Strategy before the logo
When a client says "it doesn't feel right," they're telling me I skipped the strategy and went straight to the visual.
"I don't know, it just doesn't feel right." Every brand designer has heard this, and it's the most expensive sentence in the project. For years I thought it meant the client was indecisive, but it's a symptom: the visual came before the strategy, and now there's no criterion to defend any choice, not for them and not for me.
Vague feedback is a diagnosis
When revisions never end, the problem is almost always the missing "why" we never agreed on before the design. Without it, every "why" turns into taste, and you don't win taste in a meeting. The client gets subjective because they have nothing to lean on, and I'm left with no argument because I don't have one either.
Ask before you draw
Two questions solve more than five rounds of tweaks:
- The 5 whys. "Why did you start this brand?" and keep asking "why?" until you reach the real reason, not the brochure answer.
- "So what?" When the client lists a feature ("we have eco-friendly packaging"), I push back with "so what? why does that matter to their customer?" A feature becomes a value, and value gives visual direction.
The visual becomes translation
Once the attributes are defined, designing stops being a taste call and becomes mapping. "Cutting edge" pulls toward a sharp angle. "Human" pulls toward a rounded shape. And color is sometimes a market decision: you can pick a green just to escape the blue every AI competitor uses. When the client sees the logic behind each choice, they stop revising and start trusting.