Avoiding Trouble: 8 Questions Designers Should Ask Clients

The client-designer struggle seems to have no end. Clients’ requests are often too vague to fully understand and designers sometimes don’t bother asking for more details. Thus, designers often end up executing a visually appealing design that sits far from the client’s business goals. All these problems arise from one simple thing: miscommunication.

If there were a proper communication stream between the client and the designer, all these disputes will disappear. In turn, both the client and the designer will come out as winners when the process is over. To ensure such smooth delivery, designers should be willing to dispatch a series of questions to better understand the client’s needs and wants.

One way to organize your questions is according to the client’s goals and style. Let’s start!

1. What does your brand do?
Learning about the type of business your client runs and what it offers will give the designer an idea of the themes that should conquer. Understanding the client’s customer base will push the designer into using visuals that will pertain to that target group.

2. What makes your brand different?
Designs should always carry the spirit of the brand they are portraying. Thus, designers should always aim to better understand the client’s competitive edge over others in the industry. This will drive the designer to portray these differences in the crafted visuals.

3. What are your brand goals?
If the designer does not know the client’s brand goals, they may end up designing an artistic beauty that belongs in a museum rather than on the client’s social media pages. Knowing what the brand wants to achieve and how it wishes to do so will guide the designer into producing something relevant. It will narrow down their choices and give them an area to focus on.

4. Who are your competitors?
Clients should provide the designer with a list of their most admired competitors – not so that the designer could copy what is out there but to draw inspiration from them. In doing so, the client can highlight other brand’s successes and failures to show designers what they’re seeking to achieve. This will also provide the designer with some insight into the industry they are tapping into.

5. What purpose will this design serve?
Because design is about function as much as it is about form, its type and purpose must be clear from the very start. Is it an online banner, a social media post, a pop-up, or something else entirely? This, in addition to the knowledge of the brand’s goals, will help the designer see things from the client’s perspective.

Style

6. What qualities would you like to highlight in the designs?
After learning about the client’s brand and industry, designers must ask the client what kind of sentiments they want the designs to embody. Formal or fun? Black or bright? In this case, the information provided by the client about their target audience and goals can help the designer better understand the overall feel of the design required by the client.

7. Do you have something in mind regarding the design?
Instead of attempting to come up with an idea from scratch only to be told that it’s not what the client had in mind, designers should make it a point to ask clients if they already have an idea in mind. While the client’s idea may not be implemented in the same way they envisioned it, it would still save time and effort from the designer’s end.

8. Can you provide examples of how you envision the design?
The client can always use words to explain what they want in a design, but providing examples gives the designer a more concrete idea of the overall look and feel of the potential design. It could be a design they’ve come across or even a rough sketch. This goes a long way in closing the gap between the client’s requirements and the final design.

To Wrap It Up:
There is a reason why many companies now focus on hiring employees with soft skills as much they do on hard skills. Without communication and problem-solving skills, it’s hard to get work done efficiently and effectively – whether you’re a designer or not.

While it is natural for miscommunication to occur between designers and clients (just as it is between any two people in the world), there are things that could be done to reduce the incidence greatly. The above questions are definitely a step in the right direction. We are sure of it.