"I'll Know It When I See It"

What if the most dreaded phrase in a client discussion is actually quite useful?

Every designer has heard it. Usually early, often in the first meeting, sometimes with a shrug. "I'm a visual person." "I'll know it when I see it."

For many designers, those words will raise a big red flag. There's no brief to work from, no direction to follow and a very real chance of burning through an agreed number of revisions without getting any closer to what the client expects. The industry has written about it that way for years. One branding agency described it back in 2014 as one of the hardest challenges in a client relationship, because it gives the designer nothing to steer by. Their fix was to insist on clear objectives and a strategic target before any design work starts, which is sound advice. It does treat the phrase as a gap in the brief, though. In my experience, the strategy is usually already there and just needs drawing out.

I heard it plenty of times as a designer, and for a long time I heard it the same way. With the benefit of experience, I think we've not really been hearing what's being said.

What the client might be saying

When a business owner says "I'll know it when I see it", they're rarely saying they don't know what they want. More often, they know where they want the business to go. What they're missing is the vocabulary to describe it visually.

As it turns out, there is a reason for that. The philosopher Michael Polanyi built a body of work around this idea and summed it up in one line: "we can know more than we can tell." One of his examples was a face. You can pick a friend out of a crowd in a second, but you'd struggle to list the features that told you it was them.

Memory research makes a similar point. Recognising something is far easier than producing it from scratch, because the answer is right there in front of you. Most people would spot the name of their old primary school teacher on a list, even if they couldn't come up with it if asked directly what it is.

So "I'll know it when I see it" is a fairly accurate description of how the client's mind works. They can recognise the right answer. They can't draw it and they can't brief it. That doesn't mean the thinking hasn't been done.

I never said those words myself when I ran my own business and hired creative talent. That's only because I'd spent years in design agencies and had the vocabulary required. Most business owners haven't spent time in the design industry, so there's no reason they would have it.

Same sector, same phrase, different outcome

As an example, I can compare two former clients, some years apart. Both operated in financial services. Both wanted a new logo and visual identity system. Both said some version of "I'll know it when I see it".

The first time, I heard it as a design problem. There was no context and I didn't go looking for any. We worked through the three rounds of revisions in the contract, the relationship got strained and we agreed a budget extension to keep going. I'm still not sure they ended up with what they wanted. The relationship ended there, and looking back, it could have been a much better result for both of us. Probably a retained client too.

The second time, the client said they needed a logo that would help take the business to the next level. By then I'd learned enough about brand strategy to hear what that meant. There was an ambition in that sentence and a direction of travel. My job was to help them explain how the position they wanted differed from the one they had. Once that was clear, we had the parameters for everything else. We delivered a full visual identity system with one set of revisions…after we'd done a bit of brand strategy to put things in order.

These were both in the same sector and both used a version of the same phrase. The only real variable was what I was listening for.

The tells

Once you know to listen for it, the strategy tends to show itself in the way people talk about the future. "When we get to the next stage." "When we do this." "The next level."

Those phrases are tells. They show a business strategy has at least been thought about, whether the owner made that decision consciously or not. A brand strategist hears these kinds of suggestions and can work out where the client thinking is.

It rarely takes much to get the conversation moving. A few scene-setting questions about business objectives and where the owner wants the business to be positioned are usually enough. From there, the work is unpacking the strategy then refining and simplifying it until the positioning is agreed. Then it's a case of asking the fundamental questions to find the simplest way forward.

The visual work, digital work and campaigns follow from that. So do the conversations about timings and budget, which are far easier when everyone knows what the time and money are for.

Nobody's to blame

None of this is a dig at designers. Brand strategy has rarely been a core part of design education, so many designers leave with strong craft skills and little training in hearing a business strategy hidden in a throwaway remark. I was that designer.

It does leave a gap, and the client usually pays for it in extra revisions, extended budgets and an identity that may well look good but might not actually do the job expected of it.

Designers who take on brand work owe it to themselves, and to their clients, to close that gap. That might mean learning more strategy. It might mean partnering with a strategist for the first part of the job. Either way, the client gets someone who can hear what they're saying and the designer gets a brief with fewer frustrations and red flags.

If you're the one saying it

If you're a business owner and you've said "I'll know it when I see it", you're in good company. You're probably further along than you think.

Next time you brief someone, be open about where you want the business to go. Talk about the ambitions, the next stage and what's changing. Don't be cagey about the business strategy, even if it's half-formed. It's the most useful thing a designer can hear from you, and it's often the thing clients hold back.

If the designer across the table can't or won't have that conversation, it's worth finding a specialist who can bridge the gap before the design work starts. It might feel like an additional layer of cost to bring brand strategy in but it's almost always less than the additional time and cost required for creating round after round of revisions and still not being done.

The phrase will keep coming up and that's fine. It's a good starting point for a better conversation, as long as someone in the room knows how to hear those tells.

For plain definitions of brand strategy and when you need it, see the Brand Strategy reference page. For why brand strategy keeps getting mistaken for design, read "Brand" Is Doing Too Much Work.