u/yoRaikatsi

few things i wanna ask people who’ve been doing this longer -

**•**	how do you sell/deliver something that doesn’t fully match your own vision of “good design”? does it feel like cheating to you or is that just normal

**•**	how do you even define if a piece of work is good or not — is it good if client is happy, or good if it actually solves their problem, or does it need to be good for the design “ecosystem” too (like objectively good work)

**•**	what do you do when you get bad feedback on something you designed

**•**	and just in general how do you turn off the “i can do more” voice when the scope/timeline doesn’t allow it

feel like this happens on almost every project and its exhausting honestly. anyone else deal with this or figured a way out of it

so i keep seeing two kinds of leads. one type wants a brand design or a logo done in 5-8 days for basically nothing.
other type actually understands what strategy + identity means and is ready to pay properly for it. earlier i used to just take whatever came, now i dont.
cheap leads with no process usually end up eating more time than the money is worth tbh.

wanted to ask people here -

1 - when someone lowballs you, do you still take the project or just skip it?

2- what actually makes a client say yes at the end …is it the final visuals, the process/strategy you show them, past work, or just how you talk during the call?

3- how do you filter low intent leads before wasting time making a whole proposal for them?

Genuinely curious how others deal with this, cause in my experience its rarely just “pretty graphics get the client.” feels like its more about trust and how you explain your thinking 🫶🏼

So in my firm we are getting a lot of rebranding and branding queries. The pattern that we have seen is that because of the AI the founder is getting more frustrated and generic results.

Now they have their own research and clear requirement now they know the difference and they can see why branding is important for them or why the company needs to invest in branding.

Since in my firm we do strategy and intent based branding, founders are starting to see the difference it helps us to get more recognition.

We thought that AI would kill this thing but obviously it is going in our favor….

Fuck brand guidelines show them case study.

Tell people:

why you made certain decisions

what problem you were solving

how you arrived at the solution

what challenges came up during the process

how you worked with the client to make it happen

Branding is not just about making things look good.

It’s about identifying a gap and designing a solution around it.

Start showing your thinking, not just your visuals.
And please start fucking posting your actual work on your website.

Designers, brand strategists, and creative folks—

Let’s build one thread that every branding person can save.

Drop your best tools, websites, prompts, or resources for things like:

• Free mockups
• AI prompts
• Animations & motion assets
• Color inspiration
• Packaging references
• Brand research tools
• Typography inspiration
• Creative workflows

Basically—anything that helps you build better brands.

Let’s turn this into a resource every creative can come back to.

They started with research.

Research into competitors.
Research into customer behavior.
Research into perception.
Research into language.
Research into what already exists… and what’s missing.

Then came strategy.
Then came positioning.
Then came identity.

That order matters more than most people realize.

Because when research is weak…

Everything after that becomes guesswork.

Have you ever visited a website and left within 5 seconds…

Not because it looked bad…

But because it felt confusing?

No clear offer.
Too many words.
No trust signals.
No direction.

Most people blame “traffic.”

Sometimes the real problem is clarity.

What makes you leave a website instantly?

Most businesses don’t need a new logo.

They need clarity.

I’ve seen brands spend months changing fonts, colors, icons…

While customers still can’t answer one simple question:

“What exactly do you do?”

Design can amplify clarity.

It can’t replace it.

Have you ever come across a business that looked amazing… but left you confused?

A lot of branding projects go wrong before the design even starts.

Not because of bad designers.
Not because of bad clients.

Mostly because nobody asked the right questions in the beginning.

Who are you actually selling to?
Why does your business exist?
What makes people choose you?
What do you want people to feel when they interact with your brand?
Where do you want this business to go in the next 3–5 years?

Without clarity on things like this… logos become guesswork, messaging feels random, and brand decisions keep changing.

The more I work in branding, the more I realize—great design usually starts with great questions.

That’s exactly how we approach branding at my firm.