In my decade as a designer, I’ve heard my fair share of design horror stories. In fact, I have performed “facial reconstruction surgeries” on dozens of botched design projects.

Sometimes, botched design projects happen because the designer was a talentless prick. #sorrynotsorry

But in my experience, most botched design projects happen because the designer didn’t get enough context or feedback to make the design better. 

If you’ve ever outsourced a design project and felt utterly underwhelmed by the first draft your designer sent you, this article is for you.

First, it’s okay to throw a little pity party for yourself (10 minutes MAX). We’ve all been there. After that, use the following three tips to give your designer ACTIONABLE feedback that will turn that disappointing first draft into a gorgeous second draft, Cinderella-style. Bidibidobidiboo 🪄

Tip #1: Be Visual

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to communicate your feedback in writing. There is no better way to frustrate yourself (or your designer) than writing a 14-paragraph “stream of consciousness” email. This creates more confusion and delays the entire process. 

Instead, use a tool like Loom to record a video of your screen as you describe your feedback.

• Explain what you don’t like about the design. 
• Tell them why you don’t like it 
• Use simple language without trying to speak “design-ese”

Saying things like “Can we do something about this thing? I don’t love it” is vague and unhelpful, which leads us to tip #2.

(Recommended Reading: 5 Tips to Communicate Your Vision to a Designer)

Tip #2: Be Specific

The most productive thing you can do before you sit down to record your feedback video is take a few minutes to review the designs and understand exactly what you don’t like about them. Most importantly, you need to ask yourself one question: Why?

Let’s run through two examples of what specific looks like.

Example 1:

Observation: I don’t like the placement of that image there.

Why? Because it makes the designs look crowded. 

Specific feedback: Is there anything we can do about that image to make the design feel less crowded?

Example 2: 

Observation: This graphic looks busy.

Why? Because there is a lot of text that is hard to read.

Specific feedback: I have provided some shortened copy for this section. Can we rework this design with the reworded text and make it more readable?

The goal is to help your designer get inside your head to understand the problem from your perspective. Then invite them to use their design expertise to solve the problem and leave it at that. Don’t try to problem-solve for your designer. They (should) have an entire toolbox of design skills to optimally address the issue. 

Tip #3: Be (Less) Emotional

If you’re anything like me, you pour your heart and soul into everything you do. And that’s why your clients love you. But our emotions can also work against us. 

Emotions cloud our judgment and bring unproductive frustration to the design process. The result? Delayed projects, unfinished work, and misspent money on projects that never see the light of day.

If any of this sounds familiar, you might have too many emotions tethered to the design process: 

• You procrastinate on giving feedback because your heart sinks every time you look at your graphics and you would rather do anything but deal with this project right now. 
• You write a mean email to your designer that you instantly regret the second you hit “send.” Now you have a heavy negative energy cloud floating over the entire project that derails you from your mission.
• You are so disappointed with how poorly your designs came out that you decide to give up on the project entirely instead of objectively assessing the work and finding ways to fix the issues.

For some of you, this may be the hardest of the three tips above to implement. But you cannot productively apply tips one and two without removing emotions from the equation first.

If you apply all these tips and you still can’t turn the boat around and fix your designs, then it’s time to jump ship, cut your losses, and fire your designer.   

Or! You can snag your DBK templates, send them to your VA, and have someone design your assets in-house! And because beautiful design is already baked into our templates, you are bound to end up with something you love. Jus’ saying.