The Client Issue

Client Feedback

You did your research. You did math (!) and made a budget. You built your case. You got approval! You wrote a brief. You enticed an amazing illustrator or photographer into accepting the project. But now, once things are finally moving along, the client has opinions. Pardon moi?

Feedback, notes, collaboration, harsh and unwarranted criticism…whatever you want to call it, it can be tricky to navigate. When, how, and why should an art director push back against feedback? How can an art director use feedback to make the work better? Most of all, why can’t everyone just agree with us that we’re always right?

Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

Hall of Fame Feedback

Real feedback we’ve gotten over the years:

• “[The CEO’s mom] doesn’t like the color green, so we’re going to have to change that.”
• “Does that look phallic to anyone else?”
• “That fork looks too sad…it’s not on brand.”
• “It shouldn’t be too diverse.” (More about this bombshell later, in the Yikes! section)
• Strangest of all was getting this: “Looks great!” That was it. No caveats, no questions, no changes. It was downright exhilarating, and has only happened once in our career. Before that, we’d thought it was just an urban legend.

Art Direction Waitress Syndrome

When it comes to feedback, it’s easy to slide into a role where you just take directions from a client and copy-paste that directly to the illustrator. It feels a bit like being a waitress: “And do you want a spot illustration with that hero image?” 

This is where it’s really likely that feedback cycles will get inefficient and even counterproductive. Be proactive. Take the time to consider requests, mock things up, and consolidate and negotiate client feedback. Give feedback to the feedback. Be a chef, not a waiter. The metaphor falls apart a bit here (the artist is probably the chef…?) but you get the point. Own the process.

Giving and receiving feedback can be overwhelming if you are a confrontation-fearing gentle soul. Maybe you just want to get it out of the way and not get your hands dirty, but push through this impulse. Remember that most artists had their hearts hardened long ago in terrifying art school critiques. It’s not a big deal.

Guiding Insights and Tips from the Pros

We polled our friends, coworkers, and contacts in a range of roles: they’re clients, designers, creative directors, and photographers. (Yes, we’re popular 😏 ) We got a lot of insights into ways to make the process go smoothly before and during the feedback stage.

No Surprises
Bring it in the ideas stage. Make a solid brief with a ton of comps and lots of ideas and you’ll be regarded as a source of solutions. Be as transparent as possible about what you envision the end product will look like, so there are no surprises. This trust allows clients to step back, relax, and trust that you and the illustrator know how to pick the right color red. This makes for a lot less panicked micro-managing and a much happier process for everyone.

Clear eyes, open minds, can’t lose
Criticism (how dare they!) can trigger knee-jerk defensiveness. Push past that and consider the feedback. The Upstatement mantra ‘good ideas can come from anywhere’ is a nice reminder to keep an open mind and let quality conquer ego. Fresh eyes can be a big help. Maybe that fork does look a little sad now that you mention it…

Couples therapy
Take the feedback, but examine it. Often a client has a valid concern (ie, headline isn’t legible), but rather than directly sharing that, they present a solution (ie, change it to Helvetica). Take a step back together and start from a place of understanding and consensus, not prescription. From there you can solve the problem in a way that makes both teams happy. (It also helps to coach the client early on to give feedback in this way. It’s actually easier for them. They don’t need to come up with the solution, that’s our job!)

Remember the Good Times
Don’t be afraid to pull out that original brief the client signed off on and the moodboards you shared (you did that, right?). Show that you’re on track towards something everyone agreed on, and most importantly, are solving the problems that you set out to address. Invoke strategy over arbitrary taste. Does this illustration properly convey that the product is elegant, modern, and [insert buzzword from the brief here]? Then it doesn’t matter if there’s green in it but the CEO’s mom hates green. Bye. (If she’s the one paying, you might have to be a bit more flexible though. Capitalism!)

But what if taking their feedback would RUIN EVERYTHING?

Client feedback tends to elicit one of three responses.

