A Business Mistake & Being Gandalf
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in business and today I’m going to tell you about one of them.
I had a client come to me looking for a logo for her new chocolate business.
The design brief was pretty simple. She wanted her logo to look like a cacao plant, use the colors of a cacao plant, and it would go on her packaging.
As a designer, I wish all design briefs were this clear and easy to parse.
We agreed on a price and I got to work.
I sifted through images of cacao plants. I sampled the colors. I sought inspiration from other designers. To any designer, this will all be familiar.
After three days, I deliver her the first draft of the logo and she asked for some revisions.
I made the corrections, package it all up in different file formats so she can use them everywhere, and send it off.
A couple days later, I get a message saying that she will be paying me but she won’t be using my logo.
I inquired why that is and she said after discussing it with family and friends, it didn’t match her brand.
Check out the images below. Do you see the mistake I made?
Could the design be better? Yes… but that’s not the mistake.
Was it the font? Nope. The colors? Nope.
The mistake was in the delivery. I delivered the logo and said “here you go!”
Go back to the beginning of the story. My client was a chocolatier who creates craft chocolate for her customers. She needed a logo for her branded packaging.
She had an idea for a logo but it was MY JOB to bring that idea to life. I should’ve done mockups of the logo on different packaging, on a polo shirt, on a mug, on a website. Here’s how I should’ve delivered the logo:
I made a fatal assumption that she would know how to do all that. Because of this, I lost out on a potential lifelong client.
Here’s what I learned a couple key lessons from this experience:
- Don’t confuse your tools for your job. I was more concerned with designing a logo than I was with solving the client’s problem. In doing so, I stopped being a designer and became an artist… because design is about problem solving.
- I’m Gandalf, not Frodo. As the expert, it’s my responsibility to guide my clients to their ideal outcome. It’s not to be the star of the show.
So remember: Be Gandalf (or Dumbledore if you’re an HP fan) and serve the customer, not yourself.