30 Questions to Ask Your Clients Before You Start Designing

As a designer you must to be ready for any occasion. It's necessary to prepare for various surprises and different job offers. In this digital era the designers have a lot of orders and it is a very promising profession. You should listen carefully to your customer wants, but also don't forget to have a detailed questionnaire to ask a special questions to your customer too.

Have you ever been in a situation where the customer, after receiving the design you submitted, turned up his nose and said that it was not what he wanted and you were left in the place of a fool? Such of situation is very often when you trust your customer and don't listen what he want really, so you spend your time and efforts for nothing. So why we have created 10 specific questions for your needs.

Why Need To Create a Questionnaire?

Here are 3 reasons why you need to prepare questions:

Save Time - If you are well prepared, you will be sure of what your client really wants, thus saving time for additional questions that should be searched for when the client is not around. You will be able to do everything the first time.

Avoid Project Failure - Asking the right questions helps you make sure you meet the design project expectations and protect it from failure. Just so simple. Do this and both of you will be more happy.

Look Professional - You will be more professional in the eyes of the client, so not only will he dictate his wishes to you, but he will also have to listen to you. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to it.

Now let's go deeply into what questions you can ask:

30 Questions to Ask Your Client

Ask About Client's Business and Target Audience

The first step is to learn as much as possible about the nature of the client's business and the industry he works in. Some details you can ask.

• What products or services do you offer? What are some of its values?
• What is your company’s mission statement? What’s your vision? What’s your brand message?
• What sets your business apart? What is your main appeal?
• Who are your main competitors?
• Who is your target audience?

Questions About the Brand

Brand is the key thing your customer thinks about and probably has his goals, so a questionnaire is worth paying attention to.

• What are some words you can use to describe your brand?
• How do your customers currently perceive your organization?
• How do you want your audience to perceive your business? What are 3 things you want them to think or feel when engaging with your brand?
• What do you like about your current branding?
• What do you dislike about your current branding?
• Is there a brand you look up to that you’d like to benchmark against?

Questions About Design Preferences

We know this is a delicate question and we really don't want to ask it, but it is necessary because you will be able to focus more and plan your time on the essential things that come first.

• To ensure brand consistency, do you have any design and style guidelines or assets you’d like to share? (font, logos, color codes, or other design elements).
• If you don’t intend to use existing brand colors, do you have a color palette in mind? Are there any colors you dislike?
• What are some must-have elements of design?
• Are there any new elements you’d like to try out in this project?
• Are there any design styles that you really like? Please provide an example URL.
• Are there any design styles that you dislike? Please provide an example URL.
  Do you have any preferred fonts to share?
• What do you like or dislike about your competitor’s branding? Please provide an example URL and point out what you like and don’t like.
• Please provide a few links or samples for inspiration / creative direction if you have.

Questions About Working Relationships

It is a very good question to find out about your client's experience with previous designers and the peculiarities of their work. How he wants to work and communicate with you.

• Have you worked with a designers before? What was positive about your experience? What was negative about your experience?
• How do you prefer to communicate? (phone, email, zoom, in-person meetings, other).
• Aside from this project, do you need assistance with any other projects? What are they? (print design, logo design, website design, apparel design).

Questions About Design Specifics

These questions are very complex in order to confirm the project scope, timelines and project objectives. You will simply build your visual memory by asking these questions.

• Specify the design deliverables you need for the project:

- Website
- Brochures
- Logo
- Ads
- Sales materials
- Apparel
- Poster
- Blog images
- Web design
- Other

• Where do you intend to use the final project deliverable? (print, online, other).
• What is the goal of this design project?
• How will you define the success of this project?
• Are there any other specifications or details you’d like to list? (timeline, project schedule, other).

Questions About Budget

Direct question. Ask what the client's full budget is for this design project, if there is an option to supplement it, or if there are any other monetary wishes. You can ask him to tell the amount or offer any other choices.

• How much are you willing to spend on this project?
• Is your budget flexible or fixed?

How to Create a Design Questionnaire?

You can use any kind of online tools like Google Forms. If you need more extensive planning of creating a questionnaire, we invite you to join Content Snare that was purposely built to collect this kind of information, you avoid the headaches.