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CommentAuthorbenjwalker
- CommentTimeOct 15th 2006
When starting a design job, be it a website, a logo design, CD artwork, or whatever tickles your fancy... what initial questions do you put to the client to get a feel for who they are, and what 'visual feel' they're looking for? -
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I personally always start with...
What do you like the look/feel of?
Its normally the biggest giveaway as to where to start. -
I'm a webdev and the two questions I start off with are:
What message they want to convey to the end user?
Give me 5 sites that you like and why. -
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CommentAuthoradjustafresh
- CommentTimeOct 16th 2006 edited
Easment is dead on.
The "what message?" or "what are you trying to communicate?" question is imperative. I usually suggest that a client give a few key words as an answer. Example... "Professional, strength, classic" conveys something entirely different to me than: "Fun, friendly, inviting".
Gathering examples of what the client likes is also a nice way of establishing their taste. Remember, you're designing for the client's taste--not yours. Hopefully they've hired you because they like the look and feel of your portfolio, so you meet somewhere in the middle.
If you're creating a website for a client. ALWAYS find out what kind of browser they will be looking at your work on. If they're using IE 4 and you didn't know it--you're screwed. -
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I always start with three questions
- What does the audience want?
- What does the audience expect?
- What do you want the audience to want?
You have to know your audience, their expectations and the companies objectives before you can really start any design project (in my opinion).
Logo and brand identity is slighty different, because then you are more focused on conveying a message than you are focused on interaction. -
I find that often my clients would already have an idea of how they want the final product to look like, but lack the expertise to create it. Thus there is very little actual 'design' involved.
In these cases I simply let them choose from a series of juxtaposing items:
- dark vs light
- clean vs flamboyant
- hot vs cool
- simpsons vs family guy
etc etc...
This helps me better understand the style they're going for.
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