We have all been there – you work day and night with your team to develop an amazing solution. You create a great presentation filled with impeccable research and beautiful illustrations. You even have design prototypes created for extra impact. And then… SUCCESS! The client loves everything about it!

Then, in some strange twist of fate, conversation and direction shifts in subsequent meetings. Changes occur. Your design is dancing into the “safe” territory. The research is forgotten and you lose the momentum of the great idea. It is now just an “okay” idea. Your team is flustered and you believe you have failed because “okay” design is the real archenemy of “great” design. You hang your head and shake your fist to the typography god Spiekermann and the star-crossed Beirut.

“What went wrong?!” you scream. “What… went… wrong…?”

The project’s downfall most likely related to management of the overall design vision. The design vision is the structure of the project. It is the framework of information and concepts that the client’s decisions will be based on. Building a design vision will allow the project to flourish in conjunction with client comments because they will feel more comfortable with perceived risks.

How do you keep your design vision on track? Well here is an approach that has worked for me multiple times – reducing the need for “options” and focusing myself on the solutions.

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Design leadership is crucial for the success of your team’s solutions. Management keeps the teams in check and on a direct path when it is needed, but rarely lets the team create truly innovative solutions based on their own insights. Leadership allows for exploration. Sure, management has its place, but it is leadership that pushes individuals and your team to the next level.

This is a quick primer of the design leadership process. Each team will be different with different personalities but the ideas below should help you develop a framework on how to approach your next project.

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We all have ideas, but not all of us know how to put those ideas into action. These ideas stay in our head instead of being developed into physical form. What could be stopping you from acting on these creative impulses? Maybe it is a lack of design-confidence?

Self-confidence is the feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment. As designers we do not just have to develop self-confidence, we need to develop “design-confidence”. Design-confidence is the feeling of trust in your design process and creative ideas. Design-confidence allows your process to flourish because you no longer have the insecurity of your ideas not measuring up to whatever standard you are trying to reach. By developing design-confidence we no longer look at our grand, innovative ideas with fear, we learned to quell our natural instincts of flight and let our creative instincts take over.

Here are two ways to begin or continue building your design-confidence at the beginning and the end of your projects.

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As creatives we must consistently perform at a high level to develop innovative solutions for our clients. Sometimes, however, we get bogged down with stress, our creative juices slow, and we hit a wall. We begin to see our work as mediocre, and try as we might, we just can’t seem to take it to the next level. Creative block has set in.

Developing a few exercises to break down that creative block is important. It keeps your mind nimble and ready to perform at the high level you are expected to. Below are a few exercises I have done myself. Hopefully, they can set you on a path to create your own.

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