When I start a new project I always have this thing in mind: “I should do it on guides or should I do it freestyle?”; and now let me explain to you what did I mean with “GUIDES”. For me “GUIDES” means, study the market, the opponents, consult every single thing for inspiration, do several sketches, read a 147 pages brief and so on. “FREESTYLE” - just do it. Well, I do it kinda freestyle. I don’t like briefs and all that shit, is not for me. I know some of you will say “Dude you are so idiot, how can you call you a designer”, but here I am, the idiot himself right here right now. For me is enough to know what is the brand name or the purpose and a few words about the field (the domain where this website, logo, poster should “act”).
I definitely think that clients really don’t give a damn when they wrote huge briefs, when they spend money on marketing and strategy, and almost 99% of my designs succeed like this, with me not giving a fucking damn about their strategy and 147 pages of brief. If you are able to describe to a designer your business in 3 word then do it and don’t try to impress him. What is even funny is that 80% of my designs were not even close to the briefs and what they wrote in there but they still accept it and do the thing really good with it. I am really sure that some of you will say “This guy is pure suicidal publishing this post on his public blog” … “You idiot maybe a potential client will read this, and you are out of business”.. whatever guys, because you know what? I think the clients know it. They know that is for nothing, they know that what they wrote there is not really what they want; and let me give you an example. I receive many briefs and when it comes to “keywords” part ( the part where the client describes what he want for the new design in just keywords) the clients goes like this: “fresh, young, powerful, classic, colorful, corporate, professional, …..” and so on. So can you design a fresh website for example in a classic way? unfortunately not. And here is the problem, because when they see this part of the brief they really go wild and start write in there all the beautiful words that they ever heard. Of course I bet I receive some good briefs but as I said…..whatever.
Another thing is our agencies or studios. I don’t know how’s thing in big agencies like Leo or S&S because I never care about how they work or what they do and so on. And if anyone from a big agency stumble upon my blog I really want to hear his point of view. But one thing is for sure, all the small ones are like this. “Hey Stefan, we work very professional, we do 2 weeks of research and then we design one week and bla bla bla….bla” and guess what, after 2 days they go like….“Yo Stefan do you got any chance to do anything?”……damn you people.
But enough with this, because from my point of view clients task is just to give you some little “guides” lets say, regarding what they want to achieve; not trying to make the job for you, and do a huge brief where they tell you what to do. So? Guides or Freestyle?
