Designing is a tricky business, especially when you’re tasked with keeping the client happy while also sticking to design principles that actually work. It’s like walking a tightrope—one wrong step and you might end up with a project that doesn’t quite hit the mark on either side. On the one hand, clients usually come to the table with specific ideas, goals, and expectations. On the other hand, designers have their own set of best practices that are there to ensure the end product is functional, user-friendly, and visually appealing.

The real challenge here is finding that sweet spot where the client’s needs and expectations meet the fundamentals of good design. After all, you could give a client a stunning design, but if it doesn’t serve their needs or connect with their audience, what’s the point? This article is all about finding ways to navigate these challenges, so you don’t have to choose between doing what the client wants and doing what’s best for the design.

Take Siren Training, for example—a company focused on mental health first aid training. They approached us with a request to redo some of their website pages, but with the important caveat. In this article, we’ll explore the strategies and approaches that can help designers navigate these tricky waters, creating designs that balance client expectations with best practices.

Understanding Client Needs

The Role of Client Briefs

A strong design project starts with a clear client brief. This is where you get to hear exactly what the client wants—and where your job really begins. A good brief sets the tone for the entire project. It helps you understand the project’s scope, the problem the client is trying to solve, and what success looks like in their eyes. Without this, you could be left guessing, and we all know that guesswork isn’t a reliable foundation for any design.

However, a client brief doesn’t always come perfectly packaged. Sometimes, clients aren’t even sure what they need, which can lead to vague or even contradictory instructions. This is where you have to put on your detective hat and ask the right questions to dig deeper. Don’t be afraid to push for clarity, because a brief that leaves too much open to interpretation can result in disappointment down the line.

Identifying Key Client Objectives

Every design project has a goal—or at least, it should. Whether it’s increasing sales, improving the user experience, or giving a brand a fresh look, understanding the core objective behind the design is crucial. Knowing what your client’s priorities are helps you focus your efforts and make decisions that align with their vision.

It’s also important to remember that the client’s goals may evolve over time, especially as you get deeper into the project. So, while the initial objective is the starting point, keep checking in to ensure you’re still on the right track and haven’t drifted too far from the original plan.

Managing Client Expectations

Sometimes, clients expect the world, and while you might be tempted to deliver everything under the sun, there’s only so much you can do within the project’s scope, timeline, and budget. Here’s where managing expectations becomes key. You don’t want to disappoint the client, but at the same time, you can’t promise what you know is unrealistic.

It’s important to be upfront about what’s achievable and what isn’t. Have those tough conversations early on, even if they’re uncomfortable. Managing expectations doesn’t mean saying “no” to every idea the client has, but it does mean providing honest feedback and guiding them toward solutions that are both feasible and effective.

The Client’s Audience

One thing many clients might forget is that their target audience is just as important as their own needs. A design that looks good to the client may not always connect with the people it’s meant to serve. Whether it’s website visitors, customers, or users of a product, understanding the end audience is key to delivering a design that works.

You have to dig into who the users are, what they care about, and what their pain points are. The better you understand the people interacting with the design, the better you can tailor your choices to meet their needs—without losing sight of the client’s vision. This is where user-centred design principles come into play, ensuring the design isn’t just about the client’s preferences but also about creating an experience that resonates with the audience.

Design Best Practices

Principles of Good Design

When you’re in the thick of client demands and the pressure of deadlines, it can be easy to overlook the basics of good design. But sticking to tried-and-true design principles can help guide your decisions and ensure your work remains solid, no matter the challenges. Some of these principles are timeless—like usability, accessibility, and functionality—and they should always be at the core of any design.

Usability is a big one. At the end of the day, your design needs to make sense to the people using it. This means clear navigation, intuitive layouts, and simple user flows that don’t confuse or frustrate. No one likes a website they can’t figure out, right? Accessibility also plays a role here, as your design should be usable by people with varying abilities. It’s not just about making something look nice, but about creating an experience that everyone can access.

Aesthetics matter too, but they should never come at the cost of functionality. There’s a balance to strike between something that’s visually appealing and something that’s easy to use. As a designer, it’s your job to find that sweet spot where form meets function.

The Importance of Consistency

Consistency is the silent hero of any design. From your colour scheme to typography to button styles, keeping things consistent across all aspects of the design helps create a seamless user experience. When a user encounters random changes in design elements (like a button that’s different on every page), it feels disjointed and can cause confusion. Consistency builds familiarity, and familiarity creates trust.

It’s also important for brand identity. If you’re working on a brand or marketing materials, consistency is key to building a recognizable and cohesive identity. A client might request a lot of different things—animations, colour schemes, or styles—but it’s your job to make sure that all of these things align with the brand’s voice and message. A lack of consistency can undermine the effectiveness of the design.

User-Centered Design

User-centred design is, in many ways, the foundation of all great digital design. While it’s tempting to focus solely on what the client wants (especially if they have very specific ideas), it’s essential to keep the user’s needs front and centre. After all, it’s the user who will be interacting with the design every day, not the client.

A user-centred approach means considering the user’s journey at every stage. What problems are they trying to solve? How can you make their experience smoother? How do you ensure they understand how to interact with your design? Asking these questions helps you create designs that aren’t just visually appealing but also functional and effective in meeting the users’ needs.

This approach often involves a fair amount of research—like user testing, surveys, and creating user personas—to make sure you’re designing with real-world use cases in mind. Sometimes, this means suggesting design elements or changes that might not align with the client’s initial vision, but ultimately will make the end product better for the people it’s meant to serve.

Responsive and Adaptive Design

In today’s digital world, design can’t just be static or confined to a single platform. It’s not just about how something looks on a desktop computer anymore—it’s about how it functions on smartphones, tablets, and every other screen size in between. Responsive and adaptive design are essential practices to ensure your work looks good and functions well no matter where it’s viewed.

