How to talk to a designer

Designers aren’t from Venus and developers aren’t from Mars. Our skill sets are very different but we all have the same end goals. Hear from designers about communication that works when partnering on a project. Some key considerations we’ll discuss are:

• Give limitations up front. Whether it’s budget constraints, limitations of Drupal 7 or of the unknowns of Drupal 8, getting the rundown of time-sucking details and potential unknowns is helpful in making realistic design decisions.

• Communicating functionality in designs can be difficult. We’ll discuss how you can work with your design team to help them better communicate the intended functionality, workflow and collaborate on ideas.

• Don’t spare our feelings. Any good designer doesn’t need an ego boost, we need candor. We’ll talk about how to communicate positive and critical feedback in a way that produces a good working relationship.

• Be inclusive. The worst thing that can happen to a designer is to spend months pouring your heart into something only to be left out of conversations during implementation. The relationship should be symbiotic, working together from start to finish.

• Respect Typography and you designers will love you. We’ll talk about why this is so important and how to communicate limitations and manage assumptions.

• We respect you. You hold the keys to bringing our hard work to life. Without you, all we have is just a bunch of jpegs living in the cloud that only serve us.