Posted on May 5, 2004

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Spotlight on the Designer

In my previous column I talked about the various roles played by members of the branding team and stressed the importance of the designer to the success or failure of any design project. In this column I'll demystify the role of the designer in the branding process and will walk you through the steps required to find a designer whose sensibility and work methods are likely to be a good fit for your organization.

The majority of independent graphic designers work on a fairly broad range of projects: they tend to be generalists, in that sense, with agile minds and abundant supplies of creativity. If asked to work on the same old stuff day after day, they grow bored and frustrated. Why should that matter to you? Because good graphic designers thrive on the kind of interesting communication challenges and diverse messages that typify the nonprofit sector.

You noticed I qualified my last statement, right? I said good designers, because unlike plumbers, lawyers, or the person who cuts your hair, graphic designers don't need to be certified in order to hang out a shingle. In fact, there are vast numbers of mediocre quasi-professional designers out there. Complicating matters, designers, like the rest of us, tend to have strengths and weaknesses: Great Web site designers may be lousy brand designers, and the award-winning designer of annual reports may not have a clue how to design a decent advertisement. Then there are the designers who, although they do everything, may not do anything well. Your challenge is to find a designer who is inspired, intelligent, and responsive to your needs. And to do that, you and your branding team have to know what you want and how to articulate it. (For help in doing just that, see my previous columns, "Anatomy of a Design Brief" and "It Takes a Village to Raise a Brand.") So here are some guidelines for finding a designer who is just right for you.

There's no way around it: To find a design professional you feel comfortable with and whose work you like, you're going to have to interview a lot of designers and be able to evaluate the work they show you. But how do you, a non-designer, assess a design professional's portfolio? Here are some basic questions to keep in mind:

• Is the work consistently strong and organized in a way that's logical and speaks to your needs?
• Is the design concept or idea behind the work evident, or is the work merely decorative? You don't need decoration; you need design.
• Does the work need to be explained in order to be understood?
• How much of the work was actually produced and how much is merely prototyped? Prototypes aren't proof that a designer can actually produce what he or she has designed. When work has been taken through to printing or manufacturing and still looks great, you know you're talking to a pro.
• How much of the work relates stylistically to your organization's needs? Is the portfolio too serious or too whimsical, too modern or too classic. Be like Goldilocks — keep looking until you find the portfolio that's just right.

The designer should show you examples of the kind of materials — annual reports, Web pages, book jackets, logos — you're looking for help with. Not that you'll always know whether the examples are effective. Design is subjective, and what works and doesn't in a particular context is often a mystery even to an accomplished designer. What looks good to you may have been totally inappropriate and a flop for the actual client. But there are some questions you should ask every designer you interview, so be sure to keep a list handy as you review portfolios:

• How was the design problem defined by your client? Did the client provide a design brief? If not, how did you determine the objectives of the project?
• How did you present the design to your client? Was it a tight comprehensive presentation or a series of sketches? Why did you present it as you did?
• Was this the design solution you preferred or did you present others that you liked better?
• How did this particular design solution address your client's problem?
• How many applications did you create for the design program? May I see the whole program?
• Who acted as project manager — you or your client?
• Is the design currently being used by the client? Do you feel it is being used successfully?

The idea is to try to get insights into the designer's working relationships with his or her clients. If she says, "What I'm showing here wasn't actually produced. We terminated the relationship with that client," well, that tells you something. As does a designer who says, "The client wanted this. I didn't. I thought it was the wrong approach." This could mean a lack of leadership skills on the designer's part. Besides helping you to determine whether the designer has talent, the portfolio review process is also an opportunity for you to learn about a designer's modus operandi. Some designers will insist on presenting only a single solution to a client — the right one. Others prefer to share their thinking in sketch form and proceed collaboratively from there, coming up with additional solutions based on dialogue with the client. You need to figure out how much you need, and want, to be involved in the process. But regardless of your level of participation, it's absolutely essential that you and your designer communicate enough to establish a good rapport.

