The Imagined Client
The figure of the client takes on different facets depending on the context and phases of work of the graphic designer: sometimes absent, sometimes simulated, sometimes replaced, the imagined client is however always present.
by Gianluca Camillini and Jonathan Pierini
This article (qui in italiano) has been featured on Progetto Grafico, an international graphic design magazine published by Aiap, the italian association for visual communication design. The issue #29, “Clients and Patrons”, has been edited by Carlo Vinti and Davide Fornari with Riccardo Falcinelli. You can subscribe to the magazine here and buy the current issue here.
In this article we introduce the figure of the imagined client as a way of examining various areas of graphic design and seeing how the monolithic and traditionally accepted designer-client relationship has today taken on a new form.
The imagined client is a character to whom we can give an identity. It is the client as we imagine them, the client we want but also a client that you cannot and no longer want to define a client: the public, your partner in crime or in need.
The imagined client is everywhere a designer feels the need to overcome a given situation for a wide range of different reasons ranging from finding work to filling a perceived gap.
We will take a look at some of the identities the imagined client might assume, with special reference to the world of teaching, self-commissioned designs and self-promotion.
Naturally enough, the imagined client is just part of a project that has to take into account a subject, the specific contents of the project, and its users. With their shifting identity and their behaviour, the imagined client is likely to call into question all the other conditions of the project.
The imagined client in teaching
Alongside collaboration with real clients, as in the case of ecal which bases much of its teaching on projects commissioned by foundations and other bodies, the imagined client is still a common expedient in the world of teaching. There are however intermediary zones between real commission and expedient. In 2013 Dutchman Danny Kreeft and his students from Rotterdam’s Willem de Kooning Academie created a new identity for the city involving various local administrators in the process who, both as experts and clients, judged the work of the students from their point of view. Kreeft explains how the Willem de Kooning syllabus has developed over the past ten years, initially starting with imaginary exercises and gradually developing into collaboration with real clients, or rather with partners, thus emphasizing that the University does not work for but with them, using them as objects and inviting them to collaborate in their role as specialists.
An increasing number of academic courses, such as the Eindhoven Design Academy, offer themselves up as research projects the student can approach relatively autonomously, without defining client, user or medium as a matter of course.
The non-definition of these variables shifts the attention onto the subject matter, leaving the way open for possible and unexpected developments. What is a modus operandi typical of self-commissioning is therefore increasingly influencing and reforming teaching. According to Paul Bailey, designer and Course Leader of the MA in Graphic Design at the London College of Communication, the figure of the imagined client in the teaching field can also help raise questions about the very definition of the syllabus, conceived as a real planning of the learning experience.
With the spread of the discourse on capitalization of education, we are more and more frequently encountering terms in academia whose origins come from the world of commerce and finance. In the case of an institution such as a school, who is the client? The student? The team coordinating the course? The future graduate or the legislators and governing politicians?
Self-commissioning
An interesting difference in perspective, which is true for an increasing number of designers, is brought about by the redefinition of the client, seen both as client and collaborator.
This new perspective is often due to the very nature of projects which are not necessarily attributable to the field of graphic design as such. Some of Bailey’s projects have originated through correspondence with online galleries, conversations with artists or subjects that have cropped up during the lunch break. The diverse nature of such exchanges necessarily implies a different way of understanding the relationship with the client. Bailey describes this by referring to Gordan Pask’s Conversation Theory, according to which meaning is agreed through interpretation of the other’s behaviour during the conversation; a way of exchanging dialogue does not only define work relationships but also friendships and neighbourly relations, a characteristic that shows how the boundary between roles and the separation between working and non-working relationships is getting harder to define.
Another perspective on self-commission comes from the experience of Studio Fludd, a Venetian multidisciplinary collective. For them self-commission means learning and growth. In their self-initiated projects they take care of the entire process, from concept to completion and communication, thus constituting an autonomous dimension that offers the opportunity to acquire skills in numerous areas of the project.
This approach stems from a desire not to wait for the ideal client but to be resourceful and try even with limited resources to develop ideas and complex projects independently.
Self-promotion
In 1927 the multitalented Fortunato Depero wrote: “Self-publicity is not a vain, useless or exaggerated expression of megalomania, but an indispensable need to let the public know your ideas and creations quickly.”1
With self-promotion, like self-commission, the imagined client tries in all respects to satisfy the interests and tastes of the designer. As can happen in education, being your own client creates a useful precedent for selling yourself to the real client.
In contrast, a project motivated solely by the need to “get known” can be a less complex challenge leading to poor results in terms of research and innovation.
The imagined client is a regular visitor to portfolio sites on the web, where very often the boundary between self-indulgence and self-promotion becomes hazy. One such example is the Behance phenomenon, where countless hypothetical and imagined projects are uploaded daily on the online platform: minimal and perfectly in line with the graphic trends of the moment, openly or covertly fake projects digitally added to stationery, renderings so perfect it is hard to tell whether the project has actually been produced or not.
What does real actually mean in the social and post-digital era? How important is it for the artifact to be tangible? Is there any point in undertaking a project without a real client?
Among young designers it is very common to make a coordinated image an essential project in your portfolio, perhaps because this is still, in a “traditional” view, the most comprehensive work you can get to grips with. You end up designing your own identity. There are various reasons for this: first of all self-promotion; there is certainly no better way to promote yourself than to talk about yourself. Even if it’s not Depero’s “megalomania,” a little narcissism it is — then as now, from the millions of today’s selfies back to the proud photos of the Futurists.
In the second place self-corporate identity is a kind of declaration of intent through which designers establish their existence as freelancers, or even as a studio or workshop.
It has to be said that this constant exercise inevitably produces a huge amount of visual artifacts some, as is normal, very good, others less. All graphics output, real or not, is an imaginary to draw on. On the other hand this imaginary gives the profession of visual designer a narrow and ideologized definition.
Concluding Remarks
On their way through teaching, self-commission and self-production, the imagined client has had to ask themselves many questions, reinventing him or herself each time according to the needs of the case. Observing them has allowed us to see how the boundaries between different areas are actually far from defined. Design methods typical of teaching crop up again in self-commissioning which then becomes a complete and independent practice. Similarly, teaching can recreate situations “in the laboratory,” specifically modelled on consolidated designer/client relationships.
Further education may become a place for developing new professional practices or it may even consider redesigning itself. One such example is the case of a workshop held by Rob Giampietro at the Faculty of Design in Bolzano in 20122 which asked students to think up a new syllabus. In the certainly fruitful context of contamination between design practices and milieus, the imagined client calls himself into question and from client becomes a less defined but continuously re-definable object of multiple relationships. This seemingly rather disarming conclusion invites us to look at the project from a little farther away so as to adopt a directorial point of view. Not assuming who our client is nor even that there is a client is a revolution that perhaps has always been there, but that we try to make every day.
1. Fortunato Depero, “Necessità auto-réclame” (The need for self-promotion) in Depero Futurista, Dinamo-Azari, Milan, 1927, p. 51.
2. The Teacher’s College workshop was held by Rob Giampietro during Design Festival 2012 — Faculty of Design and Art at the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen (curated by Giorgio Camuffo and Maddalena Dalla Mura).
