Say What's Wrong, Not What to Change

You get the first draft of a Diwali offer creative back from your designer. You look at it for ten seconds, and something is off. So you write back: "Make the logo bigger and change the blue to our brand blue."

Two days later you have a version with a bigger logo in the correct blue, and it is still off. You have now spent two rounds and you are no closer, because the logo was never the problem. The problem was that nothing on the creative told you what the offer was.

This is the single most expensive habit in working with designers, and almost every business owner has it. You are not being difficult. You are doing what feels helpful — you are trying to save the designer time by handing them a solution. But the solution you can see is limited by what you know about design, and the designer's is not. When you prescribe the fix, you cap the outcome at your own level.

Why prescribing fixes backfires

A designer solving "the offer isn't clear" has maybe fifteen tools available. Change the hierarchy so the discount number is the first thing the eye lands on. Cut the headline from eleven words to four. Remove the background photo that is competing with the text. Put the offer in a contrasting block. Increase the weight of the typeface rather than the size. Move the logo to the bottom so it stops stealing attention.

A designer solving "make the logo bigger" has one tool. They will use it, because you asked, and they will often know it will not help. Some will tell you. Many will not, because arguing with a client about a specific instruction is a losing game and they would rather do the round and move on.

There is a second cost. Every prescribed fix you issue trains the designer to stop thinking. After four or five rounds of being handed instructions, they become a pair of hands. The work gets safer, blander and slower, and you end up doing a job you are not trained for while paying someone else to do it.

The fix is not to be vague. Vague is worse — "it just doesn't feel premium" with nothing attached is the feedback designers dread most. The fix is to be specific about the problem and silent about the solution.

The three-part sentence that works

Useful design feedback has three parts: what you observed, where you observed it, and what you expected instead. Not how to change it.

Observation — what actually happened when you looked at it. "I read the headline three times before I understood it."
Location — which element, which part of the page, which frame of the reel.
Expectation — what the thing is meant to achieve, restated. "A passer-by on a scrolling feed needs to get the offer in about a second."

That is it. The designer now has a problem with a measurable target and full freedom over the method. Here is what the shift looks like across the kinds of work small Indian businesses actually commission.

Social creative

Instead of	Say
"Make the font bigger."	"I checked this on my phone and I couldn't read the address line without zooming. People will see this at arm's length on a feed."
"Add our tagline."	"Nothing here says what business we're in. If someone doesn't already know us, this post means nothing."
"Use a brighter colour."	"In the feed preview this disappears against Instagram's white background — I scrolled straight past our own post."
"Move the price to the top."	"The price is the whole reason for this post and it's the last thing I noticed."

Website pages

Instead of	Say
"Make the button red."	"I didn't realise that was clickable until I hovered over it."
"Add more photos."	"This page is asking people to spend ₹40,000 and there's no visual evidence of the work. I don't believe it yet."
"Shorten this section."	"I got bored two paragraphs in and I wrote the brief."
"Put the phone number in the header."	"Most of our enquiries are people who want to call and ask one question. On this page I can't find a way to do that."

Instead of	Say
"Use the other product shot."	"This shot shows the model we discontinued — customers who click will land expecting something we can't sell them."
"Make it look more professional."	"We sell to procurement managers at factories. This looks like it's aimed at college students."

Notice that none of the right-hand examples are softer or politer. Several are blunter. Being specific about a problem is not the same as being gentle.

The exception: facts, rules and non-negotiables

Describe-the-problem is a rule about judgement. It does not apply to facts. If the phone number is wrong, say the phone number is wrong and give the right one. If your brand guideline says the logo never sits on a photograph, state the rule. If legal requires the GST number on invoices, that is an instruction, not feedback.

Things that are legitimately instructions:

Factual corrections — spellings, prices, dates, phone numbers, WhatsApp links.
Brand rules that already exist in writing.
Platform requirements — aspect ratios, character limits, file sizes.
Legal or compliance text that must appear verbatim.

