Because of the way I run business, I do a lot of design directly in front of my customers. This certainly isn’t the way most designers work, but I have found that it has taught me a whole lot about the relationship between client and designer.
One of the things I find myself telling my clients pretty often is to tell me what their problems are, but let me solve them. I tell them, “I need to learn about you, about your taste and your preferences. I need to learn about what you do and don’t like, what you want to change or fix. But, let me do the problem solving”. If you find yourself trying to solve the problems in your space yourself, and just telling your designer exactly what to put where, then you have one of two problems. Either 1) you don’t trust your designer and you should consider working with a different one, or 2) your are paying for a designer but getting a draftsman. Either way, you are missing out on a skill set that your designer has spent years honing.