Aaron Hurst, president of Taproot Foundation, organizes communications projects on a purely pro bono basis for select nonprofits in San Francisco and New York. "It's tough to judge a designer by their book. There are often several 'authors' in any project, making it hard to see what the designer is capable of by viewing their portfolio," he notes. "So we often ask other professionals to recommend good graphic designers, and we ask the members of our board. It's not uncommon for us to find the project manager first, since they have links to the better graphic designers."

For all its projects, Taproot provides a pro bono manager who serves as the intermediary between the branding team and the client and is responsible for delivering the finished product on time, on budget, and on target. In other situations, the role of project manager may be filled by the designer or by a member of his or her staff, or by someone on the client's staff — a not-uncommon practice when the client is already providing other key creative types to the project who are not under the direct supervision of the designer.

So which is it? Will someone on your staff be the project manager, or are you expecting the designer to fill that role? If you want the designer to be the project manager, be sure to evaluate your design candidates' managerial skills and acumen as well as their design talent. And don't forget to figure the added cost into his or her final design fee.

Design education is a good thing. But it's not the only thing, and it's not a guarantee of good design instincts. I've worked with amazingly talented designers who had virtually no formal design training. And I've met plenty of lousy designers with impressive degrees. The point is, really good design is inspired, not learned. That said, designers are less likely to work in an idiosyncratic or spontaneous way and are more likely to follow a formal process if they have a design school background. So bring it up.

The size of a design firm is another consideration. Big graphic design firms or advertising agencies with in-house designers often have more resources to allocate to pro bono or low-fee nonprofit work. In many ways, however, you get

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what you pay for, so be sure to find out from any designer under consideration exactly who will be working on the project and in what capacity. The last thing you want is to have your project delegated to a junior designer whose work falls short of your expectations.

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Interestingly, some firms seem to do their best work for nonprofits. With offices in London, Berlin, Austin, San Francisco, and New York, Pentagram is arguably the largest and most prestigious and of the multinational graphic design firms, and its partners in the New York office have created memorable brand identities for a number of local nonprofit organizations, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Public Theatre. Michael Bierut, a partner in New York, says that almost two-thirds of his clients are nonprofits, representing mainly cultural and educational concerns, some large and well-funded, like New York University, and others small, with modest budgets. Regardless of size or status, however, each client gets the same treatment. Says

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Bierut, "The best thing about working with nonprofits is that, whether it's a museum, a school, or a performing arts organization, generally there is more 'content' with which to get engaged. That makes all the difference."

Like Bierut, Steve Liska, president of Liska+Associates, whose current clients include Hubbard Street Dance, the Racine Art Museum, and the Brain Research Foundation, is attracted to nonprofit work. According to Liska, about 15 percent to 20 percent of his work is for nonprofits, and a small amount of that is done pro bono. "We don't view nonprofits as charity, we view them as usually needing brand and

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communication help more than anyone," he says. "They don't have the kind of media exposure that for-profits often do — so they need to be smarter and more focused. I think they chose us because we want to solve their problem to the best of our ability. Building a brand is always collaborative, and the process is no different for a nonprofit than it is for a for-profit client."

In addition to a designer's portfolio and personality, there's one other aspect of his or her presentation that you'll want to consider before you make up your mind: the proposal. Once you've narrowed the field of candidates to three or four, maximum, you should provide each with a design brief (see "Anatomy of a Design Brief"). They, in turn, should provide you with a written proposal based on the brief, usually within ten days. The proposal is important — for you and for the designer you ultimately hire. Although design proposals run the gamut, from undesigned two-page estimates submitted via e-mail to multi-sectioned extravaganzas sent FedEx, a good proposal, regardless of length, should always contain the following elements:

• A description of the design process. Most designers follow a five-phase process:
• Phase 1: Orientation (research, backgrounding);
• Phase 2: Design exploration (development of preliminary design solutions that address the project's objectives);
• Phase 3: Refinement (adjustments made to the design as required by the client);
• Phase 4: Prepress production (the project is made ready for the printer/Web site host/signage manufacturer, etc.); and
• Phase 5: Printing or manufacturing (the project is taken to completion).
• Also look for:
• Points during the process when you will be allowed to approve/amend/reject the work in progress
• Time frames for each phase of the project
• Cost (i.e., the designer's fee plus an estimate of expenses)
• Terms and conditions
• Biographies of the key players on the designer's team
• References (optional)

