I think that one of the hardest things for new designers to learn when they try and make a living doing design is that it really does not matter what you, the designer, think is good.

It really only matter what the client wants – you can try and use your knowledge of form, function, color, and creativity to nudge the client in the right direction, but in the end a for hire design job is only really successful if the client thinks that they have gotten a good value and are happy with the results.

Take, for instance, my latest project for an awesome photographer out on the left coast named melissa schwartz.. She is a WPJA award winning wedding photojournalist and has a distinct style – and a design style that is not exactly what I would do if it were left up to me.

But her custom WordPress theme is not about me, it’s about her. So after being warned that she was an artist and had strong opinions about how the blog should look I tried to remove my own bias from process and created her a mock up. This is what she said:

i’m kind of shocked…i love it! i’m usually really difficult to please =)

I admit that I was kinda shocked as well, I was prepared to have it ripped to pieces and heading back to the drawing board. I went ahead and starting cutting it up, helped her install WordPress and got the theme set up and she said:

i think it’s amazing, it looks awesome, you rock.

Not bad coming from a client that told me up front that she was going to be hard to please – but, I think, that by trying to remove my ego from the design process that she actually became easy to please.