Giving Great Feedback
Today we’ll take a look at what most people find to be the most exciting part of the branding journey: the design phase!
During this phase, your designer is working hard behind the scenes to craft your visual assets using all of the great brand strategy that you developed together. These assets include your logo files, brand colors, brand fonts, graphic elements, and anything else visual that is a part of your project scope.
And once all of the initial design work is complete, it’s time for the big brand reveal!
Mixed Emotions
For designers & clients alike, this step can be both super exciting and extremely nerve-wracking. It’s exciting for clients to finally see how everything is coming together and exciting for designers who have put a lot of thought & effort into the designs and can’t wait to share what they’ve developed!
But, for both parties, the nerves can kick in—the designer worries about the client not loving the designs as much as they do, and the client worries about the same thing, but from the perspective of how to handle the situation if that’s the case.
Once you get to this stage in the process, it’s important to remember that it’s completely OK if you’re not 100% in love with the design!
You shouldn’t feel pressured to love every pixel on the first draft. In fact, most designers expect some level of refining to take place after the reveal. After all, refinement stages are built into the process for a reason! The branding process is meant to be collaborative, and working together to finesse & refine the designs to best reflect your strategy will result in an amazing end product!
But that said, when working with your designer, it’s important make sure that there is some sort of initial Art Direction sign-off & strategy development before the design process takes place. Whether it’s a questionnaire or full strategy session, a mood board or complete art direction, there should be some sort of conversation and agreement around the overall tone & style before any designing begins. This ensures that you’re both on the same page when it comes to colors, font style, and approach & makes it more likely that you’ll be on board with the initial designs once they’re revealed.
The Brand Reveal
Now, let’s pretend that you just had your brand reveal meeting and you love the overall direction your designer took, but there are a couple elements you want modified here & there.
Some people are really confident when it comes to giving feedback while others might find it to be more challenging. It’s completely normal if giving design feedback feels intimidating to you, especially for those who may be working with a designer for the first time. Remember that it’s OK to not know specific design terminology! Your designer won’t expect your feedback to be filled with technical design terms, but the one thing they will expect is kindness.
That’s not to say that you need to tiptoe around elements you don’t love to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, but remembering that there is another human on the other end of the email who worked very hard to bring your vision to life can go a long way! There’s a big difference between expressing your thoughts & concerns and being rude, so it’s safe to assume that feedback should be free of comments that are mean, accusatory, or demeaning.
Feedback Tips
Are you ready for the big secret to giving great feedback?
The key is to be as specific as possible. Even if you aren’t familiar with design lingo, being specific in your responses goes a long way!
Here are some tips on how to provide helpful and honest feedback:
Think Like Your Audience
The most important thing to remember during the review process is to consider how everything relates back to your brand strategy. Think back to the goals, values, and most importantly, your customer profiles.
The way to do this is to view everything through the eyes of your audience and filter all feedback through their lens. Remember, what is created during this phase is not about what aligns with your personal style preferences or the aesthetic you prefer, but what will resonate best with your audience.
Instead of saying something like: “I don’t like this font”, explain your concerns in more detail so that your designer can best understand where you’re coming from. Try something like: “That font might be too professional for our audience. I think we need something more fun & quirky” or “These particular letters are hard to read in this font”.
Instead of: “These colors aren’t working”, explain what it is about the colors that you don’t think are consistent with your brand strategy. Try something like: “These colors feel too muted; I think brighter colors would better represent the energy we want to convey”.
Make sure you not only address the concern, but also why/how you feel it’s missing the mark in relation to your strategy. Whatever your concerns and feedback might be, remember to always tie it back to your audience and your strategy since that needs to be the foundation of the design!
Identify the Concern, not the Solution
Identifying the solution as part of the requested edits is one of the most common ways designers will typically receive feedback. It’s natural to gravitate towards thoughts of what you’d like to see changed, but by providing feedback in the form of the issue you’re concerned with, your designer can help identify alternative solutions that might flow a bit better in the design while still addressing your concern.
Instead of framing feedback as a solution like: “Make this part of the logo bigger” you can say something like: “This text in the logo is difficult to read” or “This part of the logo feels unbalanced.”
By framing an issue and not a solution, your designer can come up with different approaches that might be a better fix for the issue at hand. Maybe in this case, the section of the logo doesn’t need to be bigger, but the font just needs to be adjusted to be a little thicker; or maybe a few letters need to be customized to read better at a smaller size.
Requesting the solution right off of the bat not only limits your options, but puts a specific expectation in your mind that might not actually be the best overall solution.
Use Visual Guides
When in doubt, send examples!
It can sometimes be tricky to articulate exactly what you mean, so if you’re having a tough time putting something into words, feel free to send along a photo or link to examples. Designers are, unsurprisingly, very visual people, so having that frame of reference will really help us get on the same page as you.
Remember, a lot of directives can be subjective, so a visual aid can be really helpful! Asking someone to “increase the space between the letters a little” can be interpreted differently from person to person. Someone’s perception of “little” can be someone else’s perception of “a lot”. The same is especially true for colors! Saying “I would like this to be a darker blue” can illicit dozens of different shades of what someone chooses as a dark blue. But having an example to reference will help cut down on that subjectivity.
One very important thing to note is that while examples can be used for inspiration & reference, Type A (and most professional designers) will not plagiarize existing work by directly re-creating some else’s designs. When providing examples, you should not expect to get the exact same deliverable as the inspiration. Not only is direct copying avoided for legal reasons, but it also benefits your company by ensuring that you have branded elements that are completely unique to you.
Ask Questions
Generally speaking, your designer likely pulled most of their inspiration for the design directly from your brand strategy, so if you’re unsure about specific design choices ask! You can ask why a certain choice was made, or ask for more specific information on how it relates back to the strategy.
It’s important that you are confident in understanding why certain design choices were made, so even if you like the look of everything, ask to talk through the reasoning behind the designs. Having that deeper understanding of the design will only help you in the long run.
Be Selective When Sharing
A common situation that comes up during the branding process are clients are showing the initial design concepts to all of their family & friends for crowdsourcing feedback.
We get it! This step is really exciting and can make this part of your business journey start to feel real!
You might be super excited by the designs and can’t wait to show all the close people in your network, or maybe you have concerns and are looking for validation in your feelings or even want someone else to confirm that you’re overthinking things and everything looks awesome. Whatever the motivation can be, sharing your initial design concepts with too many people can impact the process and make you question your visual direction.
The reason this can be dangerous is that it’s very likely that these reviewers do not have any context regarding the brand strategy and are only judging everything based on their own personal aesthetic preferences or experiences. It’s also likely that they are not your target audience, so the designs may not resonate at all with them—and more importantly weren’t designed to!
Now, that’s not to say everyone in our lives is incapable of being objective or understanding framing feedback from the audience’s perspective! But if you do want to share the initial design concepts with friends and family, make sure it’s people you can trust to leave their own personal feelings at the door and internalize the full brand strategy before providing their input.
Ready to develop a brand strategy or a new visual identity?
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