"— Hey! I'm sending you the texts for the book / manual / brochure / publication in a Word file. Can you please put it in a nice, professional layout for me? Thanks!"

For years, it frustrated me that clients, although initially accepted my usual solution for the problems of book / manual / brochure / publication of having a two column based layout over a 12 column grid, they always (and I do mean ALWAYS) come back to the single column, neverending word length, so-called traditional layout.

My usual starting grid. 12 columns... divisible by 2 or 3... It solves most of my daily problems and I feel quite comfortable with its flexibility.

The situation escalates to ridiculously bad proportions when a designer works in-house. It's like he's the only shit-head in the entire company that does not "get on with the program." Although everybody is super nice to him when he arrives, after a while people get really annoyed with the whole "this layout is better because it's less crowded and it breathes more" argument / attitude — and here is where the problem lies /starts.

His colleagues want / expect a professionally laid out document while constraining it with unprofessional limits:

I would like to have that document done just like my Word file, but looking good. After all, that's why we're paying you to work in-house.

The Designer's version

Matey... it does not work like that. And if you need it "just like the Word file", why give it to the designer? Why not... well... keep it in Word? What exactly do you expect the designer to do? If anything, we learn rules of typography, balance, composition and colours (among other things) in University; quite different from spell casting, cauldronry, and other mystic teachings that might enable us to look into the depths your mind, read it and produce whatever it is you think is of high standard. Why frustrate yourself and the designer with such a brief?

The Client's version

I simply asked him/her something quite simple: to turn this document into something more pleasing to the eyes; is that so hard to do? isn't that his job? isn't he/she supposed to know what "professionally designed" means? It's so frustrating to work with these "arty farty" people... they just seem to be unable to deliver in a "real-world" environment. He/she seems to constantly not listen to my requests: He/she takes the original files along with the brief and then just makes something I completely did not ask for... It's like talking to a wall that never left Uni.

We've all been there. One place or the other. We've all felt this genuine feeling of frustration.

And, as a male that belongs to the graphic group kind of the designer species, I must add that I already felt first hand how harsh the corporate world can be... however dear colleagues, "the client is always right". And I say this with a smile and my chest full of hope as if I have just discovered cold fusion.

I came to the conclusion that it's a mentality problem.
Although this conclusion not new, what I'm trying to do is intelectualize the problem in order to expose it and, hopefully, solve it.

The Designers

You see reader, we designers come from a problem solving background. One way or another, our brains are wired in a way that we live constantly urging for the next problem (read briefs) to be solved (read agonize over and over until we distill a solution) — and that's good. That's how we are. During this problem solving process, we are obsessed (read haunted) with four questions:

Is it beautiful?
Is it original?
Is the client happy?
Will I add it to my folio?

On the whole, if you manage to answer "Yes" to these four, deceptively simple, questions, and you earn your living as a designer, you'll feel this incredible endorphine rush in your brain, this incredible sense of achievement, the ultimate "this is what I was born to do" kind of feeling. It lasts for about 3m36s.

The reason why it's such a short period is because designers are ill. We are a sick bunch.

It's easy to tell that we're ill... Have you noticed our natural inclination to collect things nobody cares about? How thrilled we get when we see a sign on the street with some unusual typography? How we tend to collect what most people would classify as garbage? How we are envious of each other because "A got sent some fonts from Hoefler and Frère Jones... why wasn't I?"? —

In my particular case, beauty is paramount. I thrive for the beautiful layout. Or, at least, what in my head is a beautiful layout. To give you an idea of how important beauty is in my life, I bought a sofa that I can't sit nor lie on because it causes some excruciating back pain... but hey... it's a beautiful sofa.

Once a job is successfully done we are on to the next fix, the next rush... and that rush... that "I'm the King of the World" moment only comes after the successful completion of the four questions above.

The Clients

The cold and harsh truth is that the Clients are not and do not have to be sensitive to the designer's sensitivity. Of course you'll find Clients that are sensitive to the visual professional's constant need to comply with his own standard, but most of them don't. Therefore, when a designer comes up with a white space minded layout, the usual question coming from the client is "Why didn't you use the whole page?"

