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10th International Design Indaba Articles
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Designing in hostile territory
By: Louise Marsland

Do you talk about your ‘moron’ clients that you just can’t work with because they don’t understand design or your creative challenges particularly? ‘Designing in hostile territory’ was the focus of business design and competitiveness guru from Canada, Roger Martin’s presentation at the 10th annual South African creative showcase: Design Indaba in Cape Town this morning, Thursday, 22 February 2007. The fact is, designers scare clients.

In an attempt to try get clients and designers to understand that despite the fact that they operate completely differently (some would say indifferent solar systems), as in left brain vs right brain people and speak different ‘languages’, it is still possible to collaborate and communicate, says Martin, whose presentation focused on these differences.

The design challenge

This was his advice for designers:
  1. Take ‘design-unfriendliness’ as a design challenge…
    If you are talking about “moron” clients you “just can’t work with”, it’s as much of a design challenge like the rest of the design challenges. If you see it this way, then designers will be much better off and enjoy the task more, Martin believes.

  2. Empathise with the design-unfriendly elements…
    Clients are thinking about payroll, other business challenges. So, understand where the client comes from, their business constraints, advises Martin. If designers empathised with the design unfriendly elements, they would get further.

  3. Speak the language of reliability…
    “Break the rules… tearing up the plans… be dangerous… be different... ambiguity…” Stop using these scary words with your clients, says Martin. Clients are business people who need a certain level of reliability to keep an organisation going. Designers and clients speak different languages! It creates miscommunication and the client may think you are being problematic, instead of creative and wonderful, he says.

  4. Use analogies and stories…
    “I sealed my own fate by not recognising when clients need a reason to believe in your ideas,” Martin says explaining why he once lost a client. If one can reassure clients with stories and analogies and examples of why your off-the-chart ideas might work and not seem to the client as dangerous or radical, then you will be the winner. Use analogies and stories with the purpose of helping clients understand.

  5. Bite off as little a piece as possible to generate proof…
    It’s hard for designers who tend to say “it’s all or nothing”, to bite off a chunk when you want the whole picture. But the client might be afraid of the whole picture.
Leveraging design in business

His advice to the client was similar. Understand and emphathise with your designers or design consultants, they are trying to do the best for you:
  1. Take inattention to reliability as a management challenge…
    Just as I don’t see business people, business people don’t see designers, warns Martin. Design is as legitimate as any other management challenge, he advises.

  2. Empathise with the reliability-unfriendly elements…
    Designers are trying to do the best for your company, recognise that and show appreciation for their ideas and the creative input that went into them.

  3. Speak the language of validity…
    Start to recognise that the words you use destroy validity for designers. Understand what they need from you in turn.

  4. Share data and reasoning, not conclusions…
    Don’t get on the list of clients that have to be cut off.

  5. Bite off as big a piece as possible to give innovation a chance…
    The best designers and business people are those who understand each other.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louise Marsland is editor and editorial director of Bizcommunity.com, Africa’s leading provider of daily media, marketing, and advertising news and information. She is also the South African joint-coordinator and founder of the Trade, Association, Business Publication International (TABPI) Editor’s Chapter. She has recently also been appointed to head up the Magazine Publishers’ Association of South Africa (MPASA) Business-to-business Media Sub-committee. A journalist with 21 years’ experience, Marsland started in daily newspapers in South Africa in the 1980s and has specialised in media strategy and B2B and online media in the last decade, editing and launching publications in the main in the marketing and FMCG retail market, both print and online. She recently researched the sustainability of the B2B media sector for her Masters in Commerce degree: Strategy & Organisational Dynamics, through the Leadership Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is currently researching a book in her field and develops training programmes in the B2B media sector; and marketing communications arena in knowledge management from a media perspective. Contact her on: editor@bizcommunity.com.

[22 Feb 2007 10:20]

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