You hate when clients have an idea? I think it depends on the client. Someone having ideas is fine -- I like that a lot in fact. You can get some good collabora

You hate when clients have an idea? I think it depends on the client. Someone having ideas is fine -- I like that a lot in fact. You can get some good collaborative brainstorming out of it, and it often gives me insight into how the client sees his/her business or product. It's not the act of having an idea that's bad. What's bad is when the expectation, spoken or (worse) unspoken, is not that the client's ideas are the starting point for a conversation between the two of you, but that you're going to do what this article suggests and just "polish up" the client's idea verbatim. That is, with nearly nonexistent exception, a road straight to horrible design town. Just like how good programmers aren't just "good at computers," or "good at math," or whatever, good designers aren't just "good at drawing." Like good programmers, good designers are good problem solvers. (The problems they solve are just different.) Most good designers I know relish solving problems and coming up with unexpected or interesting or clean and efficient solutions to challenges as much as (if not more than) they enjoy the actual act of putting pen to paper (or hand to mouse). Obviously a good designer should be someone who produces aesthetically pleasing work, but that's not all they do, at least not if they're good! If you're not letting your designer help you solve your problems, you might be under utilizing your designer. If your designer isn't helping you solve your problems, you might have a bad designer.