Have you ever made a presentation to a committee/ boss/client who could not converse in words? It goes like this: "Hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure what I want, but I'll know it if I see it." And, "I can't tell you what I like, but I know what I don't like."

The inability to articulate is a serious professional handicap. The problem is, it afflicts designers, too. Ask a designer to describe his fine technique and you might hear: "I air out the type until it feels right," or, "I isolate each color until one works."

Until one works?

That's not an answer.

Our teachers are equally abstract. One submitted to me an article on designing a newsletter nameplate. It began: "First select an appropriate typeface."

How helpful.

Another, teaching on type, described Helvetica as honest.

With terms this vague, it's no wonder nothing gets resolved. Just listen:
Client to designer: This is an important campaign; we have a big impression to make. Punch it up.
Designer: I know just the thing.

Later, at the presentation:
Designer: Isn't it heavenly? The blue really makes it flow.
Client: There's not enough ooommph.
Designer: I believe its beauty is its own ooommph.
Client: It's not happening for me.
Designer: What do you want, then?
Client: Impact. Um, zip. I'm not sure; I'll know it when I see it.

Later, over coffee:
Designer A: That great poster with the blue graduated fill? Jones didn't like it. Too sophisticated.
Designer B: Aw! It was totally great! What did he want?
Designer A: Couldn't say.
Designer B: Clients are so stupid.

Before & After has made nothing more vivid to me than our need as designers to master the skills of verbal articulation. It is our job to understand and describe what we do, intelligently, perceptively, in our local language.

This is not a trivial matter. Would you pay your attorney for flow and oommph? Or your banker for a retirement plan that happens for you?

I doubt it.

But when you tell your boss the company's image needs to be perked up, do you expect her to know what you mean?

What, exactly,do you mean?

Do you mean Futura or Garamond? Caps, or lowercase? Black type or white?

Can you explain which does what?

Do you mean four columns or three? Folded or flat? A new size?

Why?

Do you mean orange or red? What effect will each have? Why is one better?

Can you say?

In B&A planning sessions, we have a term we use called proof of concept. Say one of us makes the observation: Gray really works on that page. It's probably true, but the statement is useless to the reader with a different page. If the page is important to us, we'll make dozens of layouts in an effort to articulate why the gray "works." In analyzing these pages, we probe, tweak, classify and expound — often out loud, with a dictionary — until we can fit words to what we see. When we're done, the statement has been transformed into: Gray makes an image recede. It is now useful information, a statement of fact.

The process does not degrade our intuitive sense of design. In other words, clinical analysis does not strip us of our artistry. It does, however, put a sharp point on our ability to state a problem and describe its solutions.

It's a skill you can learn.

You'll find that while a client does not speak like a designer, he or she, like all of us, has a fine visual imagination, a theater in the mind. What's fun is that your skill at putting solid words on vague images — articulating the workings of design — will light up that screen like a projector.

So do it.

Or just be a propellerhead.

Originally published in Before & After magazine issue 11, June,1992
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