Yes it’s personal
Design is personal. I work hard to understand how personal it is to my clients. Design reaches across your desk and touches those around you, those you are serving and those whom you have never met. With that in mind to many cooks in the kitchen can make creation feel dreaded and overwhelming. When that happens it helps to step away from your work and remind yourself there are only two sets of eyes you really need to be concerned about. The clients and yours.
Some might say that the designer is designing with only one set of eyes and that the client should be happy to use whatever amazing emergence the designers imagination comes to. This is simply not true. My personal take on this is that the designer and client are both a designer in one. Unified in a common goal of creation. This is not always an easy collaboration of minds but, you can bet, in the end the client will be much happier to pay you for your services if they feel they are being heard, appreciated and included in the process of creation.
We designers sometimes look at our clients like beasts that have crashed down our doors, standing over us forcing their own ideas of how their company should be represented on us. “Don’t they get it! I am the designer.” we think – and yes, I have had these thoughts, that the client does not get it. But, they do get it. This is why they hired us to begin with. What we, as designers, don’t get is that it is not about us, our ego, talent or vision but about our use of imagination in how we collaborate as a team, pulling creation out from the deepest depths of both our hidden agendas. This is where real creation comes from. The clients vision and your ability to add spice with a 4 color process to that vision.
We are in it together. Each bringing to the table our own experience. So when it feels like it is not working and getting under your mouse, moving it away from your own ideas of how something should look, take a step back, breath deep and remember that you are only one part of the equation. Design is never simple but, it is personal to everyone involved. As it should be.
