Paul O'Flaherty

Graphic design for the horse that will not drink

One of the major challenges I face here in Denmark when designing anything from graphics to a website for a customer is ensuring that I produce a design which the client actually requested. The biggest obstacle is the language barrier. Even though I speak Danish, I’m not perfectly fluent, and still run into a lot of misunderstandings. Of course, the way around this is to ask lots of questions and do some preliminary sketches with the client to ensure that I’m on the right track before I even boot Photoshop or Dreamweaver for the first time.

Yet, the language barrier is not the most difficult designing challenge I face on a day to day basis. A clients lack of knowledge and ignorance of even simple design premises proves to be the bane of many good ideas.

The customer is always right, or so the say. Well in the world of graphic or web design that simply doesn’t hold any water. Recently I was hired to produce a logo for a new company. The company itself isn’t small, and is, in fact the third “off shoot” of a primary company, but one that still needed to develop and brand its own business identity.

After meeting with the client for two hours, from 7am onwards, discussing what was wanted in the logo, and doing multiple sketches, we settled on two ideas which I would take from sketching paper to screen and print. The logo’s not only had to work on web pages, but be scalable for everything from letter heads to the side of 3 story buildings.

I set out by working on the “simplest” of the two sketches, and quickly found that while the concept sounded good, it just didn’t work when developed and spent a couple of hours doing variations on it and tweaking it to get a logo that would be useable, and above all, one that I would be happy and proud to hand over to the client. The concept behind the logo that the client wanted was flawed, which ultimately resulted in a mediocre logo that I felt any hack could have pumped out.

I moved on to the second concept drawing, and while a lot more challenging to bring to the screen, it was immediately apparent to me that if I did this one right it would not only be good, it would be awesome.

Hours later I was done. But, having knowledge of the client already, I duplicated many of the layers of the logo, and redid them in variations, so that the client would have the opportunity to choose between subtle, and not so subtle style variations.

With that done, I called the client to arrange a meeting.

The client arrives and I proudly display the second logo. My master piece! It’s everything the client specified, from shape to content to colour. He just says “and what about the other idea?” I was taken aback.

Still, I like to consider myself a professional, so I explain to the client that while the idea for the first logo was good (it wasn’t particularly, but you have to keep them happy), it ultimately didn’t translate very well to the screen. But as I had, as I always do, translated the idea to screen and done variations, I showed them to him.

At this point it might be worth noting that I always have m ore than one meeting with a client after I start developing something to ensure that things are on the right track before we get to a final product. This meeting was on the same day, a mere twelve hours after I had the initial meeting with the client.

Strangely the client got very excited by the “crap” logo and then, as this wasn’t supposed to be the final meeting, asked if I could take one part of the “crap” logo, and one segment of my “master piece”, and put them together to create a different logo.

Of course I could, but as I explained to my client, it just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work from any point of view, design, colour, nothing.

But the “customer is always right”, right? So I put the two elements together on a new graphic, moved them around to a couple of locations and changed some colours, at the clients request, so that what was “crap” now became exceptionally crap.

I couldn’t believe it! I was staring at the screen, wondering how this “work” which would best serve it’s life floating in a toilet bowl waiting to be flushed, could ever be rescued and the client was sitting there beaming from ear to ear.

There never was a second meeting. The client asked for the work to be printed, and output in the various formats, which I did and put the lot on a CD for him.

I now get to see that logo all the time. It drives past me on vans, I see it on signs. It depresses me. I do actively try to educate my client, so that they will get what they expect. What this client ended up with wasn’t even discussed in out two hour planning meeting.

Educating your clients is important, they’ve got to be happy with the product they get, and it must work. Still, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

It’s like those horrible print “paintings” of dogs playing poker, that you see in so many dorm rooms, or hanging in single guys bachelor pads. When asked why they’ve got that picture handing the response is always the same:

I may not know art, but I know what I like!