It’s such a small request isn’t it? 6 innocent words “Can we make the logo bigger?”
And at the end of the day, why shouldn’t you ask it? After all you’re the client. It’s your money, it’s your website. You’ve paid for the logo and made sure that it effortlessly epitomises the ethos and mentality of your brand, and now this jumped up creative has placed it artfully within a carefully partitioned white area, practically hidden away at the top left of your site… So why not make it bigger?
It may come as a surprise that requests to make the logo bigger are so prevalent in the world of client/creative relationships, that it has spawned its very own internet meme, and there’s a good reason for this.
You see, to a creative, you are not saying you would like your brand logo to occupy more space on the screen; you are instead saying you’d like to migrate gently into a new role.
You are moving from being the client, to being the designer.
Despite what you might think – we designers are actually a very accommodating lot. We have done our chops creating wedding invitations for family members , and doing free sites for charities. We have spent many hours pawing over Twitter, Smashing Magazine (and even on occasion Clients From Hell!), and all of these many thousands of hours of retinal burn have been to one end.
To make your website better.
There’s a very thick and important line between what clients want their website to look like and how the customer who visits the site will perceive it. The designer’s job is to reinforce that line, and demonstrate its value.
Believe it or not, when you make that small and simple 6-word request, you are devaluing the job you have paid us for, undoing the benefit of thousands of hours of research and practice, and generally ensuring that the creative message of your site is duluted. Sounds serious huh?
Consider the plumber.
Consider a plumber, installing copper pipes in your house. Consider telling him that the type of solder he is using to connect two pipes together is wrong and you’d like him to use a different one because it looks nicer. Ignoring all his years of experience, in favour of something you have a ‘feeling’ is right.
Now forget all that because it’s rubbish.
The plumber analogy is nothing like the client designer relationship at all. The reason it holds less water than a broken tap is simple: Design is emotive, pipes are not. And that’s why this issue will never go away.
Bring problems, not solutions.
Of course it’s not really about logos – it’s about clients being prescriptive about the actual layout of a website. Designers understand that it is your website, and you are in control of the overriding strategy behind every aspect of the site. But don’t forget what you have hired us to do. We are here to interpret your goals in a visually striking, effective and logical way. Let us do that job.
When offering feedback; try to make it open. Bring your designer problems not solutions.
- A problem is: “I feel like my eye is being drawn away from the content into the twitter feed”
- A solution is: “Can you make the twitter feed grey?”
See how simple that was? Just sit back and let your designer bring you the perfect solution to all your problems.
Here are a couple of other tips to help you make the most of the design experience as a client:
- Remember who this website is for. Elicit feedback from that group of people, not necessarily just from a family member who happens to walk past the screen.
- If you trusted your designer enough to give them the job, trust them enough to actually do it for you and remember what it is you are paying them for. They are not just a third arm to allow you to express your own creativity.
- Understand that things are never black and white.
Let’s wrap it up
This post is flawed. It speaks from a “them & us” perspective that will not exist in a good client/designer relationship. Sure, the two parties may not always be drinking buddies, but there should be an amiable respect and an understanding that each party knows what they are talking about, otherwise any project is likely to run aground in a short period of time.
At Crowd we understand this, we know our industry and we know that you know yours.
But more than that, we also have the experience and confidence to engage in as many difficult conversations as it takes, if we think that you will end up with a better outcome because of it. We will always go the extra mile to offer long term engagement to your target audience.
Finally – and just to put the issue to bed once and for all…
It is very rare that the logo really needs to be any bigger…
Image Attribution: Cave Canem – http://www.flickr.com/photos/bewareofdog/