Respect Your Designers, They Know What They’re Doing

This is not so much a marketing post as it is a post to anyone who works closely with designers and to those who employ them. Frequently in my industry, I see designers wrongfully treated and should be given more respect. Remember, designers are human beings and are trained in their fields.

A good design does not take only five minutes to complete for a website, it takes hours, days, even weeks to get a proper design. I may not be a designer but this is the most basic approach.

Let’s go over the process of a site that is designed by a professional graphic designer.

1. The site idea. The graphic designer learns what the project is, talks to the client or director and sees some ideas of what the client may want the site to look like.

2. Research. This is EXTREMELY important! While there are prodigy designers who can make a beautiful look for a site without a thought, most experts take their time to get inspiration, and make a proper plan for how the site should look for the client’s site to really make it look good while making it user friendly. From what I have seen, many of them prepare several ideas to draw out in mock-ups.

3.Mock-Ups. The designer or the team begins creating mock-ups. This can just for the home page take up to several days depending on the size of the project and how big the website will be. A good looking home page is essential! They create the pages look and creative feel. After completion, it get’s sent to the developers for proper coding.

4. Edits. Final edits to design are made with the designers (small touch ups, perhaps a slight change in color) and it is finalized. Hooray!

Now, as a marketer, I speak from working with a large firm and this is a very BASIC view of how the processes go in most firms I have seen (each has more detailed parts which I do not know about). So the next time a client comes in storming in and yelling at a designer and says the famous line, “I can make something better in five minutes.”  Show them the process. Make sure they appreciate the time and effort gone into it. If they say it’s too expensive, show the process that real designers go through and that this isn’t some amateur you picked up off the street.

Graphic designers work hard, respect this fact and respect them so they give you better work each time.