On design

Design is about problem solving - working within constraints to achieve a certain, set, and ideally measurable goal. However, the bulk of a designer's role is getting to that problem.

You have to work out what is your client's aspiration, what they actually need to achieve and what assumptions they have made. You need to be able to cut through lots of conflicting, confusing information and get to that nub of necessity within it.

Good design starts with valid constraints and shared understanding. If there is any confusion, if any bad assumptions - and any assumption that you don't share with your client is a bad assumption - then your work is on fragile ground.

This is a big problem, especially for less experienced designers - or even more experienced designers who have never learned this particular lesson. However, they then go on to compound the problem by changing people's expectation of design.

I have had a fair number of conversations with prospective clients who were shocked by the number of questions that I asked, or that I asked any questions in the first place, or by some of the things that I insisted I should know ("How does this affect your bottom line", Who is your biggest competitor, and should they be) or by questions that they themselves don't have the answer for.

I make a point of explaining that I don't expect just to fire questions at them and wait, tapping my feet until they fill them in and submit them back for my review. I expect it to be a conversation, a joint discovery of answers, or of the lack of answers.

This is one of the key skills a designer brings to the table - the ability to take a cloud of unformed 'need' and 'want' and, often ' fear and doubt' and help craft it into something that can then be acted upon.

Often a designer's output could look simple. Take swiss typography. Beautiful, bold helvetica on a white background and think for a moment, not even about the grids or type heirarchys or copy editing that went into that, think about the conversations and research that went into establishing that that particular 'designed piece' would fulfil a need - and even about what the actual need was.

That is the work of a designer.