Worried your clients will think you’re underdelivering if you present only one concept? We’re going to let you in on the solution.

But first, some back story…

For those of you who don’t already know our history, the two of us met at university. Back then, Kris was a design honours student and Donna was her lecturer. Kris went on to begin her first design business straight after graduation, but for Donna things had travelled a different path.

Before beginning her first design business, Donna and her then partners had all worked for large advertising agencies and design firms. In those businesses, delivering multiple concepts was common practice.

And it all worked out fine – they were on a weekly wage, they went to work, did whatever was on their plate, and got paid.

But when they began their own business, it quickly became clear to Donna and her partners that this approach wasn’t sustainable from a time and energy perspective. And more than that, it wasn’t reliably delivering the best result for the client.

Instead of producing one solution that was lazer focused on nailing the brief, they were splitting their energy between two or three solutions, all the while knowing which one was the right one, and hoping their clients would choose it. It just didn’t make sense.

So they transitioned to delivering one concept – and it wasn’t easy. They were all in the habit of delivering multiple solutions and they knew there was an expectation for this within the industry. But they also knew that focusing on one perfect concept was the best way forward, for both themselves and their clients.

Enter Kris…

By the time Donna became Kris’s lecturer, she had completely transitioned. She was confident that her process delivered the best outcome for the client and she knew how to communicate that process so that clients rarely questioned it. And she taught this process to her students (including Kris!)

So Kris went into her first design business with the expectation of delivering one concept. It never occurred to her to deliver multiples, her whole process was based on creating the perfect design solution. And because she’d never considered anything else, she presented to clients with confidence.

Now for the plot twist…

We’ve come to it in different ways, but the solution we’ve both discovered is: you don’t actually need to convince your clients! You only need to convince yourself!

It’s all about your own mindset. Believing you need multiple solutions is just a bad habit. Donna had to unlearn it, Kris didn’t. We both arrived in the same place and we want to bring you there too. Because your client will trust you if you trust yourself.

There is no reason to even mention to your client that you are ‘only’ delivering one option. Why would you need to deliver more? Your focus is the process by which you are going to create the singularly perfect, powerful, kick-ass solution to their brief. And your client is going to come with you on that process.

All you need to do is to lose your fear of ‘not-enough’. You are not hired to provide quantity, you are hired to bring your expertise and creativity to work to produce the best possible design for your client. It’s never about ‘options’. It’s about THE ONE.

Trust in your process

If your process is as thorough as the one we teach in the Academy, it will be totally geared towards this one direction. Of course there will be multiple solutions at first in the initial brainstorming process. But our job as designers is to refine the ideas that come to the surface and develop them into that one all-encompassing solution.

It’s all in the steps; the briefing, the conceptual development, the creation of original ideas and the distilling of those ideas into a singular, concise, on-brief solution. And then the selling of that solution to the client with a detailed, confident rationale.

You can’t do that multiple times for one client. It’s exhausting. And honestly, it’s not financially sustainable.

But what if they ask for options?

From time to time it will happen. Sometimes in the briefing, a client will ask you for more than one option – and this is where you need to bring your confidence in yourself and your process into play.

Explain your in-depth, multifaceted approach to your client.

Let them into the absolute focus with which you will create the perfect solution for their needs.

Explain to them that for you to bring your most outstanding work to the table, you need to concentrate on THE design rather than splitting your attention between a number of watered down versions.

Alternatively, if your client is insistent that they require options, explain to them that in order for you to create multiple fully resolved, fully researched, fully developed concepts, you will need to charge accordingly. Of course you will, because you will be doing the job multiple times!

Perhaps they have the budget for that, in which case, go for it! But always keep in the forefront that multiple concepts will require a totally different level of energy, and you will need to charge for the delivery of each quality solution.

Want to know more?

If you’ve listened to this week’s podcast and want to unpack this even more, head back to Episode 8 Why graphic designers should present one concept, where we’ve devoted another whole episode to the one concept approach.

We passionately believe that this is the only way to go to produce the optimal results for both our clients and ourselves.

It takes courage to transition when you’re used to presenting multiple options. We know that, and we’re here to support you through it. Because we also know that once you do, you’ll wonder why you ever did it any other way.

