I’m kinda struggling to figure out how to word this so please bear with me. I’m just super interested in what it is that makes clients pick, what we designers deem, the worst options in design and what that says about design as an industry?
I’m also massively assuming this isn’t just my lived experience.
Examples would be when you create artwork for a high end brand but the client just keeps asking you to fill up more of the white space, make the text bigger, or when you make a logo and they want more and more colours etc.
In my head something doesn’t add up. We as designers have been basically taught how to use psychology to communicate ideas effectively to customers right? At its most fundamental that’s what I think of design as anyway (like how colour, typography and layout makes a customer feel and how it influences them). And if that’s the case, what we create should also psychologically affect the clients we’re showing those designs to and make them feel the same way. Like, “ah there is white space in the poster therefore I feel it looks high end and worth the price” but it often feel like instead they go “ugh white space? It’s so empty! This makes me feel uneasy and like no-one will like the product”
It’s like they often want the opposite of what good design practice is!
So, I guess my question in its simplest form is; if we are right, and we learnt what is right by looking at how it affects the average non designer, then why do non designer clients disagree? Is it just because it’s their own product and so they’re self conscious about how it comes across and fundamentally they would agree with a designer if they looked at it as an outsider, or are we as designers wrong and out of touch with what the average person actually connects with now?