How to gain approval for your designs:
For Strategically Focused Clients: Craft your story around how the design reflects or amplifies who they are and how they are unique. Strategic clients want to see themselves through their brand elements.
For Tactically Focused Clients: Build the case for approval by showing that the brand follows industry best-practices or established design trends and solid techniques. Tactical clients want to know that there’s a long history of success before following a path.
The best designers and branders ensure that they’re ready for either conversation. But enthusiastic approval (and the ensuing momentum behind the brand launch) comes from your understanding of how your client thinks, and not from ensuring that every box on the creative brief is checked. It’s entirely possible to get agreement that you’ve satisfied the contract and yet have an unfulfilled client.
Success in branding comes from creating and empowering believers rather than seeking out admirers that never engage. That applies to both our relationship with our clients, and their corresponding relationship with their own audience.