5 things Mean Girls can teach everyone about designers

Last Updated on 2 October 2023

Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood. We talk in pictures, we scrutinize everything from your branding to your birthday cards, and we find inspiration for a logo design from watching cat videos on Youtube. There’s a kind of madness to our methods that only other creatives can truly understand. That said, here’s a list of things that you should probably know about us (and it can only benefit your project if you do). Also, pictures!

We know good design

You might’ve thought it a good idea to pepper your last website with enough special effects to make Michael Bay jealous, but that doesn’t mean that we’re adding lens flares and drop shadows to everything that hovers. Times change, trends evolve, and something that was all the rage 5 years ago is now considered design blasphemy. Even the great flattening of yesteryear is seeing a change. When you ask a designer to change that button to a colour that makes our insides wobble, you’re asking us to undermine the success of our design for the sake of a trend. A trend that might not even be appropriate for the message you’re trying to convey. Our designs should be informed by best practice and well-informed decisions, not by what you think looks cool.

Don’t lead a designer by the nose

A good design is like catching a butterfly in a mall during the festive period: it doesn’t come easy, and it doesn’t happen quickly. Because we’re visual creatures we can only understand what the design might look like once we see it, which means that much of the start of the project is spent pushing pixels around while we process and understand it. And when your client is there peeking over your shoulder and barking orders it makes this nearly impossible. We understand that you have opinions, or that you’re anxious to see a result, but dictating the design only introduces frustration to an already unpredictable process.

Stop trying to make #fetch happen

While it is certainly true that you know your target audience, it stands to reason that we know the best way to communicate with them through a design. Every design we create at Flint is backed by some form of a strategy (be that digital, content or social). There’s a psychology to how a design speaks to your audience, so insisting that we make that heading hot pink when we know your audience responds best to blue undermines the success of what we create. Just let it go.

We’re not an endless amount of reverts

While you might be tempted to believe that creativity is like an endless buffet, the reality is more like a 5 course meal. The longer a project drags on and the more guideless reverts there are, the more demotivated we get. And a lack of motivation is like creativity cancer. It’s not that we’re bored and uninspired, but rather that we’ve lost track of which direction to design in. So be mindful of the feedback you give, be as succinct as possible, and we’ll all get along.

We ask the important questions

You know your brand best, and considering that most designs will happen within the confines of some branding it stands to reason that we’ll need certain assets from you before we can do awesome designs (and drink awesome shooters). Which means we get to pester you with important questions like “Can we have the vector version of your logo?” or “What are your corporate colours?”. As the custodian of your brand, you need to know these things. And if our queries sounds like Martian, here’s a handy list of common design terminology for non-designers. Study it, there’ll be a quiz.

And there you have it. Well even if you don’t, we hope you got a chuckle out of it anyway. And remember, on Wednesdays we wear pink.