However, let’s not confuse useful mistakes with making a useless mess. When good mistakes happen it’s because you’re working on real problems with a business-like approach. Playful work is different then playful. Allowing mistakes to happen is an attitude. An attitude that frees you from narrow minded thinking. An attitude that enables you to discover ideas several levels beneath the obvious, boring surface because you aren’t trying to avoid making mistakes.

WHY IT MATTERS
We all know that marketing is about standing out from the crowd. It’s about originality and catching your attention in a slightly wonderful and imaginative way. It’s about originality. When clients want to art direct or stay rigidly within self-imposed parameters it makes the end product unsuccessful. Allowing something bad to exist, whether it was the clients decision or not, inevitably becomes the designers responsibility. Designers who ‘settle’ should be avoided. Clients who ‘settle’ should be educated. If not by us, then who?

A few simple rules in the very beginning can do away with this feeling in the end.

What to consider when working with designers:

1) Review his or her portfolio and ask specific questions. Which pieces of this project did you actually create? How many revisions did you work through? What can you tell me about the company you did this for? All of these questions should help you understand the designer’s ability and process. It also sets a precedent for your expectations. Designers need to have ‘reasons’ for why they did what they did.

2) Ask the designer to describe back to you what he or she heard you say. Communicating simple things like who your target audience is and what is most important idea to convey should come out of your designers lips the same way it comes out of yours.

3) Use examples. You know what you like, and why you like those specific ideas and examples. Since designers are visual people this will make the most sense to them.

4) Set expectations on turn-around time and cost. There is a shared responsibility to developing creative. Most designers work off a time estimate to determine cost. This is part of the equation, but ‘value’ should also be considered. Turn-around time should be in days or weeks, not months. Set absolute dates for completion and, if you experience delays, don’t hesitate to get to the bottom of it. There’s nothing magical about design. It takes thought and effort just like anything else, and the designer should be accountable based on the expectations you set together.

5) Never accept something you aren’t sure of. The goal of any designer is to make your company look good. But it’s also to make you look… ‘like YOU.’ If it doesn’t feel right, keep working. You deserve to feel proud of your image, confident it represents you accurately and ultimately looks professional.

Something else that you might consider precious is your website. When you look back you remember all the time and energy you spent to make it just so. As time went on you started to make exceptions for where to put content, jamming new links or information into an outdated architecture. Now it’s become this bulging mess where only you know how to find things. Let go… allow yourself to get excited about organizing the site in a fresh way. Present your content in a way that works with your design and makes for a user-friendly experience.

Change can be good. Ask around for critical feedback, explore new ideas and never hesitate to get professional advice. Most designers are willing to provide opinions and ideas without a financial commitment.