A Marketer’s Guide to Building Relations with Designers (Hint: Empathise)
If you’ve ever sat with a designer to get the “creatives” done, chances are that you got into a disagreement over the final look, your feedback was taken lightly, worse, you were unable to communicate your ideas.
Having spent a considerable time on both sides of designing and marketing, I can assure you one thing — it happens between every designer and non-designer.
And I get it, you only mean to get the work done.But here’s why you need to have a working relationship with designers — the digital platform requires them not just to communicate well but also equally participate in conversions. The ultimate goal is to create unique user experience, for which you need good, functional design.
So where are we going wrong? Marketers and designers approach the problem differently. The most simple thing you can do is to empathise.
Learn to look at the “big picture”
There may have been times when you’ve looked at a good design and wondered, “Ah, I could have done this myself”. However, designing goes beyond having knowledge of the design softwares.
Having mentioned the importance of user experience before, designers are trained to choose colors, patterns and visual treatment according to psychology of how users would respond to it.
Just like how marketers have to look over the little fun aspects to stick to their strategy, designers approach their briefs the same way. So “a lot of white space” or “it doesn’t look that nice” may not necessarily fit in what I call the “big picture”.
I’d like demonstrate this with a 16th century painting and 2015 illustration. Here’s The Calling of St Matthew by Italian painter Caravaggio and an illustration by French-American artist Pascal Campion.
Both the artists could have created more emphasis in their works — Caravaggio’s subject is not all the characters, just the boy on the left while Pascal uses few dashes to create the cityscape. The creators sacrificed adding details because they wanted to focus on the “big picture”, in this case, get the viewers to easily recognise the subject of their work.
Designers need constructive feedback
Time’s running out and deadlines have to be met anyhow. Your client has just sent back feedback with more changes in the creatives. Under this pressure, you may simply pass on the word from the feedback from the client, no matter how ridiculous it may sound just to “get it done”.
This is where you need the designer the most, and so does the designer need you. Take out two minutes to explain your situation, and give constructive feedback. Here are some ways:
Let your designer know what’s on your and your client’s mind so that they can understand your hurdles better.
Give your designer enough time to work through the changes. Designers usually plan their work schedule early in the day, at times, days ahead. This includes spare time for last moment changes but time to consider and re-align the schedule is always appreciated.
- If the project involves a third party such as a printer, let the designer get to know their difficulties and suggestions ahead of time.
- Get in the shoes (and mind) of your designer. Ask them how they would approach the problem before they start working on it, so everyone can expect the same outcome and avoid further complications.
Provide visual references, not creatives to be copied
Designers are always open to visual references to get better understanding of the brief.
To start on a blank canvas is quite scary. In fact, most artists carry this fear right from the beginning of their careers through their whole professional life. So help is appreciated as long as they don’t have to plagiarize someone else’s work.
Share the references at early stage of your briefing. This allows the designer to visualise your ideas, provide inputs and can help you finalise the visual treatment.
Now that you know how designers work from point one, you can imagine how irritating it must be for designers to receive references days after they have already started working on it.
Understand what kind of designer they are
There are several design profiles that can be broadly categorised as:
- Graphic Designer
- UI Designer
- UX Designer
- Motion Graphics Designer
- Web Designer
- Interaction Designer
- Communication Designer
- Print Designer
I would need more space to delve into these categories (there’s more to the list). Every branch of design has its own significance. A print graphic designer’s task would be different from that of a UI/UX designer. They might have a few overlapping elements but every single one of them has its own process and tools to be used. So get to know what they specialize in before specifying the task.
Refrain from asking a designer to handle a project at the same duration and calibre that was followed through a project of a completely different genre.
Let the designers develop their signature
These days, designers have to train themselves to meet different aesthetic and technical requirements. But as artists, they also have to find their signature style to meet their long term career objective.
A good portfolio brings the designer qualitative projects, which requires consistency in their style, unless versatility is their strongest feature. Instead of having them imitate someone else’s signature work, give them the creative freedom to meet your requirements.
While this requires trust in your designer’s execution, it encourages a win-win situation — you get to display fresh design ideas on your company profile.For marketers looking to hire designers for specific projects, a consistent portfolio allows them to get the look and feel quickly.
Parting note
Design is subjective and everything is possible in art yet it is impossible to win your the user’s experience without a collaboration between marketers and designers. I would recommend both designers and non-designers to empathize with each other, find a stronghold where design can contribute your projects and maximise your workflow.
In short, don’t become The Most Interesting Man In The World meme:
About the author: Jothi Ganesh is a designer by the day, musician by night, and painter on the weekends. Follow this contemporary artist’s experiments on @whiskeyandjazz
