No compromise— Is generally the rule that Design Pioneer Massimo Vignelli follows on a daily basis. I’ve been lucky enough to be one of the very few young designers to have spent some real quality time and learn this way of thinking first hand with the Vignelli’s. Last summer I was accepted into a workshop in the South of France to work with Massimo on a design project for challenging but memorable week. It was an amazing experience. But what really intrigued me was Massimo’s keen sense for what’s good and what’s not. He truly understands the pragmatic, semantics and syntactic elements of design.

If you know anything about Massimo, you know the way

he approaches a client. He is considers himself to be the  Doctor and the client the patient.

The client has a disease and he knows what is best for them. He feels clients don’t know how to approach a project and that clients should be at the mercy of the ‘Doctor’ when it comes to making decisions about design. A good position to be in for Massimo, though somewhat unrealistic for the rest of us—especially us young designers.

Most of us would be crazy to walk away from a project and to not give in at the very least a little bit to satisfy the needs of the client. Like any relationship, you must take and also give. Designers must sometimes compromise ideas we obtain in order to suit the needs of everyone involved in the project. Without that ideology, many design firms would go bankrupt.

So where do we draw the line? It’s a fine line to walk, but usually in the end, a compromise is made and everyone is happy. — Usually.

I think there is a nice parallel between this situation and the situation that graduating students need to resolve and overcome... including myself.

Our situation is slightly different. We do not (yet) have clients we need to make happy. We have something else to be concerned about— suiting the needs of our potential employers. I’ve had over 20 portfolio reviews with different design and advertising firms in Toronto, Ottawa and Rochester. Not including professors, freelance designers, and opinions from other owners from NYC and other various cities throughout the world who have seen it via PDF. I’ve been given countless opinions about my work and portfolio over the last few months. More then I’ve ever had before and am grateful for every one of them. But too many cooks in the kitchen is potentially a recipe for disaster.

If I took the advice from everyone, I would lose my own right to even have a portfolio. It wouldn’t be mine and therefore  would end up with practically nothing. One page of my portfolio someone sees and likes can be the same page someone else see and says to revise, change or even delete from my book. If I didn’t digest that information taken from everyone and didn’t think about it myself before taking action, I would be in an awkward situation.

An opinion-less designer is in fact, not a designer at all.

By all means, students and recent grads should accept the information but if they just blindly make the changes without thinking they will often be less happy with the results they had before. Michael Beirut writes in an essay on his blog Design Observer of a quote by Michael McDonough,  

If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important. You hear a lot about details, from "Don't sweat the details" to "God is in the details." Both are true, but with a very important explanation: hierarchy. You must decide what is important, and then attend to it first and foremost. Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important.

I think Canadian Designer Bruce Mau states this best.

“The designer leads a kind of karaoke existence, always singing someone else's song, and never saying what he thinks should be said.”

This attitude needs to be changed. We as designers need to form not just an opinion but an educated one. We need to have a reason in order to first state then prove our reasoning to the client. Design is a profession based on the very existence of thinking and thoughtfulness. Any designer or architect will tell you that style is just extra layers based off aesthetics. The same goes for thought-less design.

Massimo, in an recent e-mail sent to me states,

“For me, appropriateness (the search for the specific) should be at the core of any solution, otherwise the problem has not been solved.”

It isn’t really design if there was never an intention or reason behind the idea. But for every action there is an exception.  And that being, if Massimo is telling you what to do, then you better bloody well listen and do what he says. He knows what’s best. He’s the expert. No, he’s the doctor. And I? I am just the murse in a large hospital full of sick patients waiting for my chance to make a difference. — But that’s something I’m willing to wait for, and will.

By Greg Cunneyworth

www.gregcunneyworth.com