A Quick Piece of Advice for Graphic Designers
OWN. YOUR. CONTENT.
I feel like I’ve recently hit a new level with my design abilities, and I owe it all to this seemingly simple idea. When you’re given content from a client, whether it’s artwork, existing pieces, text, photos or whatever else, you need to do more than just turn your brain off and use what you’re given. You need to turn your brain on and figure out what you want to use.
There was a long time when I would feel limited by the constraints of a project and make the best of them. I would be scared of them. I would feel limited and intimidated thinking that the client clearly knows best. Instead of doing anything about it I’d just try to make the best of it. But recently, I’ve seen the work of some of my peers really hit the mark, and it’s because they did more than use what they had to work with. They went the extra mile with what they were given.
When you’re given content from a client, you need to look through all of it, think about it, and edit it. It might not all be necessary. Or make sense. Or be enough information. Or be any good. As a designer you might feel the need to add more or, much more likely, edit it down.
I had to work on a poster recently, where I was given crappy content to work with. It was supposed to be sent to students interested in getting a studio art MFA, and had about three blurbs of actual information and mostly lists of visiting artists and faculty that, to most who don’t know the people involved, wouldn’t really explain anything about the program. In short, not much to work with.
The first thing I did was read it and decide that if I were a prospective MFA candidate, I’d want to know more. A lot more. So I went on the program’s website and pulled all the text I could from there. I asked around to people in the program what pieces of it they most interested in when they were looking at schools, and which parts make this program special. I checked with the client and changed the format, from a poster to a mailer. I took all the new content and split it into sections, added headlines (and came up with a tagline for the overall piece along the way), and took pull quotes from the interesting parts. What started as a cluttered poster is now a mailer that gives a good introduction to the program, and will be mailed out to 700 or so universities.
What was said about all those changes I made? Did the client say a word about it, good or bad? Were they upset I didn’t use what I was given? Or excited I went the extra mile?
Nope.
I almost wish they had, just so there would be some acknowledgement of it. But at the end of the day, what matters is the piece is better for it. And that’s really what I was brought in to do. Make the best of what I have to work with, and what that is extends well past what the client gives you, to every skill you have whether it’s your own illustrations, photography, writing, and editing.
You can’t always do whatever you want with a project. I’m sick of reading lofty design theory posts that talk about perfect situations. There’s plenty of real limitations like budget, timeline, approval, knowing who you’re working with, and the general shitty way the practical world can work. So maybe some of these ideas get shot down, or need to be changed back later.
But approaching a project this way, as an editor, helps everyone. It makes the project much more interesting for you to work on. It lets you use your outside perspective to help the client get new ideas and that can lead to a better end result, and makes the piece better at achieving whatever goals it is hoping to achieve. And hopefully, in a touchy-feely “The Secret” sort of way, works out better for you in the long run as it will help you form a reputation not as someone that just acts like a brainwashed content wrangler playing layout-Tetris, but as someone that thinks and brings everything they’ve got to what they work on.
So don’t be afraid to take your fresh eyes and say “this doesn’t work, I’ll show you what does.”
