Killing the Artist
May 28th, 2010
One of the hardest things to learn, when venturing out on your own in the design world, is that you shouldn’t be too attached emotionally to your work. Clients come to you for a creative solution to their problem, and they trust that you are going to provide them that solution. Some clients give you all the freedom in the world and let you have your way with their website, brochure or whatever. These projects are always a pleasure to work on because it feeds the artist that is in most of us. For the most part, however, clients have their own idea of what the end result should look like, generally. Sometimes they have preconceived idea, or they simply do not like what you have done after they see your first iteration. There are times when it doesn’t matter how detailed a brief you get or how many interviews you do, sometimes you just miss the mark. They don’t like your design for some reason or another, valid, or invalid—dosen’t really matter. This is where you have to kill the artist in yourself and think like a business person.
What’s so bad about the artist?
An artist creates works of art that are expressions of his thoughts and feelings. He is attached to his work emotionally as it is essentially part of him. While most designers are artists at some level, and artistic sensibilities play a huge role in crafting effective design, the artist must not be allowed to rule when it comes to work for clients. Why? Because the artist is too emotionally attached to the work. When a client, or colleague, criticizes the work, the artist takes it as a criticism of himself. And it’s understandable that he would. To the artist, this piece of design is representing his thoughts and feelings expressed in color, layout and type. He thought to himself during the process of designing, “Man wait until people see this, they’re going to be blown away!”. What he should have been thinking is, “Man, this is going to do exactly what the client wants to get done, in a creative way.”This mentality is focused on client needs and the solution to their problem and not a focus on self-gratification.
Killing my own artist
I have had to come to grips with this personally. And it wasn’t easy. There was a client that was great from the get go. They seemed flexible, they liked the work in my portfolio, they pointed out some sites that they liked and colors that they were looking to use. All good. So I got to work. I was pumped. The design was looking awesome. One of my personal best, in my opinion. I was so excited to show the client the first mockup and to hear them say “Wow, that is so incredible! Thanks for going the extra mile.” Boy was I surprised when I heard “I don’t get how you got the idea that this is what we were looking for. It looks nothing like the sites we showed you that we liked.” My heart sank. I couldn’t understand it. I put so much of myself into the design. And that was the problem. I was designing for me, not the client and their problem. In the end I had to start over and I got the job done for them in a way that pleased them and solved their problem. In my opinion the end product wasn’t as nice artistically than the first design, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that the client got what they paid for.
Conclusion
Now I’m not saying that you should not try to push yourself to create the best work you can, or that we shouldn’t use our artistic sensibilities in what we do. I’m just saying that maybe we need to redefine what “best” means to us as individuals. Is it great work if it solves the problem for the client but dosen’t get praise from your peers. I think so. Sometimes we have to bite the bullet and do things that we may not be fully on board with just to please our clients, because that is why we are in business.
Show Some Love
This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Business, Process, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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