1. How many concepts to present to a client?

    I’ve read an article called The Magic Number in a new Cognition blog.

    Author believes that the magic number is 3 and it’s the number of concepts the Happy Cog studio is presenting to its clients. Jeff Croft tweeted his opinion about it and had a little discussion on twitter that inspired me to think a bit. 

    I appreciate the assured position of another designer in this regard:

    They harm is the possibility the client will like a weaker concept, or worse: want a mish-mash of the three. #
    How do you respond when they start wanting to mesh ideas from the three into each other? #

    Good question, I recall the answer being that there will be another article on Cognition about it. I’m interested.

    So far I think that by making three unique web design concepts to present to a client, a web designer directs his effort not to creating the optimal solution but to something different. 

    Let’s say freelance web designer is working alone, unlike in Happy Cog’s case where three different designers work on a different concepts. What’s the point of designing one concept that is better than others if the designer knows that the client will probably pick a different one? To make three equally good solutions would take an enormous amount of time and effort of one designer. 

    One person, as a client, wrote something I have to agree with, it’s a good point:

    Do you ask the designer which one he/she likes the best? How much weight do you put on his/her opinion? #
    Sure I want their opinion, but there is no way to give them enough information about my project for them to be able to decide for me #

    Yes, with a perfect brief there could be indeed only one *best* idea, but that truly is not always the case. 

    However, we can and should try to communicate with clients the best way possible. I will continue to show one unique idea and only show others if I can’t move forward with the first. 

    By the way, the fact that I present one concept to a client doesn’t mean that I come up with it without trying the other solutions and picking the best of them, but yes, nothing really pushes me to create different options just for the sake of it. I guess that would be the positive moment in three concept methodology. 

    If you’re a web designer, share your opinion in the comments please. What is your method?