Most design projects go wrong before the designer opens a file.

The objective was never agreed. The brief was one line long. Four people gave feedback and two of them contradicted each other. The logo files arrived a week late. Then a change landed in round three and got called a small tweak.

When the project slips, everyone blames the designer.

Chris Barin has been on both sides of this. He has designed for clients for years, and he has spent seven years hiring designers: reading portfolios, running the interviews, writing the briefs, paying the invoices. This is the process he wishes his own clients had used.

Inside:

• Decide whether you need custom design at all, or whether a template will do
• • Pick the right kind of specialist, and read a portfolio for fit instead of for looks
• • Run a twenty-minute interview that actually tells you something
• • Agree scope, money and who approves, before anyone starts
• • Write a brief a designer can work from
• • Review the work in context rather than zoomed in
• • Give feedback that can be acted on
• • Handle revisions, delays, licences, ownership and a clean handoff

This is not a defence of bad designers. Some designers are bad. The point is that blame is a poor management system, and most of what decides the outcome is settled by you, before the work starts.

Includes a plain-language toolkit of the terms designers use, so nobody has to pretend they understood.