Who is design for?

This is a matter of opinion, and this is ours: Design is there to serve the end user, not the designer and not (with respect to the purse-holder) the client. There may be one client and one designer, but there can be thousands or even millions of end users, this should be their focus.

Some design studios have a ‘house style’ and every project that they work on will have a similar look and feel regardless of the end user, some clients will have strong ideas of what they like and don’t like, ultimately, none of this matters, what matters is that the thing that is being created attends to the need(s) of the user.

The egos of designer and client must be left at the door. An experienced design studio and an enlightened client will make any potential conflict manageable, difficulty can arise where one party is insistent on a way forward based on something other than user-need; this is where a more experienced studio will be able to really help.