So you’ve brainstormed, sketched, executed, tweaked and perfected your designs…..now time for the big reveal. The client may hate it, they may love it, they may be on the fence. But what should you do or say before the verdict is out? At times it may be appropriate to sit back and let them find their way, but for more formal presentations, it’s time for us to put on our sales caps.
I prefer to keep my initial explanations of design work to a minimum. The client’s final audience isn’t going to hear my rambling justification for why the logo is in this font, or why the brochure in their hands is blue, or whatever……the goal when you’re designing should be that everything that needs to be said should already have been said with the design. So I prefer to get the unbiased initial reaction of the client before explaining each design, so as to get the most accurate reading of how the final audience may respond. Then I can answer any questions from there.
But sometimes clients need a bigger nudge in the direction we think best. I was taught never to use the response “It just felt right” as a reason for a design decision…that there must be a reason for every little detail of your work. I’m not sure how much I completely agree with that, but I suppose it’s a good train of thought so we’re always prepared to justify our work. But there’s no need to give a 30 page design brief explaining how your new logo design for Pepsi compares to the golden ratio and the Parthenon….just keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Here are just a few ideas for presenting your work to a client:
- Start strong, end strong. Begin and end with the concepts you think are working best, leaving your least favorites for the middle.
- Reiterate the client’s needs and challenges that were presented in the beginning, and explain how your work fulfills those needs or provides the solution.
- Pay attention to clues as to what the client is responding positively to and use that as a guide in explaining your work.
- Explain your creative process and how you arrived at the final product.
- Prove you did your research by pointing out specific information your work reflects or how it compares to their competition.
- Present one concept at a time. Don’t overwhelm the client by spreading a table full of scattered concepts in front of them all at once.
- Discuss the fonts, colors, and style you used and why you chose them.
Of course the client doesn’t always connect with the concept we’re gearing them towards and it’s never pleasant to see our design babies rejected and buried in the heaps of unused ideas to never escape the confines of our hard drives. But it’s worth a shot to put our sales skills to the test and the client will appreciate the creative process and thought you put into representing their business.
