Your changes still have to solve the problem
I used to use a client's own list of problems to win arguments about the work. Now it's the question I ask about every change, mine included.
Early at the agency, I picked up a way of starting projects from José Caballer. Before anything gets designed, the client says what the problems are, in their own words, and they get written down. Everything made afterwards answers to that list.
I'm a little embarrassed by what I saw in it at first. I didn't think, here's a great way to tie the design to the business. I thought, here's a great way to get the client off my back. You told me this, this and this. I made you something that solves those problems. You don't like it? Too bad, tough shit, because this is what solves the problem.
That's a selfish, ego-driven way to use it. It also puts the client on the other side of the table, and nobody wants to be told their opinion of their own business doesn't count.
The same list, a different question
Now it goes like this. Okay, you don't like what I made. That's fine. Tell me how your changes will address the problems we talked about before.
It's the same list doing the same job. The work still answers to the problems we agreed on, not to my taste or to theirs. What changed is who gets to make the case. It isn't me defending the design anymore. It's both of us checking the change against what the business needs.
It isn't about liking it
When Heather Crank came on my podcast, I asked her whether she still makes work she doesn't like. "I do a lot of stuff I don't like," she said. "I'm there to solve your problem." Her own standard and the client's can be very different, and she still has to make money.
That cuts both ways, and it took me a while to see it. If the problem is the job, then my taste doesn't win the argument either. "I like it" isn't a reason, whether the designer says it or the client does.
Heather said that part takes time: learning to communicate, understanding what the client needs, and holding your boundaries so you don't feel taken advantage of, while everybody still gets what they need. "You need the equal power dynamic," she said.
That's most of what branding work with me looks like. We agree on the problems first. Then every piece of feedback, mine included, has to answer to them.
