You don’t always have to change it.

There are a number of clients and people inside of agencies that always have to change something. Something about a design, a word, a color, it may be little, but they always have to change something. And I’m not totally sure why? My initial theory is that the person(s) feels the need to contribute value to the concept or execution - if they don’t change anything they’re not doing their job.

The issue with that, is that if goals were communicated up front and the designer or agency involved meets the objective. The solution should be complete… The result of THEIR initial communication efforts. I understand this is an idealist perspective - we all remember the game of telephone in grade school. Messages get mixed and visual preferences come into play. But the result of these changes are tremendously inefficient (cost, time, and energy) for everyone, and according to my theory a mere result of insecurity.

The examples may include direct changes; “make the logo bigger”, increase type size, “pump up the color”, add more copy about the product. To subjective changes like “make the image, ‘pop’”. As if these are really going to make the concept or execution THAT much better?

Ok, almost done. And on top of that are the enablers of these “little change” inefficiencies. The open-ended “Do you have any changes?”, or “Let us know if you have any changes?”. I understand that the client knows and understands their business and customers. But really, at the end of the line, it should be the client’s customer making the call, “Did execution X communicate objective Y?”. If so, great work. They didn’t even notice the brighter blue or the 2 pt type size increase.