wow... that is great advice for all the sales rep, (outsourcing com) a freelancer designer, thanks Eros

This has nothing to do with holding hands...you stated above exactly what I was talking about...relating important issues to the designer...I just used fonts for an example but I can see that's what people are going to focus on...LOL.

The point here is communication...that's all..whether it is fonts or more important issues like forms etc.

We certainly have different ideas about a designer's role and although yours seems to be a common point of view among adult site designers, I can assure you that it isn't in the wider world.

I have had many book covers, company identities, and print ads designed over the years. In every single case, the designer asked me questions about my product/service/audience/etc. But except for asking if I had any special requirements, they did not expect me to provide any creative input. I usually chose a designer who specialized in the relevant market and I would expect him to understand that market at least as well as I did.

This business has a lot of Photoshop kiddies who are not real designers. They know how to put together a striking collage of images and effects, but they do not understand sales and marketing or even, in many cases, appear to realize that the point of site design is not simply to produce something about which the webmaster will say "hey that's cool".

If a designer doesn't understand better than the webmaster, how to create something that will make money, generate traffic, etc., then he is in the wrong business.

I know what you mean. I used to HATE when I would get an order for say.. 20 galleries or so and the customer would just say " make the galleries for www.mypaysite.com " and that's it! Tell me what colors, what fonts, what font sizes, how many thumbs, what size thumbs, how many click through links, html pages for pics or not, animated gifs or no animated gifs, what text, descriptions ect... The more the better!

I know I always found it that I got the order done alot faster when I had plenty of information to work with. End the end the customer and designer will be much much happier if things are done this way :2 cents:

You have some valid points...once again I spent a number of years in mainstream commercial production and have worked with the top advertising firms in the world...our company won the bronze lion in cannes for some of our commercials.
The kind of money that is spent there is not the kind of money we'll see here.

I don't have a team that focuses on market research, I don't have a team to storyboard each project, or a team to research each and every market niche I come across in this business.

In most cases the webmaster already has done that work. He/she has a good idea what works with his/her site and/or fetish.

This is not about "creativity" or lack of. This is about communication...pure plain and simple.

I've been involved in many mainstream meetings and things are discussed to the nth degree almost to the point of redundancy.

You can't really compare that to what we do here.

I disagree. Of course there is a difference between - for example - spending $20,000 on a logo and $1,000 on a complete site design, but a webmaster is expecting a design that will be functional: ie drive sales and/or traffic. If a design fails to do that, it doesn't matter how pretty or cool it looks, or how cheap it is, it is a waste of money.

Although there are exceptions such as if a site belongs to an unusual niche or if a webmaster has very specific requirements, in this business it should make it possible to do a comparable job without the resources you mentioned, The reason being that many (successful) adult designers work in the same market most, if not all of the time. Therefore they don't have to do research separately for each client.

I'm not saying that input from the client is a bad thing: only that a designer shouldn't depend on it for good results.

If right from the off a designer asks me to point him at a design I like, or enquires what color I want, I look for a polite way to end the conversation. And with your experience, you must admit that the majority of site designs show very little understanding of the role of design in marketing.