Presenting Designs to Your Client
The Information Age has meant more fragmented schedules – which makes asynchronous communication necessary; and more competition between designers in a global marketplace – which has yielded smaller and smaller design budgets, especially with the economic downturn. As a result, we have fewer face-to-face meetings with our clients, and fewer chances to “sell” our approach, process, and our design solutions, to our clients.
How has the Information Age affected how you present design work to clients? What tactics do you use to still educate your clients on your process and present work in a professional manner, while maintaining the efficiency that comes with our times?
P.S. Some developers and I built 4sli.de over a weekend in an attempt to address some of the new challenges that designers face in presenting work remotely. It’s a start, but we want to make it better. If you get a chance to check it out, what features could it have to make it better?
David Kadavy
….and there’s something wrong with PDF presentations, built in Indesign?
Seems to me to be the best solution, on the technical side.
In terms of content, since you’re not in person to add oratory elements, the structure and logic of the presentation matters even more so.
A good trick I do is copy/paste the last email comments or responses I got on a project, highlight key terms, and then isolate those terms in a new slide, as key points to hit in the design. It helps set up the context for the design, a good lead in to your formal process, and something to refer to at the conclusion.
Hey @Thomas, yeah, I’ve used PDF presentations a couple of times, and they do look great. For me, the things that keep them from being the perfect solution are:
1) You have to make them, which can be time-consuming
2) Version control issues. Sure, you’ve named and labeled the file correctly, but it’s still easy to get confused as to which is the most recent. What if there was one link you could go to for a particular project that would always have the most recent version, but would point to previous versions as well?
3) Keeping track of feedback. Sure, e-mail works pretty well, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a comment thread for the work, too?
4) This one is kind of silly, but ever have a client (or yourself) forget to read a few pages on a PDF. I really wish they would improve the UI to cue people to scroll down, but for now you have to put the cues in your presentation.
Does any of that sound valid to you, or am I just being too picky?
I like what you’re up to. This definitely addresses a new challenge to us when presenting.
I’ve thought about this as I look to have more clients like you describe. Although I haven’t tested it yet, I’ve considered using GarageBand to make enhanced Podcasts for clients to download and play – this way, I can control what I say and what they see and when they see it. This way I can write and rehearse until my presentation is right where I want it and then have the client download it and follow-up upon their review.
It could be a lot of work but it could pay off too.