A well-crafted proposal serves many functions: It reveals how the designer presents him or herself on paper and enables you to compare "apples to apples"; it provides a snapshot of how the designer sees the project progressing, as well as the roles you and he/she will play in the process; and it anticipates outcomes for each phase of the project. It also makes it easier for you and the designer to discuss problems up front, where they can be negotiated without bloodshed and/or needless expense. For all these reasons, I would be wary of a short proposal, since it may mean the designer has not thought through the way he or she wants to work with you. I would also be wary of proposals that are not well designed. Think of the proposal as the designer's cover letter. If it's sloppy, thrown together, or just unimaginative...well, why work with a designer who isn't even tending to his or her own brand?

There are a fair number of boilerplate terms in the typical design proposal and only a few — the deal breakers) that usually get the client's attention and require negotiation:

• Markups — a carrying charge, usually 15-20 percent, for expenses incurred by the designer on the client's behalf.
• Kill fee — the fee, agreed upon in advance, received by the designer should the project be terminated at any point. The way the kill fee is calculated should be spelled out in the terms.
• Rights transfer — while the designer generally transfers the copyright to the client for the completed work when payment is made in full, he or she usually retains the rights to unfinished work.
• Credit — the designer generally wishes to be acknowledged in print for the work he or she has done — when appropriate. Such credit usually appears as a very small, inconspicuous line of type somewhere on the piece and, when the work is exhibited (in design contests, for instance), also as a general acknowledgment in the program.

In addition to copyright, the main legal and ethical issues of concern to designers are:

• Work on Speculation — a designer should not be asked to create work without an agreement, on paper, that he or she will be paid and/or the client is intending to take the work to completion.
• Plagiarism — a designer should never be asked to adapt and/or modify the work of another designer without that designer's knowledge.
• Work for Hire — the independent contractor/designer should not be asked to give up his or her rights of authorship. Work for Hire is a loophole (usually applied to staff members) in copyright law which, if signed, makes the designer all but invisible. Rights transfers, on the other hand, do not negate the creator's existence.

The Pricing and Ethical Guidelines (PEGs) published by the Graphic Artists Guild is the main industry tool for understanding per-project pricing, legal and ethical issues, and contractual terms and agreements; you should probably have a copy on hand if you think you'll be working with designers on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, most designers and clients are looking to create a simpatico relationship with the other party, one that rewards creativity and honest effort and with appropriate compensation. Each side has to get what it needs for the relationship to thrive. Compensation, however, can be defined beyond money to include:

• Satisfaction in seeing a project through to its successful conclusion
• Creative freedom
• Respect
• The knowledge that your work is contributing to making a difference

Simply having read this column, you are helping to insure that no matter how much (or little) you ultimately pay your designer, he or she is likely to be rewarded with other, less tangible forms of compensation.

In my next column, I'll try to shed some light on the design development process by walking you through the typical phases of the process and showing you what to expect at each stage along the way. Of course, in design, there is no single formula, no typical situation; each project is a unique creative challenge. That's why it's so exciting. So stay tuned — the best is yet to come.

Writer, strategist, and art director DK Holland has been developing award-winning programs that include branding, licensing, promotion, and product development for companies such as Mattel and Citicorp for thirty years. She was, until 2001, a partner in the Pushpin Group, an internationally acclaimed design and illustration firm based in New York City. Currently the principal of DK Holland, llc, a communications consultancy that works exclusively with nonprofits, her clients include the Literacy Assistance Center, New Internationals, the Sustainability Education Center, World Reach, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and Sisters of Charity New York. DK serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Nonprofit Governance, which she is in the process of re-branding; is an editor of Communications Arts magazine and the author/art director of a dozen books on graphic design; and teaches in the graduate school for nonprofit management at New School University. She lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.