Design for Clients and Not for Trends

It's easy to slip into the design trends knocking about on the internet, I for one am guilty of over indulging in information from creative blogs and twitter. And when doing this, you're picking up on things like current design trends. You suddenly start to see styles creeping into the day to day feeds and perhaps you want to emulate it, 'oh I like what they have done with that style and maybe I could do something with that’. We've all at least thought it, right?

When does emulating a style, which inspires you, become right for the client? Well, it is pretty obvious that you shouldn't insert design trends into your work just because it's cool at the time. You can see looking back at past references, websites for instance, where this has happened and they have led with the style over substance approach. And a few years down the line these trends start to look outdated.

I think it should come down to what becomes right for the client and their brand. Your client has come to you to for help with improving or building their brand and they trust you will do this in their best interest. The best way is to design for the client. The greatest brands are those which stand the test of time and not the ones which have been set up to need a new look after a year. When it comes to your client: lead, don’t follow.

However, some trends emerge from new techniques or technologies and these can have positive effects on design. For example the latest trend in web design is to use hidden/mobile navigation. Using this “hamburger” style navigation has started to become recognised with users who now know that this works for the menu. Some elements of trends become the norm, and this again comes down to forward thinking. Recognising specific trends in design and picking the techniques which can really go the distance. Choose your battles wisely, not everyone will want to see textured type or minimal posters once the majority of designers have stopped using these techniques.

The bottom line is to understand and know your clients brand through and through. Do what is right by them and put to one side a specific style you really want to use in your next design. Save that for personal projects and get that urge out of your system. This way you can carry on with producing great work that will stand the test of time, which really has an impact, instead of a couple of retweets or likes in the web world.