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There is a saying within the design world, “Design By Committee.” I first ran across it as a early in my freelance career looking at merchandise on veer.com. The design had almost a mocking feel to it, like it was trying to portray that nostalgic innocence, the man with a big white smile, endorsing cigarettes, despite the fact that the product was poison. When I saw the phrase I knew exactly what was being inferred even though I had never heard it put exactly that way. I had been working as a freelancer for less than a year and already I began to understand that if there are too many people with a controlling stake in the design process, the final product – whatever it may be – will suffer. Sadly there a are a lot people in the world who have a controlling stake in designs who do not understand this.

Art Is Subjective
Part of this is due to the fact that art is often subjective. There a lot of theories behind what makes “good art” or “strong design” but when push comes to shove, there is no hard-fast rule that will guarantee the perfect result. Even the “golden ratio” one of the most universal and well know theories behind what is balanced and what is out of balance, is just a theory that works most of the time. Even still… there is plenty of mind blowing work out there that doesn’t always adhere to the golden ratio. Which is why basing design off a person’s opinion and not off of hard objectives is a recipe for disaster. This is a truth that many more businesses need to learn and understand. If you manage a project or design based off of what a group of people’s opinions of it are no one will everbe fully happy with it. Each person has a different vision for what looks good. If you do not have clear objectives set out from the beginning for what you want to accomplish through a design, or a marketing piece, your design and marketing will not be effective, no matter how good it looks.

Design To Objectives
That is why the success of a project/design must be based off of how well it accomplishes the objectives set out from the beginning. Having project objectives will help clarify what the design needs to communicate and accomplish visually. It will help make the end result stronger and will also lead to a longer lasting design – or something that will more effectively accomplish those goals. Very rarely will having clear objectives hurt a project.

Having someone to manage the process/design/project who is proven to have a strong eye for design AND a thorough understanding of what will meet the objectives is also important. Even if there is a team of people working together, they must all know and understand what the over all objectives are in order to know what to work towards together, they must share a common vision and end result. When you design to some one’s opinion you will never make them happy. Even artist’s are not always happy with the end result of there work. You must learn how to set clear objectives for a project, and learn how to reach those objectives through varying styles and techniques. Otherwise you are in for a world of constant and incurable rabbit holes… and that is miserable. 

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