I'm not just a tag on to production

Recently it's come to anger me how often we as designers, particularly as freelancers, clients seem to think of us as add ons to the actual production process. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "we only have two weeks" or something similair before a brief composing something which should have been in development for several months previously.

It seems all the businesses at least I deal with are under the severely wrong impression that design is only the final step in the production of their output, something to be approached narrowly before going to print or manufacture, and with little or no consideration as to whether they might need creative input into their brief or even their research before putting their baby out to tender. It all comes down to an inability to effectively integrate creative management into brand strategies. Before a company goes out to find a designer to knock out a few thousand leaflets how many bother to employ anyone to think about whether it's really leaflets they need or whether an alternative approach is needed - and in these cases where companies do think about this, how often is the brainstorming job given to a non-creative. I'm not saying our colleagues in PR, research and many other fields aren't capable of deciding what direction their productivity should take, but when the end result is a brief to be foisted on some poor freelancer with a ridiculous deadline surely there should be someone a little earlier in the timeline with a handle on creative thinking and working!

Case point, a brief I recently pitched for, where all I was asked to submit was a quote for total production cost with my time included for 10,000 packs of promotional playing cards, to be delivered in less than a month. Never mind that most of the companies printing cards needed at least 4-5 weeks to deliver that quantity, the brief was highly directed without any clear thought to how this might actually effect the input. Needless to say a chap they'd worked with before got the job, (though I'm not sure how, I got a real steal of a printing quote) and frankly good luck to him, because if he does a proper job he'll have to do it at a loss to keep within the original non-designed brief's budget, and if he does it on budget, because it'll clearly be a bit of a ballsup.

The conclusion ladies and gents? Designers, or more specifically design managers, have to be a regular fixture in every office that produces any kind of physical output. It's a no brainer that if you're producing anything, whether it's a kettle or a Westminster report, that has to have a creative involved to make it happen, it makes sense to have a creative work on producing your brief. That's our training, and our passion. Companies might always decide the "what", but until creative management is integrated into every business, we'll continue to fall short on the "how" and "why" every time.