1) Not Checking the Details
It’s easy to assume what you have been provided by your client or your boss is correct and then just hit that publish/print button. Always double check and then triple check every name, phone number, web address, and email on any project. This is especially important when it comes to printed projects, where making changes will be expensive.
Getting someone else to look over it is a good idea too: It’s common to miss “the forest for the trees” when you’re focused on the end product and the text can easily just become another visual component, instead of being a readable item; treating text as if it were any other visual element is a bad idea. When you have double and triple checked it, make sure your client approves it – they should know their business and will be able to pick out incorrect terminology or if someone’s name or a location is spelled incorrectly, which in turn also covers your liability.
2) Becoming Too Invested
The easiest and most off-putting mistake any new creative can make, in a business sphere, is becoming too involved and/or too possessive of their own work. It’s vitally important to remember that the project is not a representation of you as a designer; your design, your video production, or whatever your talent might be.
Feedback, amendments, and revisions are the natural flow of any professional creative work that’s done for other people. If you’re too invested, or too attached to your own ideas, you will find it difficult to not be personally offended when a client or boss or fellow designers suggest changes. As the professional, it is likely that at some point you will feel you know better and that your idea is the clear winner, which may the case – however, that doesn’t always matter.
Your client is paying you to do a job, to express or create something they can’t or don’t have time or skill to do, but they have a vision; an idea or a plan that might not be as cool or professional as something you could create on your own projects. That’s okay, as not every project will end up in your portfolio and you will need to be able to draw clear definitions between yourself and your work.
3) Starting without a Plan
When you feel you have a strong idea on the direction of a project, and you think you know exactly what the client needs, it’s tempting to just start working straight away. This seems great; it’s saving you and your client time and money – better for everyone, right? No, it’s not.
While it does happen on occasion, it’s unlikely that your first idea will ever be your best and taking 10-20 minutes to brainstorm some alternatives, even if you decide on the first idea anyway, can vastly improve the final project quality.
In addition, when a client calls and needs something “yesterday”, it can be far too easy to just jump straight in; this is a dangerous way to work. Clients have a different understanding of creative work than you do – we’ve had clients in our own studio ask for an A5 booklet only to realise later that their final product would be A5-side stapled booklet – so in their mind it was an a4 document that would be cropped and stapled to “look” like an a5, so check your work and always make a plan.
4) Not Writing it Down
When working on a project someone will make a change: your boss or the client, or perhaps you run into a budget or technical issue, which means something in the original plan can’t be done. Write that down, date it, and save it – keep that information on file. If a client emails you a massive list of changes or a one-word spelling error: fix it, save the email, and record the fix somewhere.
If they mention something during a meeting or on the phone, write it down, date it, and file it. This allows you to track changes as they are made, providing you with a “living document” that should reflect the current form of the project. You do this so not to miss something that has been requested – you don’t want to end up in a client meeting and have them ask why item 1, 3, and 6 haven’t been done because you forgot them after you read the email.
Do not trust your brain to remember anything. Keeping track of feedback and keeping older versions of designs means you can always look back to see why changes were made and when they were requested; the when and why things were done. Never go into a meeting or talk to your client or boss without a pen or pencil in hand – using a laptop or iPad can be seen as putting a barrier between you and who you’re talking to, so go low-tech for a face-to-face.
