Greetings.

After reading all the comments to Marie-Aline's post, and a good night's sleep, I decided to write from a very personal point of view. This may be too much information but I will speak frankly, probably because I am too old to hide the fact that I am not a very good business man as I am a designer. But, good news! I am learning to be better at both, and I am willing to bare my stomach; show my belly, with a nice target painted on it. You are my design family, I might as well be open with you.

My comments are personal and are specifically about pro-bono work; volunteering is one thing, pro-bono 'work' is another. Everybody ought to keep community going by volunteering at one thing or the other, no question.

Sustainability. It can be viewed as the environmental reality we live in today, the social equity that we all strive for, the economic realities that we deal with day in and day out, and the cultural vitality that we're all encouraging to flourish.

All of the above, or none at all.

We’re putting out the call—what does sustainability mean to you, being (or involved as) a creative professional and a valued GDC member? We know it's a vast idea, but let's keep it short and sustainable. (See what we did there?) Help shape our collected professional stance on sustainability and all that it means to us.

Alternatively, answer the question "Why is sustainability needed in our industry?"

Have fun!

All too often we designers can get caught up in a battle of egos with our clients. Raise your hand if you've ever said the following, "but the client hired US because WE'RE the experts! They should listen to us!" Yeah, me too.

But here's something we can stand to be reminded of: our clients are the experts in THEIR field, and part of our job should be using that to our mutual advantage. They know their audience better than we do, and while we shouldn't allow ourselves to be made into pixel-pushers, we often have to learn how to better collaborate.

Paul Boag, of Boagworld and Headscape, presented a fantastic session at SxSWi this year that I was fortunate enough to attend (you can listen to the whole talk if you've got a spare 40 minutes). While Paul's examples are website-based, I feel that any designer (or anyone that deals with clients, actually) can benefit from Boag's principles of collaboration.

• Ensure the client understands their role in the process. Their job is to find problems, and yours as the designer, is to find solutions.

When a client tries to give you a solution (for example, the infamous "make the logo bigger"), you must ask "Why?" to get to the root of the problem and reinforce the outlined roles. Once you know the "why", it's that much easier to react and provide a solution that accommodates their need and your design goals.

• Make sure they have ownership in the project by involving them in the process often and early.

• Educate them about the decisions you've made. Yep, give 'em Design 101. Explain the miracle of white space, explain what makes your font choices appropriate for the project, etc etc.

• Ask for specific types of feedback. Instead of leading with "What do you think?" (which can be fairly intimidating if a client doesn't know what they should be saying in order to be helpful), try asking how their audience will react or if it meets their project objectives.

• Avoid saying no. Instead of responding negatively when met with an unreasonable request, show them the consequences of their choice (the time required to implement such a choice, the impression it might leave their audience with, etc.). Let them be the one to say "no" instead.

If we can focus on working with the client instead of against them (because really, in the end don't we all want something that everyone can be happy with?) we can expect the following results: happy, confident clients (about the project, its process and about you as a designer), less frustration and by extension, less battles.

How do you deal with frustrating projects? What are your methods of coping with a client that just "doesn't get it."?