Re: Flexin'

At work, I've been struggling with the product managers' requests for designs because they are really, really bad. My boss, the creative manager, has worked at the company for over ten years and fully understands how to deal with these bad requests: send them what they want and let them figure it out themselves. It's worked pretty much every time, but as I'm laying out their ideas, I struggle to finalize it because I'm not ok with the results as a designer. I don't want people to associate my work with these designs.

This relates to Maurice's topic because while designing for bad ideas or bad clients, you can come up with better ideas as you go and potentially show those clients or product managers a better solution. We gain ideas as we work, so I agree that designing anything is better than designing nothing.

I came across this article: Creating Good Designs from Bad Design Ideas: Three Client Types and How to Handle Them. A few good tips I gained from reading this are:

• Remember, it takes two to tango, so when you’re given a bad design idea that you just can’t execute, don’t rush to blame the client, even if it seems justified. As a designer, ask yourself whether you have helped the situation (and your client) to the best of your abilities. If you have, and you still haven’t been able to overcome the bad idea, it probably means you should send them on their way. If you know that nothing good will come out of the project, then immediately step away, because there is no sense in putting yourself through unnecessary strife.
• ...if you see an opportunity to (gently) push the client in the right direction and get the project back on track, you should certainly go for it. You’ll likely get a lot of gratitude, stellar feedback, and glowing recommendations for going the extra mile.
• The client-designer relationship is like a marriage; both parties need to pull their weight in conceiving the design. Otherwise, someone is going to end being resentful, and the design is going to suffer greatly.