In Honor of KISS
February 24, 2009
If you haven’t heard of the K.I.S.S. principle, know that it typically translates to Keep It Simple, Stupid. In honor of that principle, I’d like to share an idea with you about how clients and creatives can work better together: trust and be trustworthy. That’s it, plain and simple. We need people in our lives that we can trust–with our ideas, passions, reputations, livelihoods, and more.
Clients want to hire creatives that can be trusted with a corporate or personal image (someone to manage a print project so the corporate logo is the right color, for example). Clients need creatives that can be trusted to meet deadlines when they say they will–no excuses (because they have someone relying on them as well).
Creatives need clients that will trust them enough (to provide creative freedom) that leads to stellar work, and not just another cookie-cutter design project. Creatives need communities they can trust to provide honest and worthwhile constructive criticism.
The bottom line? Working better together boils down to trusted relationships, plain and simple. So trust and be trustworthy.
February 25, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Why would you enter into any relationship, business or personal, with someone you didn’t trust? Or at least someone in whom you had faith you could trust eventually? Shouldn’t this trust grow and deepen as the relationship progresses? If either party does something to undermine that trust, then…no. Make sure your actions are in keeping with fostering that trust. Don’t give your clients (or agencies, etc.) reason to doubt you.