How Many Drafts Should you Show a Client

A draft presentation is one of the steps that designers have to contend with during the design process. It comes early in the process because it is out of the draft presentation that the final concept of the design will be agreed upon. A draft design is the rough mock up of what the designer intends to come up with in the final design based on the project brief or the requirements of the client. The main objective of presenting a draft to the client is so that you can both agree on your intentions and also get recommendations before you go deep into the actual design. But as much as design drafts are important, how many then should you present to the client?

The number of drafts to present is very subjective and may be dictated by various factors. Before exploring the specific factors that might determine the number of drafts to show a client, it is important to understand that other than confirming to the client that you are both on the same page as far as the project requirements are concerned, you are also trying out variations and giving the client room to make a choice from the drafts you present to them. Since it is subjective, there are some designers who prefer to give one, two, three and some show up to five different drafts to the clients. Other professional designers, on the other hand, insists on showing just a single design draft for reasons which we will discuss later. Here are a few factors that might determine the total number of drafts to show to your clients.

Terms of agreement – depending on the contractual terms you agreed upon concerning the project, a specific number of drafts may be included in the contract. In such a case, the designer has no choice but to show the agreed number of drafts as per the contract.

Your mistakes – As a designer, there are certain occasions when you don’t get it right the first time, and this is a very common with the first drafts. When you meet the client with the first draft and realize that you are completely off of what they wanted, a second and maybe a third draft may be necessary.

However, this will only happen in the early stages of your design profession. As you increase in your experience, you will start to get it the first time and reduce the number of drafts you show to your clients.

Change in customer requirements – though this rarely happens, there are situations when the client might decide to change a few items once the project has commenced. As a good and a professional designer who desires to please their clients, but only to certain extent, revising the work and presenting another draft might be necessary.

What is the acceptable number – In some situations, however, when there was no clear number of drafts agreed upon on the contract, it is upon the designer and the client to agree on what is acceptable as the number of drafts to show the client. There are certain clients who might be demanding and may require several drafts before you come up with the final design. Such clients might be a bother, and they may slow you down as a designer.

The best course of action, therefore, is to remind them politely that the design needs to move on past the draft stage. But again you should not be too stingy to show at least a couple of designs to the client.

Why you should never present more than one draft to clients?

Most of the professional graphic designers hardly present more than one draft to the clients. This is due to the following reasons-:

Degrades your expertise

When you show a client many drafts, it might signify that you are not certain of what you want to do hence you are not competent enough. As the expert, you should be in a position to clearly read and understand the project brief and come up with the right draft the first time. Presenting many drafts to the client is like asking them to help you do your job.

Choice paralysis

When your habit is to present clients with a number of drafts, both you and the client risk suffering what is referred to us choice paralysis. This is when you are unable to make up your minds and pick a draft to continue working with. You might also find that the clients might choose the choices you never wanted them to pick simply because you gave them a lot of room to move around.

A lot of work on your part

Producing many drafts also mean that you will spend your time, energy and resources in working with the extra number of drafts. It, therefore, leads to more work on your part, which will eventually slow you down and affect your productivity.

How many revisions should you offer?