There are fundamental differences between clients and designers. For one, clients are the ones paying the bill. And designers are the ones cashing the checks. So right away, the relationship is set up as slave and master.

In almost every designer/client relationship there are differences in opinion. Take the size of body copy for instance. As you can see in this diagram, the wants and desires of the designer differs tremendously from the needs of the client.

Designers want less copy. They want it small (typically 9pt or 10pt). And they don’t want to tinker with it after they spent hours typesetting it.

Clients want it bigger than what has been designed but they don’t think 12pt is out of the ordinary. Probably because Microsoft Word defaults to 12pt. text. And typically, due to their own internal factors, they want to cram more copy into the layout than the designer is willing to fit in.

Where the biggest disconnect is in this combative relationship is the fact that the customer doesn’t care whether the text is 10pt. or 12pt. They just want to be able to read it.

Clients reading this wll say to themselves, “That’s why 12pt. is better. Bigger text makes things easier to read.” To which designers will reply, “It’s more than just typesize, it’s about kerning, leading, color, weight, and overall hierarchy on the page.”

Let’s agree to disagree on the big type size debate and agree to put the needs of the customer first. (Incidentally, us designers will take your comment of “make it 12pt. and in some juvenile sense of vengence, will typeset it as 11.5 pt.)

Until we remember that neither designer nor client has it completely right, and that it is actually the collaboration of client content and designer’s eye that yields a successful communication, the customer is at the end of the losing stick.

The differences in opinion do not stop at body text. There are different points of view for headline treatments, logo size, and production techniques. You can view the entire chart here.

Let’s work together and get as rich as possible together.

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