This write up was originally posted on the Intrepid Pursuits blog.

So let’s say you’re a savvy business owner (or developer, or marketing specialist, or cat enthusiast) and you’re ready to take the plunge on creating something new and exciting. It might be an awesome mobile app, or a new menu for the restaurant you’re opening or even a line of fashionable sweaters for Mr. Kittykins. There’s just one roadblock: you need a designer.

You’re probably mentally picturing a dude whose hand is glued to his Starbucks orange mocha Frappuccino with tinted glasses. He’s probably wearing a beret. I mean, if he wasn’t wearing a beret in your mind already, he probably is now that I’ve said that.

You’re probably also thinking ‘Oh sugar cookies, I’m going to have to deal with A CREATIVE’. Well don’t worry. I can help. I’ve been both a client and a designer, so I understand the struggles from both sides.

Thus, in no particular order, here are some handy tips for smoother communication between you and your designer.

1. Don’t Hold Back – Give Your Designer the True, Tough Feedback

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Every designer’s main goals are to please two people: you and the consumers of your product. If you passionately hate the color cyan or are absolutely in love with Google’s logo, let us know! The more context & insight you can give your designer about your brand and personal preferences, the faster we can get to a design you love.

This applies to anything a designer presents to you as well. We have developed thick skin in order to be good at our jobs and you should never be afraid of hurting our feelings by telling us how you really feel. This brings me neatly to my next tip (almost like it was planned that way)!

2. The Earlier a Designer Can Make a Change, The Better

Overhauling a product in the early stages is easy. Rethinking a sketch or a wireframe is no big deal. It’s cheap in terms of time, money and frustration levels.

Doing an 11th hour overhaul of the entire look and feel of your brochure is not just a bad idea though – it’s a BAD IDEA. More often than not, these significant last minute changes negatively impact the quality of your product, because there often isn’t time to address the new problems brought up by design changes.

Now, I’m not talking about little stuff like text changes and the like. Often, that sort of thing is really not a big deal. A good rule of thumb is that the larger the change is (and your designer should be able to tell you exactly how large a change will be) the earlier it needs to be made in the design cycle.

3. Designers Need to Know Your Problem, Not Your Solution

So let’s say you’ve requested a change. You say something like “I want that button to bigger and could you please put it on the left?” That’s a really polite, reasonable request. Ten times out of ten though, a designer’s response will be a variation of the exact same phrase: why?

We’re not trying to be jerks, I promise. What you’ve given your designer with feedback like that is a solution. But he or she really needs to understand what you’re trying to accomplish with the change. Maybe you are worried the button is hidden, or you think the page looks unbalanced, or the button isn’t connected enough to another element on the page, etc. etc. It could be that your proposed solution is the right one – but the designer can’t tell you that if we don’t know the problem.

To use a completely hilarious-to-imagine simile, it’s like you just came up to your designer and started yelling “TWO! TWOOOOOO!” and she’s trying to guess the equation.

This same logic applies to sending a designer the dreaded “comp”. A “comp” is swanky designer slang for a visual mock up (could be a sketch or a Photoshop file or a carved stone tablet) usually with the attached note “Can you make it look more like this?” A comp may seem like a quick way to communicate visually, using the same language a designer speaks.

In the end though, it’s not a time saver. If you send a comp, we’re just going to need to have a lonngggg meeting where you explain the “why” behind everything changed in that comp. Some designers may even be offended if you send them a comp, and that definitely doesn’t make for smooth communication.

4. Hierarchy is King

So how can you help your designer work faster and more efficiently? Having a set list of priorities. If you can tell your designer what’s important to you, ideally in the form of a numbered list, you will be his Superman. Or you could be his Batman, you know, just pick whichever hero you think is the coolest.

This can apply on a big scale (you’ve written down the project goals or your company goals in order of importance) or on a small scale (you can communicate the top 3 things you’d like a user to do on this particular mobile screen). It may seem surprising, but designers actually really love when you can give them concrete numbers to start from.

5. At All Costs, Avoid ‘Design By Committee’

So that hierarchy thing in the last tip? It applies to people involved in the project as well. I made a little graphic with a common designer quote for this one.

Camels are really dumb-looking animals. I pretty much hate camels.

Basically this means that the more people are involved in a project, the further away your final product tends to be from your goal.

I can tell you firsthand, it’s very confusing for a designer to try to incorporate the opinions of 5 different people, especially if there’s no clear leader or point of contact. It will usually stretch out the length of the project as well, making it more expensive for you, the client. You can save time, money and frustration by limiting your team size (for me personally, up to 3 people is okay but just 1 person is ideal) and clearly designating the owner who has final say in design decisions.

This tip extends to bringing in feedback from friends, enemies or your aunt that does graphic design as well. While it’s really valuable to test designs out on people and ask for opinions, try to keep in mind that any one person you or I solicit feedback from is just that – one person.

So, those are my tips. I tried to keep them general enough to be helpful when dealing with any kind of designer – graphic, mobile, web or any of the many other varieties. Every situation is, of course, unique but hopefully these tips will help facilitate clearer communication and a successful project even if, like me, your designer occasionally wears a beret.