1. Great idea, let’s do it. 
2. That’s fine, we can make that edit even though we don’t think we need to.
3. Bad idea. No. We don’t want to do it. In this case, you can always just say you’ll think about it, then ignore it and see what happens, in subtle diva mode. It works, sometimes! Maybe they’ll let it go. If not, you can try some of these approaches…

Bargaining
Is there some sort of compromise you can reach that would downgrade this 3 to a 2? Take their idea, and mitigate it with a bit of our own touch. No one’s happy, but we aren’t miserable, either.

Acceptance
Sometimes things end up feeling like a lost cause and no longer ours. That’s ok, as long as we tried our hardest to make something quality. It happens. Don’t cry. At least you’ll still get paid!

Have a Prenup
Speaking of the bank, did you remember to build in revisions in your contract and the illustrator’s contract? In theory, everything is re-doable (this is client work, not the Mona Lisa), but that doesn’t mean it won’t take more time and more money. That might make it sting a bit less.

Good Cop/Bad Cop

If you’re going to try to convince them they’re wrong, depending on the size of your team, a good cop/bad cop scenario is a classic. The good cop listens and receives the feedback, and the bad cop (a sympathetic creative director with a spare moment) pops in later and rejects it on any reasonable grounds they can (will take too long, bad for the product, whatever). 

Yikes! What to do if the client is giving some sorta-problematic notes

The client, art director, and illustrator should all work together to make sure the final product is inclusive. We all have biases and blind spots. Even when everyone has good intentions, things can go awry. So keep your eyes open and, even when it’s uncomfortable, we have to call each other out. We’ve heard quite a range of things, including, “She looks too heavy,” and, “We didn’t think he’d be Black.” 🚫 🚨 🚫 🚨 🚫 🚨 🚫 🚨 There’s also the old classic, “That looks too feminine,” an inevitable comment when we all operate within a sexist system. That’s right, The System is sexist! You heard it here first.

Case study
We were a tad taken aback when a client asked for a “less-diverse” range of people in an illustration meant to represent their company. They explained that while they aspired to have diverse workforce, right now they were anything but, and they didn’t want to be misleading or gratuitously use imagery of people of color for their own gain.

We could understand that, but still…it feels pretty weird to tell an illustrator “More white people please.” And was that even the right thing to do? Isn’t it better to broadcast values and aspirations in order to be welcoming to prospective employees of color? It was a lot to unpack, and we don’t know if we did the right thing (we ignored the feedback 😬). This is a case where our instinct tells us it’s worth pushing back and worth erring on the side of inclusivity, but we’re curious what other people think. WWYD?

In other dicey situations, we’ve talked through the situation by parroting back the client’s request. When they can hear what it sounds like from the outside, it’s often enough for a wake-up call—“So you’re saying you don’t want to show any overweight people?” “How do you think your customer base would react if they were to see this internal creative brief?” We also pull examples of other published work and campaigns that show a range of people. If they see someone else doing it (and making money) it’s very persuasive (gross, but true).

It doesn’t hurt to pull the Phone A Friend 📞 move and dig up some expert quotes and stats to help build your case. They might not listen to you, but will they listen to Dr. Fakename Smith, director of the Harvard Institute for Social Sciences? He says 62% of Americans over the age of 40 are overweight, and they are 75% more likely to identify with and purchase from a brand that offers them representation. 

We’ve been very lucky to work with a lot of great people; outright offensive requests have been extremely rare. It’s important to consider who you’re working for. If companies profit off diverse imagery, they should be supporting those communities in return, behind the scenes.

Inspirational Quotes!

We’ll leave you with some powerful quotes to bring you comfort as you experience the highs and lows of client collaboration. Good luck out there!

• “We’re solving problems and making products, not making art. #unpopularopinion —Kim Miller, Principal, Upstatement
• “Not everything is gonna be in the portfolio, but it will be in the bank.” —Anonymous