It’s time to embrace the value of the work you do – and teach your clients to value it too.

Trust yourself.

Much love

Kris and Donna xo

Podcast #49 Full Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris: Welcome everybody.

[00:00:01] Donna: Welcome everybody. Yes. Hello, hello.

[00:00:03] Kris: Hello. So if you’ve been listening to us for a while now you have heard us, um, banging on about, one concept presentations. We are huge sticklers for the one concept presentation. We love the one concept approach. It is what we believe is the only option.

[00:00:23] Donna: Absolutely and it didn’t come straightaway in my career and we’ll get to that in a little bit. It did come immediately for Kris because she went straight from uni into her career. But we want to talk about this because the influences that are out there may not be right for you. So we want to talk about where are you getting your influences from? And we hope to make a big change to the industry by talking about this and getting everybody to talk about this. It’s really important that we have this conversation.

[00:00:50] Kris: Yeah. And we were actually asked to unpack this a bit more by somebody, a designer, a beautiful designer who we love and respect so much who has been struggling with this. This person is a really talented designer and they have often presented many concepts, and we adore this person and they were like, okay, I get it. I get it. You know, I’ve I can do it. I see, I’ve got the system for it and all that sort of thing. But. How do I actually do it? How do I convince them the client that it’s actually okay? How do I convince the client that this is actually the best way forward? So there’s a bit of insecurity there.

[00:01:30] Donna: Yeah. Well, before you ponder Kristine’s questions, we want you to take a really important step or just a little bit of a paradigm shift because there’s a plot twist and beautiful designers. This is it. The person that you need to convince is you. First and foremost, you have to be the one that is comfortable and okay. And really, really sure that one concept is the way to go because when you believe it and you own it, so will your clients.

[00:02:02] Kris: Yeah.

[00:02:03] Donna: get to convincing yourself first.

[00:02:05] Kris: Yeah. If you convince yourself and wholeheartedly embrace it, with that energy of totally being on board with it. You won’t need to convince your clients at all. 

[00:02:16] Donna: No, that’ll just be like, this is the way it’s done with this designer and this is the way you work. And it’s like, okay, that’s what I can expect. That’s what I’m going to get. Great. yeah.

[00:02:26] Kris: We never made a big issue of it. So the question that we were asked is, well, how do you sell the idea? How do you, how do you bring it up? How do you get them on board? And, we’ve never made a big deal about it. That I think is the difference. We have talked to them about our process. We’ve never made a big deal of you’re only getting one. Sorry.

[00:02:46] Donna: Yeah,

[00:02:47] Kris: getting one?

[00:02:48] Donna: exactly. That’s right. That’s right. Because once you do make a big deal out of it, they latch on to that. So definitely don’t make a big deal out of it. There will be times when people actually outright ask you for more. There will be times when they say in the briefing process, I’d like to see two to three concepts. And then you will have to address it and say, my process means that I deliver you one kick-ass powerful concept, and this is my process and this is how it works. And you’ll only need one. So you speak to it when it comes up. But when, when you’re talking about your process, you’re talking about your process and you’re not highlighting that at the end it’s a single element. You’re highlighting the process that helps you to arrive at that beautiful, powerful, the one. We want the one don’t we, and the energy that goes into that can only really happen once. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford us. That would be that level of energy into multiple logos. There is going to be a favorite amongst the multiples that you’re delivering to them. You’re going to have a gut-feel. That is the one right there. That’s the one. So really why go through it when you know, there’s already an answer, right there?

[00:04:03] Kris: yeah. Uh, for many years, I didn’t even know that other designers presented multiple concepts. We were lucky enough… We must’ve had some lecturers who advised us to do the one, something must have happened, but we were very strong on this opinion. 

[00:04:18] Donna: I that was me Kris 

[00:04:20] Kris: We were very arrogant. It would have been Donna!

Yeah. 

