Chris Hammond
William Joseph
Published in
3 min readMay 10, 2019

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Love it! Can we see some more now?

One of the great benefits of designing for digital over print is the iterative processes that are embraced. For me, it felt like a breath of fresh air and a welcome return to the collaborative creative process I’d enjoyed in my early career when Macs weren’t on every desk. However, what has confused me over the last few years is how this approach hasn’t transferred to other areas of design, even when being commissioned by the same forward-thinking-digi-savvy people.

I’ve been working in the design industry for over 26 years and started my career in the pre-internet days of paste-up, pica type-scales, Omnicrom, Safmat, SyQuest disks, faxes and internal memos. All things that I’m frankly glad to see the back of.

I do miss it though. Not the laborious bits, but the fact that piss-poor ideas were far less likely to go ahead. An idea could come in an instant — but to visualise it to a paying client was a major undertaking. It could take days, weeks even. Solutions were discussed, drawn on napkins, debated, sketched and agreed way before the sharp end of the production process. All incremental stages that happened hand-in-hand with a client, primarily to save time and money, but with the happy conclusion that the ‘creative’ was considered, together, at every stage.

Fast forward to today’s digital world. Technology has given designers the tools to work more efficiently than ever before. Yes, the craft may have gone a little, but the visualising power at your fingertips is nothing short of a revolution.

Now, this shouldn’t create a problem if you are working with clients who understand the benefit of working collaboratively and in incremental steps. You can design in a modular fashion, narrowing things down as you go. In fact, this approach combined with the software now available is a powerful combination.

Some years ago, I worked on a fundraising document for a well-known charity. We had gone through various bite-sized content and design steps with them, building up layers as we went. When the whole thing came together, they seemed very happy with the result. Then they asked when they were going to see the other options. This frustrated and intrigued me in equal measure. Were they just being polite during the process? Had we bulldozed them into this solution? When I asked what they felt wasn’t working, they replied ‘Oh, nothing, we love it — but it’s like when looking for a wedding dress. You may love the first one you see (and probably will end-up buying it), but you need to see what else is out there to be sure’. The penny dropped… we thought we were creating a Stella McCartney original. They thought they were shopping on the High Street.

So, what did I learn…?

– Spend time listening and understanding not only a client’s requirements and expectations, but also pick up the smaller signals on how they may buy and view design.

– Explain the benefits of a collaborative design process over a closed-door ‘here are some ideas that are pretty well finished — which do you like then?!’

– Never spend time crafting anything until a client is sold on the core idea

– If it doesn’t work through a simple line drawing, chances are it won’t in Photoshop either

– If someone insists on seeing ‘three different options so they can choose’ — run for the hills (unless they pay you three times the amount :)

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