Thoughts & Deeds

Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of coworkers and colleagues complain that the design projects they’re working on aren’t very creative. They want inspiration, they want to cut loose from the corporate brand guidelines and do something wacky, they want to do the kind of work we all see in award shows. Sure, those kinds of projects are really cool, but they aren’t the bread and butter of most agencies. We’re so heavily socialized to want to be rockstar designers who redefine visual communication that we lose track of what it is we are paid to do every day.

I’ve been reading Visual Research by Ian Noble and Russel Bestley, and came across this very apt, simple definition of what it is to be a designer:

Traditionally, graphic designers are involved in a process of facilitation: put concisely, the business of design is to communicate other peoples’ messages to specified audiences. This might be for the purposes of providing general information (such as a train timetable or road sign) or to persuade a target audience about a particular product through its packaging and promotional design. While this may be a crude definition, it is clearly applicable to a broad majority of design practices in the commercial arena: graphic designers are commissioned to employ their skills as communicators in the service of the client.

We are facilitators. As a designer, my job is not to express my personal style and preference, it is to express the client to their audience. Now, it’s true that anything I design will be flavored by my personality, aesthetic sense, etc., but so long as that is client- and brand-appropriate, that’s not such a bad thing. Clients may even seek you out because of your particular style or take on design.

Does this mean we can’t be creative? Of course not. We are communication facilitators and creative problem solvers, applying our visual communication skills on behalf of our clients.

Written on May 7, 2007 by Stacy Westbrook, filed under Thinking, Doing business, Ideas & Theories