My capstone client wants "more pop." I have no idea what that means.

[KarenWeiss]

Capstone project. Real client. Local nonprofit. We're designing their annual report. Everything was going fine until yesterday's meeting.

Client looked at our draft and said: "It's good but... can you add more pop?"

More pop. What does that mean? More color? More contrast? More energy? More sparkle? I asked for clarification and she said "you know... pop. Make it pop."

I don't know. I really don't know.

I asked my professor what "pop" means in design terms. She laughed and said "it means the client doesn't have vocabulary to describe what they want. Your job is to figure it out."

So now I'm trying different things. Brighter colors. Bolder fonts. More white space. Less white space. Illustrations. Photographs. Everything feels like guessing.

The worst part is she'll probably look at the next version and say "not quite what I meant" without being able to explain what she meant.

Design is half art, half mind-reading. Today feels like all mind-reading.

Anyone else dealt with vague client feedback? How do you figure out what "pop" means?

 

[SellaW]

okay so i work in marketing now and "pop" is our least favorite word. here's how i deal:

1. ask for examples of things that have "pop" to them. get specific references.
2. ask what problem they're trying to solve. is the current design getting ignored? is it blending in? is it not exciting enough for their audience?
3. propose specific changes with specific rationales. "i'm going to increase contrast here so this statistic stands out more." then they can react to the SPECIFIC instead of the vague.

you're not a mind-reader. you're a translator. translate their feelings into design choices. then let them react to the choices.