Responsive design means that your layout automatically adjusts to different screen sizes and orientations. On the other hand, adaptive design is more about creating distinct layouts for different screen sizes, tailoring the experience for each device. Both approaches have their place, and the best choice depends on the project, the client’s needs, and the user’s experience.

Incorporating these practices can feel like an extra challenge—especially when dealing with a client who may not fully understand the technical aspects of responsive design. However, pushing for this kind of flexibility ensures that users will always have a smooth experience, no matter how they access the product. Plus, it future-proofs the design against ever-changing device trends.

The Tension Between Client Needs and Design Standards

Compromising Creativity

One of the toughest parts of being a designer is maintaining your creative integrity while also meeting the client’s demands. Clients often come to you with their own vision or expectations, which might not always align with the best practices or the creative direction you believe would work best. Sometimes, their ideas might be outdated or influenced by personal preferences that don’t take user experience into account.

As a designer, it’s easy to feel like you’re in a battle between your creative instincts and the pressure to deliver what the client wants. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to abandon your creativity to make the client happy. The trick is finding ways to educate the client on the reasoning behind your choices, helping them see the value in decisions that might initially feel foreign to them. You can still offer creative solutions that are both innovative and practical, balancing their ideas with design principles that’ll make the project more effective in the long run.

In some cases, compromise is necessary, but it’s also important to know when to stand your ground and explain why certain design choices—like prioritising readability over flashy visuals—are essential to achieving the project’s goals. There are ways to inject creativity into a design without losing sight of its purpose.

Overcoming Budget Constraints

Designing within a budget is a reality most designers face at some point or another. Clients often have fixed budgets that limit what can be achieved, whether it’s the number of features or the complexity of the design. As a designer, it’s easy to feel restricted by these limitations, but there’s an art to making the most of what you have.

Instead of seeing the budget as a barrier, try to look at it as a challenge that pushes you to think more creatively. What are the most important elements of the project? How can you achieve a beautiful and functional design without overspending? Prioritising features and focusing on quality over quantity can help you deliver a top-notch product even when the budget is tight.

And don’t forget that having a budget means you can be more focused. You’ll have to be strategic in your design decisions, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s about finding the best value for the money—and sometimes, a simpler, more focused design can have just as much impact as something more complex and expensive.

Time Constraints

Deadlines are one of the most stressful parts of any project. No matter how passionate you are about the design, you’re often racing against the clock to get everything completed within the given timeframe. It can be tempting to skip over some of the more thoughtful, strategic parts of the design process—like user testing, iterations, or design revisions—just to get everything finished in time.

But rushing through the design can lead to poor decisions that could hurt the overall quality of the project. That’s why it’s crucial to find ways to balance speed with quality. Prioritising key milestones, setting realistic expectations with clients, and being transparent about what can be achieved within the given time frame all help to manage this pressure.

Effective time management also means knowing when to say “enough” and not over-polish every detail. Sometimes, it’s about delivering a finished product that hits the key goals, rather than stressing over every tiny element. In the end, you’ll learn to trust the process, streamline your approach, and deliver designs that meet the deadline without sacrificing quality.

Client Feedback and Iterations

Design projects are rarely perfect after the first draft. Clients often have feedback, which is great—after all, this is their project, and their input is essential to making it right. But balancing that feedback with design standards is where things can get tricky. Sometimes, the client’s feedback can conflict with best practices or throw a wrench in the design you’ve already crafted.

The key here is open communication. Rather than seeing revisions as obstacles, treat them as opportunities to refine the design. It’s important to stay patient and approach feedback with a problem-solving mindset. Sometimes, the feedback will highlight areas that you hadn’t thought of, and other times it might push you to rethink a design choice that, in hindsight, wasn’t working as well as it could.

In some cases, you’ll need to explain why certain suggestions won’t work or why the current design is the best solution. It’s a delicate balancing act between being receptive to feedback and standing firm in your design principles. The ultimate goal is to arrive at a design that satisfies both the client’s vision and the user’s needs—sometimes this requires multiple iterations and a bit of give and take from both sides.

A Positive Client Experience:

One client that really stands out in terms of finding the balance between client needs and design best practices is Siren Training. They offer crucial mental health first aid training, and their mission to raise awareness and provide education in this important field makes their work incredibly meaningful. Siren approached us to redesign some of their pages on their website, but with one important condition: the new design had to align with their existing branding.

At first glance, this seemed like a fairly straightforward project. However, the challenge came from the fact that we needed to freshen up the design without straying too far from the established look and feel of their website. Siren had a strong identity already, and part of the design work was about enhancing what they already had, rather than reinventing the wheel.

What made this project a great experience was the open communication between our team and Siren’s. From the outset, they understood that design best practices were essential to the success of their website—especially since their content was related to mental health, which requires careful, thoughtful communication. They were open to suggestions and trusted us to enhance the user experience while keeping the core values of their existing design intact.

By collaborating closely with Siren, we were able to tweak layouts, refine typography, and make small design adjustments that aligned with their goals. Importantly, we made sure the changes would improve usability and readability, which is crucial when presenting mental health resources. The team at Siren was always receptive to feedback and willing to work with us to ensure the changes met both their needs and the expectations of their audience.

In the end, the project felt like a success not only because the design was improved but also because it reinforced the idea that collaboration between client and designer can lead to a solution that meets both sides’ goals. Siren Training proved to be a client who valued the importance of design standards but also knew how to communicate their needs effectively. It was a perfect example of how to navigate the balancing act between client expectations and delivering a polished, user-centric design.