Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client
by Kumi AkiyoshiPresenting the look & feel solutions to a client can be a decisive moment of the creative process. The most appropriate and brilliant solutions can get rejected in a mismanaged presentation.
Here are 8 tips for presenting the look & feel solutions to a client:
- Share the meeting agenda in advance. Include the goals of the meeting and ensure that it matches client expectations.
- Think of Feng Shui; If you are presenting the solutions physically, decide where and how you want your client to review the work so that you can help create a collaborative environment.
- Start the meeting with a review of the decisions made to date, such as creative brief, goals, target audience and brand positioning.It is important to get agreement on the creative brief prior to starting concept explorations. Include mood board, and visual exercise results to build consensus on the feeling of potential look & feel concepts.
- Present each solution as a concept that addresses agreed goals. Describe how the concept addresses values that are important to the users and client. Do not dive into aesthetics right away, instead talk about meaning.
- Present the solutions that you believe in that work best for the client’s needs. Avoid presenting too many solutions that dilute the key concepts and may confuse the client.
- Be a facilitator of collaborative conversation rather the receiver of aesthetic criticism.
- Summarize the meeting result and share next steps.
- Follow up with meeting notes with the decisions that were made.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Collaboration, Communication, Tips & Tricks.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This post is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:39 am
[...] adaptive path » blog » Kumi Akiyoshi » Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client Presenting the look & feel solutions to a client can be a decisive moment of the creative process. The most appropriate and brilliant solutions can get rejected in a mismanaged presentation (tags: design) [...]
May 21st, 2008 at 5:00 am
Kumi’s list feels spot-on. I’m particularly interested in (and most challenged by) her 6th point, “Be a facilitator of collaborative conversation rather the receiver of aesthetic criticism.”
Even with a thorough brief, it’s critical to separate one’s aesthetic preferences from design decisions fulfilling a brief. Designers are trained to do this, but many clients aren’t. I find making this distinction helps the client feel less defensive of their opinions.
It would be very valuable to learn more about designers’ techniques and to accumulate some pointers.
anyone?
cheers, jess.
wittebort@gmail.com
May 21st, 2008 at 8:10 pm
[...] (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are "Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client" and "The Lure of the Single [...]
May 25th, 2008 at 2:52 am
[...] (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are “Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client” and “The Lure of the Single [...]
May 30th, 2008 at 3:38 am
[...] (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are “Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client” and “The Lure of the Single [...]
June 1st, 2008 at 11:30 pm
[...] (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are “Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client” and “The Lure of the Single [...]
July 5th, 2008 at 4:14 am
[...] (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are “Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client” and “The Lure of the Single [...]
August 29th, 2008 at 1:03 am
[...] (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are “Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client” and “The Lure of the Single [...]