Liggett Stashower Intern Blog: In a Perfect World No One Would Compromise

In a perfect world the client would instantly fall in love with all of the designer’s first drafts, budgets would be thrown out the window completely, and just for good measure we would all be millionaires living in mansions. It’s pretty safe to say that this isn’t the world we live in. Throughout the intern t-shirt design project our design has seen a lot of drafts and a lot of compromise. Keep in mind that this is a fun project for the interns, but it also gives us a little taste of what the process is like when taking an idea from concept to print while ‘working for a client’. Our client is technically the agency, but we still had to write up a creative brief as well as stay under a set budget.

Since the initial stages of our design process, the final design has seen about ten to fifteen different drafts with as many color choices. Then once we decided upon a final design we had to take into account our budget. Apparently all over prints with twelve different colors don’t come cheap, but I like to think you should always leap for the moon before reeling yourself back down to reality. I’m not going to call myself a finicky designer, but I’m a finicky designer. I don’t like to compromise, but like I said before, this isn’t a perfect world and I’m not the one footing the bill. So after reviewing the budget we figured out that this twelve color all over print needed to be something more like a 5-color basic screen-printed t-shirt. I think the design world isn’t so much about settling to satisfy your client, but I think it is more about making a compromise that makes the client and yourself satisfied. At the end of the day you are working for your client, but you always want to make sure that you are proud of the product you’re putting out. I’m not going to show you guys our final design just yet, but here is a little sneak preview.