Category Archives: Professional Design

Don’t Let Designers Bully You!

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Some of my clients come to me shellshocked by the non-professional treatment they’ve received from their former graphic designer or web site builder. When I hear their stories it’s all I can do to not interject vehemently about the non-professionalism of these amateur hacks.

Mind you, their design work may have been brilliant (though usually it’s only been competent or worse) but that doesn’t excuse the bad treatment. I wish I could pass it all off by saying something glib like “You get what you pay for.” to help warn people off of inept assistance, but it doesn’t always work that way. These folks are usually professionally priced so until you’re actually experiencing their improper work ethic for yourself you haven’t got much in the of warning. Until now.

I’ll describe what constitutes correct professional behavior in a design professional and some blatant warning signs for you to see if it’s time for you to bail!

Traits of the Professional Designer
(Graphic, Web, Etc)

1. Has a portfolio that’s:

  • Accessible so you can actually see it – probably online, though print or originals are fine too in a face-to-face meeting, especially if you’re looking for print design.
  • High Quality showing the type of work you’re looking for.
  • Their own work – oh yes, it happens, if there’s something that’s included that stands out or somehow looks way beyond the standards of what else is included – ask questions about it. You’re looking to ascertain if they’re comfortable talking about how the piece was constructed, the challenges overcome, etc so authorship is established.

2. Has recommendations

or testimonials from satisfied, even delighted clients. If they offer references, check them!

3. Is Willing to Work Contractually

Professionals don’t fear contracts, in fact we love well written ones because they’re beneficial to both sides of the deal especially if something goes wrong. I almost always work with a contract for any initial job – though I have been to known to get lax about this once we’ve established a nice comfortable work relationship.

4. Gets the job done…

to specifications and on time. Aside: If your deadline is unreasonable a professional will recognize that and mention it upfront. Pros will have a standard way to cope with last minute must-do deadlines, many of us offer a more expensive compensation option for such occasions. It’s not because we don’t love you, it’s because many of us are self-employed and will have other commitments for the time your last minute project needs. We may use the extra money to pay for childcare, or cancel events or some such. 

A Professional Also:

Click on each topic above for a separate pop out post on each these hugely important traits.

Final Thoughts

A professional designer isn’t a Master and we’re not meant to be moody artistes either. We’re meant to be a cooperative member of your project’s team that bring special skills with us.

A professional designer takes into account your whole project, your goals with it and your budget. She may hold private space for her own creative process but allows full access to her share of the project as things progress firm up.

Secrecy is Probably Masking Incompetency.

A professional designer likely has invested in and uses professional tools. When requested he provides a Master file and converted multi-use files (pdfs, jpgs, gifs, etc) upon completion of a graphic or similar project.

A good designer checks her Ego at the door providing her creative solutions and suggestions with minimal baggage. Her ‘artistic license’ will serve you best the clearer you can be in the initial stages of your project with what challenges her work is meant to overcome. With these things in mind on both sides of the professional creative process any detrimental effect of Ego is minimized.

Finally, a good Contract is a great steward in a new business relationship. It helps establish:

  • Trust
  • Competency
  • Expectations and
  • Project Milestones.

Don’t let incompetency or inexperience bully your project!

A Good Designer Listens Well

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I started this series on how to recognize a design professional with an overview on the of the main traits you should expect from your design pro (graphic, web, whatever). We’ll start with one of the most important characteristics of a great designer.

A Professional Designer Listens Well.

Their capabilities to listen to how you describe your project is a very telling aspect of the seasoned designer. Lip service is easy, but really listening means the designer is able to integrate your information with their own design knowledge. This takes brain power and non-professionals get overwhelmed.

A design pro has mastered the tools of the trade in a way she’s able to be flexible enough to come up with solutions to the challenges you pose that aren’t necessarily boilerplate knock-offs from the formulae created for other clients. She knows each client – though there may be similarities - is different.

Every client’s needs and wants are unique. Good design isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. Mind you, there may be indistinguishable aspects between your project and a competitors’ but a design pro will find ways to get the necessary information from you so she understands fully what sets you apart. Therein is the alchemy of professionalism.

The experienced designer really shines in this regard – much better than any high school hack with a laptop and inadequate allowance. Unless, of course, that hack’s been designing since he was a Cub Scout. But if that’s the case he’s a pro too!

A Professional Designer Asks Questions

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Continuing in my series on helping you understand the traits of a professional designer – we’re now on to the part where you begin to learn what this person is made of professionally.

A Design Professional Asks a Lot of Questions About Your Projects Wants, Needs and Goals.

If they don’t seem too interested in your project one of two things might be happening:

  • They’re confused
  • They don’t care

Either way this isn’t good news for your project. A good designer asks all sorts of questions about what your wants, needs and goals are with the proposed project. Heck a good designer may even seem like they’re asking too many questions or unrelated ones – because this person is trying to understand your project from multiple points of view.

Example:

While you may see your web site as a selling point for your products, a great designer will also take deeply into account how that project is going to function and be perceived by your potential audiences and customers.

A design pro (image, graphic, web, etc) knows it’s part of our responsibility to consider all sides of a project when we’re allowed to (and you should always encourage us in this) because our fresh eyes may discover aspects you’ve simply overlooked due to your daily proximity.

The questions we ask help us help you identify your projects wants, needs and goals in ways you may very well haven’t thought of. That is part of the esoteric value we can bring to your business. That’s a true ‘no extra charge’ bonus you get when you work with a pro.

A Design Pro Offers Multiple Options

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Third in the series, we’re now on to that characteristic of a design pro that deals with the work output.

