Great artists, like Monet, were experts at employing principles like peak shift into their work. Although, I’m not sure he ever had to present designs to a client like we do today. Sometimes it seems like a lack of (design) understanding gives the client an upper hand. The difference between you and your client’s neighbor’s friend’s 13-yr-old kid with a copy of Photoshop is that they have to pay you more. Which really means that, unfortunately, to many clients you are both the same.
Experience and your portfolio of work certainly matter. But each client is completely different with how they judge design. Paul Rand described business clients as this:
“It is their uninformed, unfocused preferences or prejudices, their likes or dislikes that too often determine the look of things. Yet, much of the time, they are not even discriminating enough to distinguish between good and bad, between trendy and original, nor can they always recognize talent or specialized skills.”
In the end it is up to the designer to communicate the decisions they made in creating their solution. Understanding some of these principles won’t help you decide what style of design to use, or what colors are best. There are differences on cultural levels or project goals that affect things like that. However, knowing what these principles are and why they work will help you create effective designs and hopefully help to give you (the designer) some of that power back. More to follow…