Case Study: It’s Mandatory for A Logo Designer to be A Very Good Communicator?

Nowadays, being efficient isn’t a condition for being profitable; it is a condition for existing. Due to the fact that the clients have huge amount of possibilities to select from, in addition to the speed of never-ending changes in the society, it’s obvious that efficiency is mandatory. In this strive of being more efficient, some people neglect everything, except their effective work. Is this a good idea?

Well, no one seems to know the answer! The recommended path is the one that assures a perfect balance between lazy people that purposely “emphasize” only the quality and neglect the quantity and the too self-assertive ones that don’t have an inner temper and desperately want more. The middle solution is to be efficient, to realize good projects, whilst at the same time keeping a close eye on the personal evolution and never, but never, ignore your family and friends!

A common debate between too active and less active logo designers is about communication skills. The first ones state that they are logo designers and not psychologists, therefore communication skills are irrelevant while the less active ones praise their capacity of specking and convincing people.What do you think, which ones are correctly judging? Are communication skills as important as the design skills or not?

As I previously said, it’s hard to offer a certain answer, but the majority of the logo designers preferred to follow the in-between way. Definitely, on one hand, a logo designer should create logos, whilst on the other hand, he must have a dialogue with the clients, he must know how to speak and explain various aspects to them. Anyway, having good communication skills is welcomed both in the design world, but also in any other activity field. If you are still in doubt, I offer you three main advantages of being a good communicator. This is only my humble opinion, and it’s impossible for some readers not to share a different mentality… so I propose to share your own perspective with us. In this way, having more ideas is advantageous for everyone!

Advantage #1: Make easier the contact with the potential clients

No matter how talented a designer is or how many logos he created, unless he speaks with potential clients, none will ask for his services. Imagine a great portfolio, with some amazing logos but with no contact form, would it be possible to get in touch with the respective designer? Clearly not…

The vocabulary of a logo designer contains enough specific terms to put a client, who is interested in having a good logo and nothing more, in difficulty. It’s totally wrong to explain the rules of beautiful design to common people…it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand these, it is because they simply aren’t interested in them and don’t want to waste time. It’s the same idea: should you know high advanced math formulas and the international quotation of oil to buy some gallons of gasoline? Definitely not…so should a client know the unity principle in web design?

Briefly, being a good communicator means that you are able to speak the language of the client, let him understand what suppose a logo and more important, make him feeling that his opinions are taken into account, but some of them may not be the good solutions and here the role of the designer is to correct.

Advantage #2: You get a good image in the eyes of people

It’s immoral, but at the same time part of the human behavior. It has been scientifically demonstrated that a specialist having good communication skills is regarded by people as being even a better specialist. That means that between two individuals that have very similar design skills, the one that communicates better gains the clients. I think it is the main reason why a logo designer should try to improve his communication skills. Across time, having good relationships with clients is the basis of a good personal image and it works as magic in bringing more and more clients. Much more, the satisfied clients will recommend your services to other people and so on, because of word of mouth a designer turns into a rocking logo designer.

Advantage #3: A good communication between designer and clients is equivalent to wasting less time

There is a great paradox and every designer should be aware of: many logo creators avoid the conversations with the clients just to save time, but in the medium and long term perspective they are totally wrong. A poor and ineffective dialogue with the clients is the “perfect basis” of misunderstandings that should be resolved and it is equivalent of extra time. Definitely, the logo creator loses time and resources and the client is frustrated…there is no winner, only losers!

I think that it is useless to discuss further if it’s important to be a good communicator; a better approach is to discuss about how to improve communication skills. It will be great to know your opinion about that; are you interested in finding out more about how to better the speaking ability? Depending on your feedback, we may publish a new post about sharpening the communication know-how.

Anyway, don’t be discouraged by the fact that you aren’t still a good communicator. It’s true, some people seem to be born real orators, but communication skills may be sharpened with exercise. The conclusion is simple: you won’t waste time by reading more blog posts or books about how to effectively and efficiently discuss with your clients. There are two factors that provoke lots of troubles to a fruitful dialogue: the tameness and the vocabulary. Nor the designer nor the client should be reserved in expressing their perspectives…all of us are human, right? Another key component in having a good dialogue with the clients is the explanation of some logo design specific terms to the clients. Many promising projects were suffering from the lack of understandings between client and the designer. Keep in mind, the clients are totally uninterested in how you achieved a specific concept or the entire logo; for them, what really matters is the final product and perhaps the way of collaborating with the designer…nothing more!

– Written by Daniel –