A Challenge to Clients: Let’s go somewhere you’ve never gone before

As a designer, what do you do if what you’re creating for clients doesn’t excite you? I’m finding myself searching for clients who want to kick things up a notch, visually. This may sound harsh, but if you don’t want to do something exciting and attention-grabbing, then I don’t want to talk to you.

We recently did some work for Bea Fields’ speaking kit. Bea is an executive coach and a longtime client of ours, so I’m very familiar with the type of design she’s been doing. For her speaking kit, I created three different design concepts: one was safe, in keeping with what she usually gravitates to; the next was slightly beyond that; and the last was really far beyond what, from a visual standpoint, Bea usually does. Though she picked the first version, I had a great talk with her before we started working on a direct mail piece together. As traditional marketing, direct mail can easily fall in the realm of deathly boring. I told Bea that I didn’t want to go this route unless we pushed the envelope and did something exciting, something bold, with the piece. And, to her immense credit, she agreed.

Below is the design we created:

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It’s incredibly attention-grabbing, and she hadn’t done anything like it in the past; for that reason, because we were daring to step outside the typical boundaries of direct mail design, it was a lot of fun to work on. It made me realize that that if something doesn’t excite me as the artist, it’s not going to excite the viewer. Afterwards, I told Bea, “People still might throw it away, they still might not call you—but you know they definitely looked at it.” And isn’t that the point of design?

This trend is one I want to continue with future clients. I want to be known as the company people call when they want to go THERE; if you want to continue riding the same tired carousel, call someone else.