Whether you are fresh out of design school or a professional with twenty years of experience you have collaborated. And if you are anything like me, half of those endeavors failed miserably. The good ones produce the best work of your career, and the bad ones…oh, the bad ones. The bad ones make you age horribly, keep you up at night, and question your profession. Successful collaborations force us to learn from one another they make designers grow, and they test their limits. Collaborations are what being a designer is all about.
10. Ego
You are better than the person you are working with and you know it. Even worse, they know it. Perhaps the tables are turned and you believe the other designer is better than you. That can make for a timid atmosphere and fear for presenting an idea or concept. A collaboration can only succeed if all of the parties involved are feeding off of each other. If you have nothing to offer them, and they have nothing to offer you, than there is no reason to have a partner to begin with. One designer does all the work, but splits the credit and the money.
If you are the more talented designer in the group, keep your ego in check, get the other person involved, give them small tasks, keep them contributing. If it is that obvious to you that you are the superior designer, they know it too.
9. Brief Interpretations
We are not all sown from the same seeds. Every designer brings a different frame of reference to the table. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to the person you are working with. Make sure you take the time to clearly go over what the client’s goals are, or what the goals of the project are.
Type it out. Literally put it on paper. It may seem like an unnecessary step, even if you think you are both on the same page, chances are at some point in the project you will have different ideas and it is always good to have something physical to refer back to. When the arguments and differences begin mounting up, this will be the squabble solver.
8. Bad Project
Sometimes it really is not your fault. I know this may not be the most popular viewpoint in the world, but every project cannot be the best piece of design ever made. Sometimes all you can do is make something bad look a little bit better. If you do that, you do your job. You won’t win the awards, you won’t make the blog rounds, but you’ll make some logo for some small coffee shop in some small town just a tiny bit better. Why does this cause a collaboration to fail? Because it is just not exciting to do “decent” design. We did not sign up for this job to make things look a little nicer; we enlisted as graphic designers to be rock stars and leave our mark, however small or big it may be, on the rest of the world. If a project is not exciting, it may not be that motivating for you to work on, and chances are, it probably will not be that motivating for your partner either.
Do the best you can with the project. It might not be great, but it is better than it was, and that should be enough to let you sleep at night.
7. Unfamiliar Relationship
When beginning a collaborative relationship, just like any other relationship in your life, you need to know what the other person is all about, and they need to know what you are all about. Just because you have seen their portfolio doesn’t mean you know them. Let’s say your project has a three-week deadline. The piece in their portfolio that shows that they are a “worthy designer” could have taken three months, or worse yet, it could just be a big rip off of something else. Get to know their work beyond their glossy portfolio. An unclear and unfamiliar relationship leads to the next two failures.
Get to know the person you are working with. Talk about the project over lunch, grab coffee, anything. Just get out of the studio and talk. The more you know about them, the better it will work. Designers are artists, our emotions and our backgrounds make up our work.
6. Work Habits
You know how you work, you probably like how you work, and that is why you work that way. Your collaborator probably has their own system too. Now you have to put those together. You are a diligent designer, you work hard you work progressively and you stay on topic. Other designers go through comp after comp until they pull out a Hail Mary in the end. This will frustrate the diligent designer to no end. For the next few days, weeks, months, however long the project is, you are entering a short-term marriage, make it work!
Be the bigger person. Adjust to their schedule. Sacrifice yourself for the good of the project.
5. Work Schedule
Your place or mine? Early in the morning or late at night? What exactly is early? You may have other jobs and they may have other jobs. It is hard enough balancing one person’s schedule; now you have to coordinate in order to successfully collaborate.
Over the course of the collaboration it is not of dire importance to always work in the same room, but when first starting the project, it is helpful to actually work together. This helps establish the relationship as well as creating a more fluid working environment, which may lead to new and better ideas. Once you both are on the same page, feel free to work on your own, but do not overlook the importance of checking in face to face. There might be comps hiding on their computer or littered on the floor that you are not showing each other because you do not think they are good enough, but the other person might see something in it. As designers we tend to spend a lot of time by ourselves, especially when working freelance, a collaboration is a great excuse to actually get some human interaction. That is, if you are into that sort of thing of course.
4. Designer to Client Relations
We are in the people business. The way someone communicates to clients can make or break the project. Handle the client well and they begin to trust you more and the project will become infinitely more enjoyable. If the designer has bad people skills they can sour the whole deal.
Pick one collaborator to communicate with the client. Work as one united front. Send all the emails from one account, have all the phone calls come from one number. Keep it simple, and most importantly, do not confuse the client. If the relationship with the client is good, you do not have to spend your time on communication damage control, you can actually spend your time designing.
3. Inhibition
Speak up. If you have a good idea, let your partner know. Even if you have a bad idea, there could be something in there to draw from. Do not be afraid to be rejected. One bad suggestion will not make your partner lose respect for you. A history of bad ideas might, but you can worry about that later. If you do not speak up and you are unhappy with how the project is turning out, you only have yourself to blame. It is your project too, you are working on it, and you should like it.
Let yourself be heard. Even if the overall concept came from the other designer, it does not mean that the idea is untouchable.
2. Skill Set & Base Knowledge
We did not all attend the same class, we do not look at the same books and we do not have the same working knowledge. Do not assume everyone understands things the way you understand, in fact, it is best to assume no one else knows exactly what you know. You might have to explain things to your partner that you think seem pretty basic, and they might have to do the same to you.
Be patient, and if you do not know, just ask. Collaborations are a great chance to learn, especially for those of us that are out of school.
1. Communication
All nine of the previous issues can be avoided by this one simple problem. Communication. A collaboration is just like any other relationship you have been in during your life, be open and be up front. If everyone involved knows exactly what is going on, and exactly what needs to be done, there is no reason the collaboration should not be both enjoyable and fruitful.
Next time you start a brand new collaboration, keep these things in mind, and maybe, just maybe, you will come out a little happier, and a little richer.
