I had something of an epiphany the other day. For years I’ve assumed that most non-designers, clients included, don’t know what good design is. But now I’m looking at things in an entirely different way. I think the problem might be that most clients don’t know what bad design is.
Think about it. When was the last time a client turned up their nose at something you designed? Sure, it happens sometimes, but I’ve found that more often than not the issue is that the client can’t tell the difference between what my firm has done and what somebody else has done, even if what someone else has done looks like something that came out of a cow’s nostrils. It’s not that they think my firm’s design is bad, it’s that they can’t tell that the other guy’s work is bad, and therefore they can’t understand why my firm is charging ten times as much as the other guy.
This would naturally lead into a discussion about why people don’t know the difference between good design and bad design, but that’s a topic for another post.
