The Tale of Two Designers

Today I have a story for you - a story of Cathy and Katherine (I know, it’s so meta, right?).

Cathy and Katherine both work as product designers. One day, the team’s Art Director asked them both to work on options for a new homepage for the company’s website. They both eagerly got to work on it.

Katherine went through the archive of designs from the company’s previous web pages. She asked the Art Director what the goals of the new homepage were. She asked what kind of customers the company was trying to speak to and if those key customers had evolved over time. She asked the Art Director what they did and didn’t like about the current homepage. In the end, she presented her research alongside before-and-after views of the new homepage layout, being careful to annotate and explain why certain options were offered. She researched art styles that aligned with the strategic goals of the homepage redesign. She kept certain details the same (the size of header images and the corner rounding on buttons) because the Art Director had told her that there was a specific reason for those design choices. When she presented, she showed progressively-more-out-there options in stages.

Cathy took a different approach. She was really inspired by nostalgic 90s styles as well as brutalism. She knew that giving the brand a makeover in these styles would be really striking and would make the brand stand out — and she wanted to try it. She pulled all the examples of these styles that she could find, and got to work making a complete 90s-nostalgia version of the homepage. She added or took things away from the homepage as would fit the style and look good with it on the whole. When she presented, she had several pages’ worth of eye-popping art that looked super fresh and completely different.

Their Art Director said “ooo” and “ahh!” to both designers’ work. But in the end, they chose the direction that Katherine presented. They then asked Katherine to lead the homepage update, with Cathy as support.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened to Cathy, and she was ticked off. No longer willing to suffer in silence, she marched over to the Art Director’s office and lightly tapped the open door.

“Excuse me, do you have a minute?” The Art Director gestured to her to come in.

“I just need to know…what was wrong with what I presented? I worked extremely hard,” Cathy said, blinking with the effort to sound “calm”.

“You said it looked amazing and fresh for the brand. I know that the quality of the work was on point,” she continued. “Frankly, and I don’t want to be rude, but it needs to be said: what Katherine presented wasn’t even that innovative or new. It was SO SAFE. I really don’t get it.”

The Art Director looked at Cathy thoughtfully, but not unkindly. They rubbed their temples and closed their eyes for a moment.

“Cathy, it WAS great work. It was gorgeous. BUT…when I started to examine practical and logistical concerns, your direction started to come apart,” they began.

“The photos of our offices and the company reel were no longer on the homepage and I didn’t know why,” the Art Director continued. “It was unclear how they would be able to fit there or where they would go.”

“The 90s style style was really cool and striking, but the grungy patterns on the background were such a huge departure from what the rest of our branded materials look like, and I wanted to make sure our customers know they’re in the right place,” the Art Director continued.

“In the end, I really appreciated that you made all of us think outside the box.

I’d love to explore maybe using some of those ideas or elements. But ultimately, I don’t feel confident that you know how to work within what the brand actually is, and the assets we need to use, in order to lead this particular project. I felt like if I left you alone with the website, I’d come back to something inconsistent on many levels that I’d then have to fix.”

“With Katherine, she showed me that she is going to be able to thread that needle more clearly from a big picture perspective, even if we eventually change bigger elements down the road,” The Art Director concluded.

Cathy thanked the Art Director for their candor and time and changed up her approach. The next time she presented, she easily got approval.

—---------

Annnnnnnd….<scene>.

Okay, obviously this never happened. (Starting with the fact that you’ll likely NOT get such a thoughtful and detailed piece of feedback if your design or concept isn’t chosen.)

The point of this story? It’s not that safer is better - it’s that HOW you present something is just as important to getting approval as the work itself. Whether it’s a boss, a client, a stakeholder, or a group of colleagues.

If Cathy had tweaked a few things — e.g. if she’d shown a “safe” version alongside the “out-there” one — or if she’d demonstrated that her decisions to change the content had rationale behind them — she could have totally changed the way she came across to her Art Director. Even if the answer were still “no”, she’d still have built credibility.

How can you adjust the way you present your work next time?

XOXO,

Cathy