How many concepts should creatives present to clients?
This is one of the many debates amongst creatives themselves (and sometimes with their clients), some creatives developed this mentality that the more concepts they present the more the client will believe they’ve earned what they charged.
While it’s tempting and might sound like a good idea to feed the clients with multiple concepts, it always leads to the project taking longer than it is necessary to complete and more options often causes confusion.
As a creative you might develop say 3 concepts to present while you know very well which concept is better than the rest, then why not invest the time you have in working more on the approach that you believe is best to meet the project’s goal.
The other reason I’m not for multiple concepts is that clients tend to try and make ‘one’ concept out of the multiple concepts that you present, “…take this from concept one, use that from concept two and take those from concept three…”
I personally avoid multiple concept and drive clients towards “one concept, multiple revisions”
Presenting multiple concepts does nothing but give the client an opportunity to pick their ‘favourite’ amongst presented concepts… which doesn’t necessarily equal to the best concept for the project.
As a professional designer you are hired to provide the best design solution, then why propose multiple concepts? No matter how good the concepts are, there should the best, that’s the one you should sell.
Just like with a doctor, you pay them to offer the best solution to your medical condition (design challenge), to cure the condition (design goal)… before the doctor can start with his work the patient first will tell the doctor about their condition, pain, when it started an so forth (design brief)…
The difference is you’ll never get a patient dictating how the doctor should treat their medical condition – I guess maybe the thought of a design project failing is nothing compared to the thought of dying.
How many concepts do think creatives should present?
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