[00:04:22] Donna: because I’ll tell you why I’ll tell you why I was adamant to get this message to the students, design students of the world because myself and my other two directors, my partners at the time. In our first business. We all first started out in other agencies in advertising agencies and design business and design firms in Sydney and, and, and whatnot. And that was the way for the majority of these businesses. So what we did was we took that bad habit into our own business and we realized really quickly as business owners, this is not sustainable when we were working for other people. And we were coming up with multiple concepts. We were on a wage, so it didn’t matter what we got done during the day. We just did what we did through the day and we got our weekly wage. When we became business owners. When we were very, very clear about the waste of time, it is to present three logos. We were like, what? Well, who would do this? This is such a waste of time. And so I became really passionate about that. So I’m sure I would have gone to you in your honors year at uni, Kris going now, there only needs to be one. It only needs to be that one that you absolutely intuitively feel is right, because the time, the effort, the research, the development, all of that, you cannot do that multiple times in a business. And for that to be a financially sound decision for you. And also not great for the client because there are going to be one or two of those multiple solutions that are completely diluted. That aren’t right. And what if they choose it? You’re then delivering not the one, not the right answer. So it’s risky. It’s not financially viable. And for me it wasn’t allowing me to be really passionate about one solution that I knew was right. So anyway, it took us a while. We actually did do multiple deliveries of logos and we learnt that. It is not sustainable. So I, got on my soap box pretty quickly and made sure I told as many people as possible. Don’t be doing that. That that’s not right. 

[00:06:42] Kris: How can you be sure that you’re offering the solution? How can you be sure when you’re doing three solutions? How can you really sell it? Is it sort of did my head in, like I was hearing about people doing multiple solutions and that’s the first thing I thought, but how do you know it’s the solution I want to make sure it’s that, that’s what they’re paying me for to come up with this beautifully crafted, succinct, conceptual strategic solution that answers the brief and is the way forward. And so if you offer three, three is just an arbitrary number. It’s, you know, pluck it out of the air kind of number. If you offer multiple, like if they’re fully refined, fully finessed, how, how could that be financially sustainable as you were talking about Don, unless they’ve got a massive, massive budget, like they would have to have a really big budget. Cause that’s really the work times three.

[00:07:36] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we have done that. When we shifted to the single concept, uh, process, we actually were approached by a bigger company who said, we want to say three. And we actually said, in order for you to see three fully resolved, fully researched, fully developed concepts, then we will need to charge accordingly. And they were like, yep, we’re okay with that. So we were like, yup, we’re okay with that. So it was okay. But we needed to discuss the fact that that is the job times three. And it really was. So, you know, it’s really important that you understand the value of what you’re delivering your clients when you’re delivering multiple logo designs. It is really important that you understand how much value you’ve just given away right there. 

[00:08:26] Kris: Yeah, I might just, um, clarify for people who are new to listening and hello, everybody. Welcome. If you’re new to listening to the podcast, if you don’t know our story, Donna and I met when I was in my final year of uni and she was my lecturer and that’s how we first met. that’s why Donna was the person who told me to do one concept. It’s just brilliant. It’s so funny that I’m only just figuring these out right now. Like hello. Anyway,

[00:08:54] Donna: Which is gold, because what was beautiful about that as well, Kris, is that you started your business straight out of uni. You hit the ground running and you didn’t have that bad habit. You didn’t have to break that bad habit, which is sadly what happened to my partners and myself. We went out into other jobs and we learned all their bad habits. And when we got into our own business, we sort of had to work out, the company you were working for is doing this way that we’re doing it that way. That doesn’t make sense. That makes sense. And we sort of had to, um, cherry pick the best of these businesses to create our own. So I’m so chuffed that I managed to get that through to you before you started your business and you didn’t, you didn’t have to go through that rubbish of doing multiple concepts.

[00:09:41] Kris: yeah. And you spoke to being asked to do multiple concepts, and that has been such a rare experience for me. And I’m wondering why that is. Maybe it’s just the, the energy we carried across about it. Maybe it was speaking to our process. You get the one concept maybe it was always spoken about in our proposals, my business partner at the time, in my first business had a very logical mind and she was very good at like breaking down everything. So it would have been on our proposal from the get go I can imagine. And honestly people didn’t question it. I just can’t even remember even having to have that conversation or if we did, we’d be just like, well, that’s just the way we work.

