How Important Is A Designers Creative Input In The Industry?

The design issue I am going to be tackling with this report is, “How Important is a designers creative input in the industry?” The reason I choose to investigate this issue is because after watching Grant Gilbert and Gillian Blease, I discovered that in the design industry, a relationship between the client and the designer can be a tricky business.

Grant Gillbert, as discussed in my practitioner report, is a freelance designer under the named Double G Studios, who is hired and collaborates with other design teams on big projects that are usually to do with channel branding. He discussed the two sets of clients he had whilst working at Channel 4 and the BBC. During the More 4 promotions, promoting the channel as if it was a porn channel, many complaints were received, which is a sign of a great campaign as it means it’s been noticed and made an impact. Channel four being a more free and creative channel made them perfect clients for Grant as it gave him more freedom to develop his own ideas, as long as they met the needs of the promotion. The BBC on the other hand he described as the worst clients he ever had. The project involved too many people, which becomes a stressful task. The BBC were too cautious about public opinion as the it was the tax payers money being used to create the new branding. Therefore long thought out ideas were being rejected, or ideas restricted which doesn’t leave much freedom for a designer to work with. The BBC idents received complaints much like the More 4 promotion, but the BBC take that more seriously, which must add more pressure to a designer.

Gillian Blease discussed her relationship with the Guardian newspaper.
She had a lot of independence with her designs, as her contractor didn’t set her parameters, which is great for any designers. The crucial part though is to always meet deadlines, you can't get too precious all the time, you just need to learn to believe in yourself and what you design will be something good. One of the projects she discussed, the client made her feel like a "puppet," and left no room for creative input. Gillian also discussed how another issue is the problem of a designer being the middle person between the publisher and author. Everyone has a different design perspective, which therefore causes conflict and doesn't allow the true experienced designer to work freely.

After learning about the stories of Grant and Gillian and their relationships with their clients, I decided to investigate other companies and their client issues. To do this, I spoke to Multimedia Graduates from last year who are now working for big design companies.

Paul Greenwood currently works for Double Negative (DNEG), which is a post-production house that provides VFX shots for big blockbuster films. Paul discussed with me the entire process from pitching to deadline.




A DNEG project firstly begins by pitching for the job. This is done by speaking to the studio and presenting portfolio work which is similar to what their brief requires. As an example, the film Paul is currently working on is the new Sherlock Holmes the film. The film requires digital sets of London, which DNEG specialize in. The client would then let the pitch for the job so that they could come up with matt painting of ideas and visual styles and also present, tests of what the 3D sets will look like. Once the idea has been pitched and been successful, they get a portion of the film to work on. The company then comes up with the financial terms outlining how much certain shots will cost, the client would then decide what he can and cannot shot. Once the project starts to take shape, the client visits every view weeks to check on progress and give feedback to the supervisors who pass the information back to the staff. On occasion, a client will change requirements or give us new shots, in most cases its when were ready to deliver, not understanding the lengthy progress which is involved to make these changes. The most factor of any client-based relationship is that nothing is delivered late. A late deadline could cause a big name company to become blacklisted and go from working on major blockbuster projects and having a name for itself, to becoming a forgotten memory.

Dan Hett is another graduate that works for a Manchester based company called Creative Lynx. This company do a lot of website, branding and marketing work for independent companies.




Dan told me that Client-wise, they get a range of good, bad, and the awful. The awful clients that are the ones that cause him to not want to go into work in case they've changed more stuff on the project he'd been lovingly crafting for weeks. Dan said they have an attitude that makes them believe they are the designers so therefore mess with the design, navigation, or other element.

The good clients are the ones that have a clear idea of what they want, but are still open to suggestion creatively. Dan said that these are the clients that treat the process as a two-way thing, letting us do what we're good at.

Dan then described the bad clients as the ones that say, "here's what we want, we want it now, don't change anything, hurry up". They don't understand the time involved in producing a high standard, quality piece of design.

Creative Lynx find that most of the time clients are nice guys who know what they want without being too overpowering to the designer.

Anton, another multimedia graduate, finds that either his clients tend to only have a vague idea of what the want to show and rely on the designers knowledge, or they have a very strong idea of what they want, even if it is rubbish, and they want you to bow to their wishes.

With these types of clients, he finds that part of his job is to try and persuade the client to change there idea approach to something more esthetically pleasing.

According to Anton, he has had clients argue amongst themselves about colour schemes for days, schemes that his team are trying hard to get them away from, only for them to decide the worst one. But in the end its their say.

Certain clients will give Anton free reign, but that can also cause problems. After months of working hard on a project for a client who will praise the works he is doing, only to return with mass amounts of changes after the clients boss has seen it.




As discussed in my freelance work for the village hotel, I have had experiences dealing with a client. The first client I worked for allowed me to be very independent. He never questioned my designs unless there were mistakes with dates or spellings. This was a nice relationship for me to have for my first experiences in the design world. I had so much freedom to work with, trying my own design styles and techniques and it was very enjoyable experience for me. Although I would ask him each time whether there was something specific he had in mind about how the design work should look, I was left to my own devices working on his impression that I know best, and I didn't fail to disappoint. The biggest issue I had though was time, I was usually set projects only days before deadline, which wasn't enough time to get all elements looking perfect. Looking back now, my design work wasn't very strong at the time as I lacked the knowledge I have now, but I was always able to deliver work that my boss was happy with. For a starting out designer, and my first professional work, it was a comfortable relationship, but that may have also been an issue. I felt that it made me naive to what the industry can be like, which has been something I have learned whilst on this course, and something I experienced when working with my next client.

The next client I had was much more difficult. An example of one of my issues was when I was briefed to do a cocktail menu design. I used this opportunity to produce a beautifully laid out typography design. I pitched this piece to my client, with which he told me to completely change the whole format. His input was for me to add lots of images and overload the design with lots of colours and made my design lose its aesthetics that could have made it a strong piece. I tend to find I was doing a lot of back and forth work with him, changing his ideas at the last minute. Even the smallest of changes I don't think he understood the problems that caused. To change a small piece of text on a poster can ruin the typography of the whole design. The good thing about this relationship though was that it had me better prepared for what other client based relationships will be like when I branch out further into the industry.

From what I have learnt in this investigation, is that the client will always be the main controller in any design project in the design world. If you are lucky, you will get a client that gives you more freedom and breathing space to work with, but the main point is that you will always be working to their standards. This makes me realize the importance of self directed projects that we are doing for the final year of this course and how big an opportunity it is for any designer. It allows you to promote yourself, work freely and makes the most important person yourself. It’s unlike you will ever get a project like this in the real world, so it’s important to make the most of it now.