Reduce Design Push-Back with a ‘Presentation Mindset’

Does this sound familiar?

You spend hours, even days on a design to send to your stakeholders. You finally fight off your inner-critique and decide you’re finished. You send off your work and await a ROI on your blood, sweat and tears… but instead you get:

“It’s looks good, but can we change…”

…Everything.
…something that goes against the project goals.
…something that’s not going to help the end user.

*sigh*

This may seems like your client is intentionally trying to make your life a living hell, but the problem could probably be your clients’ lack of understanding of the project as a whole due to poor presentation of your ideas, which falls onto you.

Maybe you’re like me: you don’t have an endless amount of time to work on a presentation and you’re not able to get your clients into the office to have a full-blown design meeting. If so, you’ll need to be able to present your work in a presentation style from the get-go in order to meet deadline and budget goals.

Solution — the ‘Presentation Mindset’

The overall goal is to help your clients understand your inspiration and how you see your idea growing in the future.

It’s really helpful to see the presentation of your ideas as a communication tool at your disposal. Maybe you’re doing some form of design presentation already. For example I’ve seen may companies using a simple branded header and footer, with their design ideas sandwiched between. That’s a start, but you can do better! Imagine your ideas in a magazine-showcase, not 10 year old letterhead branding.

Let’s dig into implementing the Presentation Mindset:

1. Presentation Mindset from the start

From the beginning of a project, you should be thinking about how your idea will look as a finished product. Whether it’s in a browser, printed on a business card or even plastered all over the side of a building - you should be thinking about how the shapes, layouts, type-faces and colours you’re using, can be implemented and how it’s going to enhance the brand.

2. Mock-ups, mock-ups, mock-ups

Before you start making any final touches, take some time to see what your creation would look like in application. Try things like business cards, billboard designs or mobile browser mock-ups. This way, you’re keeping the bigger picture in mind and it will help you ensure that your idea will have the impact or desired effect before you start setting everything in concrete.

3. The final layout

To pull off a confusion-free, communication masterpiece you’ll need to showcase how you got to the finished design, and how you see things growing in the future.

As for the the actual layout, content and physical presentation of assets this will be up to you. Personally, I choose to keep my presentations open and minimal with a lot of images and application examples to help the client get a solid idea of how I see their brand working online or IRL.

Although you have creative freedom here, I recommend keeping the following in mind:

i. Variations & Actions
Any way you feel your design can be seen, spun, lifted, touched, played with or interacted with. The idea is to fill in the gaps for your viewer and reduce the amount of uncertainty.

• For branding this would be how a logo appears on different angles or on different coloured backgrounds.
• For UI this could be things like how the main navigation looks when scrolled or an interactive mock-up in www.invisionapp.com.

ii. Notes
If you can’t be there in front of your client when they open your design for the first time, I’d suggest clear and concise notation can go a long way.

iii. Two or Three Examples of Application
Probably the most important assets to any design presentation, are examples of how your design will look in a real situation. This is super important for most clients as is gives them something tangible to visualise and leaves less room for assumptions.

Conclusion

Perhaps this may all seem obvious or maybe it sounds like a whole bunch of extra work just to make what you’re already doing look flashy and fluffed-up. However it’s this attention to detail and additional explanation that is going to get your ideas across to others. No-one will understand what’s going on in your head unless you explain it, if you were to send a design to someone and say:

“Hey Bud, do you like this?”

Without any context into what this is or how this could help someone, how are they supposed to get behind you and support your ideas?

You made it! Thanks for reading.