The frustration, for both parties, that originates from the comment is evident, but its understanding is fundamental for this exercise.

You see, I believe this can be distilled to something I like to call Responsability Shift (term coined by yours truly).

The Clients usually live in a highly hierarchical setup full of organizational charts that inform the reader about who is everyone and what is everyone's task. This setup also relies on the "corporate ladder" model where Junior Associates report to Associates that report to Assistant Vice-Presidents that report to Vice-Presidents that report to Managing Directors that report to Partners — and this is fine! This is how it has been forever and it's a model everybody understands and respects.

Although there are some dogmas and hierarchical similarities (ass kissing is universal / the boss is always right / the client is always right / the more junior you are, the more likely it is to do not very interesting work ), Designers however work in a slightly different way. Usually we have brainstorming sessions where people discuss, give ideas, try things, put post-its on walls as a way to generate solutions, are (or should be) constantly asking: "is this the best we can come up with? / is the solution pertinent? / how would you solve it if...? / how will X or Y look at it? / what are the social implications of that? / is it cool? / is it nice? / would I buy it? / would you buy it?"

The Clients have always worked in a way that work is passed to them: Responsibility is passed from the Boss to the Worker. The task is handled using Word, Excel, Powerpoint or email and then transmitted back to the Boss. Once this procedure is done... the whole thing is done. Boss is happy, Worker is happy. All is good.

In the Design world, the need to constantly question procedures, actions and methods is what makes visual professionals stand out from the crowd. The mere fact that idea generation comes from informed discussion already puts Clients and Designers on a collision course. As office politics dictates to avoid conflict at all cost and creative policy strongly suggests open discussion / experimentation as the primary source of all good work, you can see why the work relationship between on and the other is complicated.
If you add to this the fact that (Landor, Pentagram and all other giants do not apply) designers are seen as artists that have mood swings and are very sensitive about their work, you'll see that the distance between these two groups just tends to increase.

One group lives according to a policy of responsibility shifting, the other lives according to a policy of taking, questioning, understanding and wanting responsibility.

Regarding the usual mix up of designers and artists, allow me to clarify you. The first group solves problems; the second expresses their feelings / messages / intentions through a certain medium. Of course the world has plenty of designers who are artists as well as artists who do design. But, by definition, we're talking about two different things.

I believe that part of the miss-understood designer's problems come from this confusion; you see, among Designers there are also a few Divas (read idiots) that think that they're better than everybody else and roll their eyes when someone gives them a piece of input / advice. Because they have this Diva behaviour, the untrained eye could classify them as extravagant and then, by word association, the designer-artist mix-up emerges. But fear not— they're plain idiots.

The fact that these idiots act like Supreme Beings that don't need the next pay (probably they don't because they still live in their Mum's basement), the whole design community is affected. Their lack of professionalism and extravagance dictates what all of us are blamed for.

Furthermore, the profession of design is seen (again, this is my opinion and is what I gathered from my experience so far) as something not very valued by the majority of people. I believe that due to its ubiquity (EVERYTHING is designed), it's simply not respected. A bit like people don't respect the oceans, or they don't respect the air, they don't respect the people that (could) bring them visual beauty. People just don't respect what they get for granted. How many designers have heard the "you should really do this for me for free because it'll give you visibility and it'll only take you 5 mins to do" / "you NEED to do this for ME for FREE because you need to get some work in your folio and if you don't do it I'll ask my nephew who just installed Photoshop on his machine and he'll do it" arguments. Dear Reader, if you only knew how many times I did stuff for free so that "a nephew" doesn't hurt the world with another piece of bad visual communication. And yes, I am aware of how arrogant that sounds. It is also the truth.

Bottom line is that Design is seen as easy and Office work is seen as hard. I really distill it down to this. One is perceived to be more important than the other — and this is bad. As far as I'm concerned, the conditions are set for a symbiosis to thrive: you have intelligent people on both sides of the same problem that want to achieve a pertinent solution.

This article is a bit all over the place. There were a lot of concepts I wanted to relate and I believe I failed to do it. However, I also think I was able to put my finger on a few issues and that rests me.

To be continued.