When non-designers design

I’m sure that by now everyone has seen the (fantastic) iPod packaging parody. If you haven’t, check it out. (Unfortunately, the clip has been removed since this post was written. If anyone has a new link, please let me know.). (2006-03-03: found a new link!) Unfortunately, it’s not too far from a real-world example of what can happen when non-designers design. It is true, the customer is always right, but it’s our job as designers to find a balance between meeting the customer’s wants and needs and general design integrity (I’ve written about this before, but the article’s in Dutch). Meeting the customer’s wants and needs does not mean “do everything the customer says”. By being passive during the design process, we’re not doing what we’re being paid to do, and that is to design, and to advise the client accordingly.

Good design will meet the needs of the client and communicate the right message in the right tone for a particular market and a particular client. The key might be in thinking creatively about what the client needs, and distinguishing this from what the client wants. Wants are high-level and subjective (we’re an accounting firm, and we like the young look of the MTV website). Needs are low-level and more factual, based on data (our client base consists of Fortune 500 companies and we need to attract more of this group in order to succeed). This makes needs easier to work with. A design which meets the needs of the client, perhaps sprinkled with a couple of wants, will almost certainly make the client happy, and allow the designer to maintain a high standard.

Of course, if you’re a professional designer, you probably already know this. The problem is that much of design seems to have has been reduced from creative problem-solving to tools-based, client-butt-kissing decoration. If I had a dollar for every time a client told me that what he wants me to do is easy and that his 12-year-old nephew with a PC can do it too, I’d buy Microsoft and hire Apple to do their design work.

The fact is, graphic design is a formal field of study, just like architecture. And I don’t know anyone who’d hire a 12-year-old kid with CAD software to design his office building, do you?