[00:10:20] Donna: Exactly. And you would have believed it, you would have believed it to be correct. You would have been confident in you weren’t doing multiple concepts before, so you didn’t know what that was like. didn’t know what it was like to present three and then, oh, no. All of a sudden I’m only presenting one. Oh my goodness. So you didn’t have that bad habit to break. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of us out there who have to break that habit or belief. It’s a limiting belief that that’s what’s expected. . It only takes one. And it’s the one that you have fully resolved and you just have to believe that. So again, coming back to our little plot twist, the only person that you have to convince about the one concept process is you and that beautiful confidence that you just spoke of Kris, that was real. That was raw confidence because you did not know any other way. You were going forward. This is the way this is how it’s done. If you’re out there right now, cringing, because you know, you presented six concepts last week to a client or three or two or whatever. It’s never too late. It’s never too late. It’s now time to refine that process, rein it in, take your power back and just make sure your process speaks to that and demonstrates the power of just one concept into delivery. 

[00:11:39] Kris: Mm and please don’t feel bad if you have been during this approach for many, many years. Because we’ve come across many designers who have been doing it for many, many years, but it really is, it’s a self-confidence issue. It’s a mindset issue. You’ve got to get on board a hundred percent on board because once you embrace it, your clients will embrace it. Like it just becomes a non-negotiable. It’s like, if you want this high quality design experience, if you want this high quality design service, this is the way I work. People will respect that.

[00:12:12] Donna: Yup. You’ve got this. That’s it? That’s it. In a nutshell, isn’t it, Kris? They, the single most important benefit of working this way is they will have you completely focused on that single outcome and it will be a kick-ass result. That’s the benefit and the benefit for you is laser focused time efficiency in your business, meaning you can do more of these beautiful things for more beautiful clients and grow your business. So it’s a win-win for everybody. So be confident you’ve got this. 

[00:12:48] Kris: Yeah, it can work. And we’ll say it again. For it to work you need to have an unshakeable belief that this is the right way. And perhaps your systems aren’t set up for it like that we teach this process in the academy, how to present a one concept solution, because it’s a multifaceted approach. There’s so many steps that lead to this, and this is why it was a bit of a head-scratcher for me. When I heard people were doing multiple approaches and multiple solutions, because. I don’t even know how that works as part of the process. This has never been part of my process because it’s so thorough and it’s geared towards this one direction. Of course, we have multiple solutions at the beginning, of course, in this beautiful brainstorming process. There’s many solutions that are coming to the surface, but it’s our job as a designer to refine and come up with that solution that meets the brief. And then use the language. We love to use design poetry, we call it. That beautiful language of design to sell the concept to the client. And it’s all in those steps. It’s the briefing, it’s the conceptual development, it’s the creation of original ideas. And then it is in the selling of the solution, explaining the solution to the client with a very detailed rationale.

[00:14:03] Donna: That’s right. And you can’t do that multiple times. It’s exhausting.. If your process is as thorough as the one that we teach in the academy, you will be exhausted to do that multiple times for one client and not be paid for it. It’s perfectly fine to do it multiple times. You’ve been paid for it because that’s different. There’s a different energy that comes with that. So be mindful of that. 

[00:14:24] Kris: All right, you’ve got this. 

[00:14:26] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:14:26] Kris: You’ve got to trust yourself. You can do it. You can do one concept. We know you can. 

[00:14:31] Donna: Yeah 

[00:14:31] Kris: because we’re evidence. 

[00:14:33] Donna: Let us know. I’d love to hear from you if you are. And again, no judgment. I was one of those people doing multiple concepts. When I became the business owner and was no longer the employee, I started scratching my head about this going, this is crazy the amount of effort and work that’s going into this. And I knew there had to be a better solution. So let me know. I was one of you. I was doing multiple concepts when I realized that this was okay and it was just self belief and mindset thing to change it around to the single concept. I have never looked back and I’d love to hear from you. If you have been that way and you have started doing the single concept, or if you’d like to give it a go and you do it soon down the track, whenever you hear this, let us know, let us know 

[00:15:18] Kris: Yeah. 

