The first draft has arrived. You open it, you have a reaction, and within an hour you have written an email that starts with "Love it, but". Three days later there is a second draft that fixed the wrong things, and you are on your way to a third. Most revision rounds are not caused by bad design. They are caused by feedback that described a feeling instead of a decision.
Giving feedback on a first draft is a skill, and it is a kinder one than it sounds. Here is how to do it so that round two is the last round, and your designer comes out of it wanting to work with you again.
Read the brief before you read the draft
Before you open the design, open the brief. The first draft should be judged against what you asked for, not against what you have been imagining since. If the draft does what the brief says and you do not like it, the brief was wrong, and that is worth saying plainly, because it changes what your designer does next.
“This is not really what we had in mind.”
“This does what the brief asked, and seeing it, we think the brief was wrong about one thing: the tone should be warmer than we said. That is on us. Can we talk about what that changes?”
Say what is working first, and mean it
Not as a cushion. As information. Your designer made a hundred decisions in the draft and needs to know which ones to keep, because the second draft is built on the first, and anything you do not mention is at risk. "The headline is right, keep it" is a decision. "Nice work overall" is a compliment, and compliments cannot be built on.
“Great start, really nice, a few thoughts below.”
“Keep: the headline, the way the product sits on the left, the colour of the button. Those are decided. Everything below is about the rest.”
Now the designer knows what is safe to build on.
Describe the problem, not the fix
"Make the logo bigger" is a fix. The problem might be that the brand is not recognisable at a glance, and a bigger logo is one of five ways to solve it, and probably not the best. Describe what you noticed and let your designer choose the fix. This is not politeness. It is the difference between paying for a designer and paying for a pair of hands.
“Can you make the logo bigger and move the button up?”
“At a glance I could not tell whose page this was, and I did not notice the button until I scrolled. Those are the two things I would like solved; you will know how.”
One list, one voice
Collect every comment from everyone into one message, sent by one person, in an order that says what matters most. Four people replying to the same email with four views is the single most expensive thing a client can do to a schedule, because the designer has to reconcile them, and the reconciliation is a round on its own. If two of you disagree, settle it before you write, and say who decided.
“Jonas and Anna will send their thoughts separately, and I have a few of my own.”
“One list, agreed between the three of us. Where we disagreed, Mette decided, and the decision is marked. Nothing else is coming.”
Say when it is done
Every list should end with a sentence that describes what "finished" looks like, so your designer knows when to stop. "If those three things are solved, we will sign off" is a promise, and a designer will work hard for a promise. Without it, every round ends with "one more small thing", and the small things are how projects become expensive.
“Let us know when the next version is ready and we will take another look.”
“If the recognisability and the button are solved, we sign off on this round. Mette will confirm within two working days of the next version.”
When you do not know
Sometimes you look at a first draft and cannot tell what is wrong, only that something is. Say that, in those words, and ask for a call. "Something is not landing for me and I cannot name it. Can we look at it together for twenty minutes?" is more useful to a designer than a page of notes written to disguise the same feeling. They have tools for finding it. The worst outcome is a confident list of fixes for a problem nobody has identified.
When a brief has been made with HereBriefly, the feedback conversation starts with an advantage: both of you are looking at the same document, and the designer can ask a question against the exact line. Many first-draft problems turn out to be lines the brief left open, and it is easier to fix a line than a layout.