Things that are judgement, and should be described as problems: hierarchy, colour, typography, layout, tone, photo choice, how much copy, how many elements. If your answer to "why?" is "because I prefer it", that is a preference, and preferences are the weakest form of input a designer can get.

Preferences are not worthless — you know your customers and your market in a way a designer cannot. But convert the preference into the reason behind it. "I don't like green" is a preference. "Our two biggest competitors in Laxmi Nagar both use green and we get mistaken for them" is a problem worth solving.

Consolidate, prioritise, and stop drip-feeding

Two more habits cost more than bad wording.

Drip-feeding. Three messages at 11pm, two more the next morning, and one from your brother-in-law who saw it on your phone. Each one arrives after the designer has already acted on the last. Collect everything, sit with the draft for an hour, then send once. If multiple people in your business have opinions, make one person responsible for merging them into a single reply — including resolving contradictions before they reach the designer. "Rohan wants it busier and Priya wants it cleaner" is not feedback, it is an unresolved internal argument.

Flat lists. Fourteen bullet points with no ranking means the designer guesses which three matter. Mark each item: must fix, would improve it, just a thought. This one change does more for turnaround time than anything else, because it lets the designer spend their effort where it counts instead of spreading it evenly across trivia.

And say what is working. Not as politeness — as information. If you only ever flag problems, the designer has no idea which parts to protect, and round three quietly loses the thing you liked in round one.

What not to buy

Some things get sold in this category that we would not spend money on.

Unlimited revisions. It sounds like you are getting protection. What you are actually buying is a studio that has priced in the rounds and has no incentive to get it right on round one — and often a queue where your round four sits behind someone else's round one. A clear scope of two or three rounds, with a defined process for what happens after, produces better work. If a designer is confident enough to limit rounds, they are usually confident enough to brief you properly first.

Multiple initial concepts as a default. Three directions for a brand identity, yes. Three directions for a routine festive post, no — you are paying for two deliberately weaker options whose job is to make the third look good. Ask for one considered attempt against a clear brief.

Approval-by-committee tooling for a five-person business. Annotation platforms are genuinely useful at scale. For most small businesses, a numbered list in an email with a screenshot does the same job, and introducing software is often just a way of avoiding the harder work of deciding who has final say.

What to do next

Take the last piece of creative feedback you sent. Count how many items were instructions and how many described a problem. If it is mostly instructions, rewrite three of them in the observation-location-expectation form and notice how much more you are actually telling the designer.

Before the next project starts, agree two things in writing: who in your business gives final feedback, and how many rounds the price covers. Both conversations are awkward once and then never again.

If you are commissioning creative regularly, the briefing side matters as much as the feedback side — our social media and creative work and website projects both start with the same questions about audience and purpose. If you would rather talk it through than read about it, get in touch.

Questions we get asked

How many rounds of revisions should a design project include?

Two or three is normal for most social and web creative, with additional rounds billed separately. The number matters less than what counts as a round — agree in advance that one round means one consolidated set of feedback, not individual messages across three days. If you need more rounds than that regularly, the brief is usually the problem rather than the designer.

What if I genuinely don't know why I dislike a design?

Say that honestly rather than inventing a reason, and give the designer something to work with instead: who the audience is, what you want them to do, and one or two examples of work you think does it well. A good designer can usually find the underlying issue from the context. Guessing at a fix you don't believe in wastes a round.

Should I show the designer competitor work I like?

Yes, but explain what you like about it rather than just sending the link. "Their pricing page makes it obvious what each plan includes" is useful. Sending five competitor sites with no comment often reads as a request to copy them, which is the opposite of what you want if you are trying to stand out.

Who should give feedback if several people in my business have opinions?

One person should collect everything and send a single merged reply, including resolving any contradictions internally first. The designer cannot act on "make it busier" and "make it cleaner" in the same message. Decide before the project starts who holds final say — that one decision prevents most project delays.

Is it rude to tell a designer the work isn't good enough?

No, as long as you are specific about what isn't working and why. Designers find vague disapproval far harder to deal with than blunt, concrete criticism. What damages the relationship is silence followed by a sudden rejection at the end, not honest feedback early.