[00:15:18] Donna: first time went for you. We’d love to hear from you.

[00:15:21] Kris: Yeah, send us a DM via Instagram to search for design and prosper and your find us, or send an email. You can send an email to team@designandprosper.co, and we’d love to hear from you, but I really am interested in that. Don, do you remember any point in time where it was still a bit of a challenge like there was a bit of a, Ooh, will they accept this one concept because you had to transition. 

[00:15:44] Donna: I had to transition. It was literally every time for the next half a dozen. Um because we’d been in the industry a long time. Remember, and we’d all being asked to do multiple solutions, not just for logos, for, for a lot of things. We had to come up with multiple solutions. So we found out very, very quickly that the process of making the decisions and distilling it down to the single most important one was really quick at brainstorming stage. But when you’re dealing with a big business and you’re going from the creative team to maybe an admin team to a marketing team, um, there’s a lot, more people that have to have they say on what’s going on. So multiple options almost met the egos of all those people. Whereas we were able to look at it and we knew what the solution was at sketch stage, like at our brainstorm thumbnail stage. So, um, it did take a little while because we felt like that was the expectation in the industry. But then once we were not questioned because our process was so thorough and what we were delivering was so concise. And in the academy, kris and I teach a combination of both our processes. We’ve basically, combined them and elevated it. So you’ve got this amazing process that, that we share, um, in the academy, but essentially, when people didn’t even blink, that’s when we started to get really comfortable with it. But when we were asked, can you do two or three? It triggered us. We’d get triggered. It’d be like, Hey, we’re here again. Oh my goodness. We’re here again. Oh, what are we, what are we doing here? You know? And then we’d have to speak to our process. We’d have to be confident. We’d have to stand our ground. We’d have to be prepared for them to say. See you later, we want three. So see you later. But once you start speaking with that level of confidence, it’s really undeniable that you will create the solution that they’re looking for. So you just have to stand your ground, which takes oodles of courage, you know, especially when you’re young or new to business and your, your business is fairly fledgling. It does take a lot of courage to go. I’m going to stand my ground on this one. That’s why I want. industry, worldwide. Let’s get on board with this people let’s get on board designers. Let’s do the single concept everywhere. So there is no expectation of doing it again and again and again. Yeah.

[00:18:09] Kris: It triggers that not enoughness because it’s like, well, if I present one concept, it’s not enough, is it. It’s like, ooh, they’re paying me a good amount of money and oh, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. So it’s really important to be very certain that it is, it absolutely is enough, but that’s very interesting that it could take a little bit of time. So be gentle with yourself.

[00:18:30] Donna: Yeah.

[00:18:31] Kris: To get to that confident place is keep on. It’s a practice. Keep on practicing with it. You probably won’t go in with it with the completely ignorant arrogance that I went into business with. Which was actually a good thing

[00:18:43] Donna: I love it. I love it, Kris. I always say how lucky you were not to an in on multiple things. I’ve just had a beautiful family of birds arrive at my window. So sorry. If you heard that. Um, I love, I love that you did not have to unlearn bad habits of others. That’s something that did take time in our businesses, especially when we came together and we were seeing our businesses as CEOs, rather than the employee. Okay. That business, that I was working at did that so well, let’s have a little bit of that. I can’t believe we were doing it that way there. No, let’s not do that ever again. And so we really had to work out what was right for us. So the way that you did. I wouldn’t say it’s ignorant at all. It was intuitive and gold and you were very blessed not to have any bad habits to break. So kudos to you.

[00:19:37] Kris: Ah, Don. Um, we’ve actually done a whole episode on the one concept approach. So it’s episode eight. It is, one of our earlier episodes. It’s called why graphic designers should only present one concept. So check it out if you want to unpack this even more, because there’s lots of benefits. We talk about the benefits of the one concept approach in that.

[00:20:00] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. All right. You’ve got this. Remember courage, yep. Be confident. You will be right. You will be taken seriously if you are presenting one concept, you can do this. 

[00:20:12] Kris: you can. Allright. 

[00:20:13] Donna: Okay. 

[00:20:15] Kris: Bye everybody. 

[00:20:16] Donna: Bye.