A Design Professional Offers Multiple Solutions to a Challenge.

With any design project there are always multiple ways to solve the challenges at hand. In many cases this is why rough sketches can be such a great way to start the process!

Some designers are handy enough with their tools that their ‘initial sketches’ look more like actual finished mock-ups of your web site, magazine, book or ad. But because they know what they’re doing these gorgeous outlines have been created in ways that are fully flexible so they can try out all sorts of changes for you to review.

It’s reasonable for you to ask for choices. A professional designer will have included approriate compensation for this in your initial Contract or Agreement. Don’t skip over this or you’re tightrope walking without a net.

You’ll be delighted at how the design will ultimately improve as you process the changes with successive iterations. Happens all the time. It’s the proof that 1+1=2+ This is the synergy magic of the design process. Oh it can get a little dicey during this phase of your working relationship – egos can come to bear here and there – but professionals will stick with it and trust the process. Your perseverance at this stage will pay off with something exponentially better than what you started with and a design pro knows this. Almost never fails.

Access to the Work You Paid For

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A Design Pro Gives You Access to the Work You Paid For.

When a new client hires me to do a design job it never fails to shock me afresh when I ask for the files of something as basic as their company logo and their answer ultimately is they haven’t got it. Oh sure, it’s on their website, their business card, their letterhead, but they don’t seem to own a final version of it in any editable format!

Professional conduct in the field of design doesn’t include hoarding the paid work! As a ranking member of the Graphic Artists Guild in the 1990′s, I was honored to meet and work with designers whose work has influenced far reaching trends throughout all of our consumer lives. From this august collective I learned how to value, sell and properly protect my work. I also learned the terms typical of the sale of design work. Basically what it comes down to is:

  1. You hire me.
  2. I do the work
  3. You pay for the work.
  4. I give you a final copy of the work.

Access to the designs you accept and have paid for is standard, especially if that’s how you all wrote out your Contract or Agreement; but really it shouldn’t even have to be written. An ethical design pro is going to naturally offer that. What this means is sending a copy of the final version of a project you create once it’s fully accepted and paid for is the right thing to do.

Images/Graphics

So if your designer has made a logo you love and use – and paid for – you should expect her to get to you the properly composed component file she created the thing with! Not just the flattened jpgs or pdfs – but the editable master Photoshop or Illustrator file. (NOTE: here’s a shorthand way to determine if you’re working with a design pro or not – if they’re using something other than programs from Adobe’s Creative Suite of software programs to create their work. These include: Photoshop, Illustrator, FlashPro, InDesign, and maybe even DreamWeaver and Fireworks – though for web site development these days open source CMS – content management systems –  like the WordPress and Joomla engines have begun to reign supreme.)

Web Sites

If it’s a web site, it should be registered using your company’s information and account. It should not be registered under your designer unless you absolutely do not want access and are willing to lose it should anything happen to your relationship with the designer – or should they cease operations for whatever reason.

Your web site should be in your company’s name with you or a position within your organization named as the main administrator. Your designer can be assigned as a technical or otherwise defined expert administrator. But you should maintain full control and ownership at the highest level of access, not your designer. This way you can never be locked out of your own site. I’ve seen that happen. It’s not nice.

Additionally, you should expect to end up with a FINAL master file of everything you pay to have produced. Designers get busy and changes and tweaks are many – and in this new flexible world of production options it’s hard to know for sure when something has really attained its full final form…but if your request for a Master copy of one of these Final forms of a project you’ve paid for goes unheeded or gets flat-out refused, something’s wrong.

And now for the final installment in this series – the Designer Bully.

Designer Bullies

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So now we’ve come to the part in this series that always just blows me away when I hear about designers behaving this way. We started our series here, by the way.

A Professional Designer Doesn’t Bully You.

Oh yes, it happens. Embarrassingly often by non-professional designers. I don’t know for sure what their underlying motivation is for such behavior but I suspect it’s to hide some sort of lack in competency. I figure the only reason a designer wouldn’t want to send a Master file or allow access to the back-end of a web site is because they have something to hide. Maybe they don’t want to show how they made it.

Hey, we’ve all run up against needing to make some shorthand ‘fudges’ from time to time that allow us to fix a shortfall in a design in a ‘down and dirty’ manner that gets the job done but is probably pretty clunky looking to another design pro. I’m not talking about these situations. After all, deadlines come to play and sometimes that’s the expedient, if inelegant, solution that brings the job in on time, within budget.

A design professional will make sure you get the final editable copy of a Master document used to create the project you’ve asked for. It’s reasonable for them to provide a version in several usable forms too (pdfs, eps, jogs, etc). I’ve inserted the word editable and bolded it so you understand creative documents these days are often composed in many layers and for you to be able to interact with or change individual components you need the layered version of the piece. Ok, you may not need it, but the designer you’ve lined up to help out with it does.

So what about the the webmaster who really believes he is some sort of Master of your web sit?. He’s the one who may well be in over his head in promises, behind in his car payments and underbid your project. A guy like this has a whole lot of reasons to keep you and anyone else who might be representing you from back-end access to your site. Mostly the reasons are going to be he’s muffed it up somehow and doesn’t want anyone dinking around back there. He’ll get caught with his pants down. Never pretty.

A professional webmaster understands there are all sorts of ways to legitimately protect a website from accidental mayhem and can assign admin access accordingly. And just to reiterate – you get to maintain supreme admin power in case all hell breaks loose and you have to fire a certain ego-inflated you-know-who. You may not know what you’re doing – but at least he won’t be able to hold your online presence ransom like I’ve witnessed others suffer and pay for!