# hired help A professional designer is hired help. Experienced, professional hired help, of course, but still just an employee. Clients are busy running businesses and doing other important things. They don’t have the skill or time to devote to creative design. They have a need or problem they can’t solve themselves. So they hire designers who have the skills and are willing to be paid to spend their time being creative on behalf of the client. A client project is a challenge that has multiple audiences. The client has a need and an idea of possible deliverables. The client’s users, customers, audience have a different need and possible deliverables. Sometimes, but not often, do the client’s needs and the audience’s need overlap. The job of the designer is to reconcile these sometimes conflicting needs. You want to make sure the target audience gets appropriate deliverables while making sure the client is happy with the product. Note that the designer’s personal ideas and aesthetics are not part of this system. The proper solution that meets the needs of the client and audience may not fit the designer’s tastes at all. That’s OK. Unless the designer is part of the target demographic, their personal opinion doesn’t necessarily matter. As a designer, you need to be a bit of a creative chameleon, adapting your design style to fit client needs. That’s why you do [[research]] and spend time [[empathy|getting to know the client]]. That’s why focus testing and demographic/psychographic studies are so important. > I’ve been described as not having any recognizable style and that’s one of the greatest compliments I could hope for. I want each book to have as much of its own individual personality as possible, based on what it is and what it’s about. > > — Chip Kidd One of the hardest challenges student designers often have is learning to check their egos. So many of my beginner students say “I’ll give the client what I give them and that’s all they are going to get”. I tell my students they are not going to be employed very long and their careers are going to be extremely short. It takes a bit of humility to give up control to the needs of a project but that is how you survive as a professional creative. One caveat is that once you’ve established an identity and visual style, you may sometimes get hired specifically for your particular vibe. The rock star designers are hired for their name and brand and are given much more creative freedom to tell a client what they are going to get. The thing is, those rock star designers have built their identities over a long time doing client work and know exactly how to meet a client/audience needs. They’ve learned how to check their egos and yet still create a personal style while meeting project needs. That’s why they are the rock stars.