What is the main difference between design and art? At the time when art asks questions, design offers solutions. Thus, a communication is crucial when it comes to designs. You cannot solve a task if you don’t clearly understand what it is about.
For freelance designers, this point is far more important than for in-house designers. If you are a freelance designer, you should combine both the features of a project manager and an executor. At first, when you’re not quite good at communicating with clients, you may think that people who surround you are complete idiots who don’t appreciate your divine gift. With some time passing by, you begin to realize that there are not so many inadequate clients; the existing ones could be easily detected with a help of a single conversation. Communication skills turn out to be vital for freelance designers because they help them to earn a sufficient income and get better projects.
A Tale of a Heaven-Born Designer Who Was Looking For A Perfect Client
And vice versa
If you’re an active and experienced user of DesignContest platform, you know these few basic rules that make clients choose your design as a winning one. If you aren’t, it’s high time you learned a couple of useful things.
Make sure your client likes your designs
On design crowdsourcing platforms, you need to make sure that your potential client likes the design entry you submit. In order to do that, your client’s brief should become your best friend in this time period. Pay attention to every detail, every word, every picture a client attaches to that brief. This way, you’ll be able to get the right picture of what your client actually wants to see in your future design.
If you’re looking for freelance non-crowdsourcing projects.
If clients on crowdsourcing platforms don’t pay attention to your portfolio (like, at all – they are interested in the result more than in the person who came up with this design), freelance projects are an opposite story. Send your potential client a link to your portfolio and ask whether this client likes your previous designs. If a client answers something like “I wasn’t impressed with them but I’m sure you’ll do much better for usâ€, say you’re sorry and run from this client away. If you decide to stay with this client, you’ll feel very sorry for that when after the 70th alteration you realize that you could have spent this time in a much more profitable way on much more interesting projects.
Don’t be in a hurry when it comes to establishing the terms your work should be done within. As a rule, if you think it will take you 5 days, it’ll take 7 at least. So, stick to your deadlines by telling your clients an average amount of time.
If the alterations sound weird
Run away as fast as possible. If your client tells you something like “here, I’d like you to add a thin gray line of about 1 pixelâ€, it is an attribute of a client who dreamt of becoming an artist and downloaded Photoshop. As a rule, such people are looking for those who will implement their own strange ideas in life. When they get disappointed in their ideas, you’re the one who is going to be blamed.
If you’re a client who wants to hire a designer
Clients also can make their design project secure by choosing a right designer. However, this very process is quite a hard thing to do.
Take a look at the designer’s portfolio
Find a person whose designs don’t raise any doubts even after the tenth look; this should be a person who you simply want to work with. Spend a bit more time to check this designer, looking through the social networks and feedbacks on different design platforms. You’ll easily be able to spot a cheater and a person who likes missing deadlines, a lot of catastrophes can be prevented at once.
Don’t lie to your designer
If your budget cannot cover the expenses, find out what can be done to cut them. If you cannot pay your designer at the final stage of the project, this wouldn’t recommend your company with its pleasant side, would it?
Don’t expect too much
If you want to get a well-experienced designer to conduct your work but can afford only a newbie, don’t demand impossible from your designer who doesn’t have enough skills (and costs less, by the way). As a rule, you can always judge from the portfolio as for what a designer can do and what can’t.
Communicate
Tell your designer as much as you can about this future project. Show the designer designs you like and those you dislike. It would help a lot in terms of understanding each other and bringing your project to its next level.
Bottom Line
Making clients understand designers (and vice versa) is the key to a successful design project that can turn to be beneficial for both sides. If there are any problems, try to solve them with your communicative skills. This way, you’ll prove yourself as a professional who is always pleasant to work with.
