Posture

On the visionary role and what distorts it.

The relationship between a designer and a client is fragile and built on a kind of interpersonal alchemy—trust, admiration, and the sense that the designer is the visionary guiding the project. That posture is clearest in the moments when the designer is talking about narrative, materiality, and the reasoning behind the decisions that resolve a space.
But when too many operational tensions land on the designer, that posture shifts. One meeting they arrive as the creative force; the next they’re addressing an overdue invoice or a boundary that’s been pushed. The client meets two versions of the same person—the visionary and the enforcer—and the coherence of that role begins to thin.

Most studios don’t intend for this split to happen. It just does. In the absence of a defined operational structure, the heavier parts of the business naturally fall to the principal or other members of the design team: the money conversations, the reminders about approvals, the enforcement of terms, the moments that carry consequence. Each time a designer steps into these moments without support, they shift into a posture that pulls them out of the role the client expects them to lead from.

The client may not articulate that shift, but they feel it. The designer’s presence feels different. The intimacy changes texture.

This isn’t about shielding principals from the realities of running a business. They’ll always have conversations only they can lead—the nuanced ones, the directional ones, the ones drawn from context no one else holds. The issue is the volume. When every emotionally charged moment lands on the person responsible for the creative vision, the posture begins to fracture. The designer spends more time drafting careful language around friction than protecting the focused mental and energetic space their creative work requires.

Studios that avoid this dynamic are defining responsibilities. They build a structure that sets the terms once, clearly, so the designer isn’t reinventing their stance or policy every time a tension point appears. The steps are known. The language is already shaped. The boundaries are articulated in advance. And someone else—an operations partner, a studio manager, a fractional support role—carries the weight of enforcing what the principal has already defined.
The team moves with clarity because they aren’t navigating ambiguous ground.

When that support exists, the designer gets to stay in the posture the client recognizes: the visionary, the guide, the person leading them through a thoughtful creative process. And the client remains anchored in that dynamic instead of oscillating between two versions of the same person. The relationship holds its coherence. The work is received in the light it deserves.

And the studio moves with a steadiness that protects both the work and the relationships at the center of it.