You don’t hate the song
“Show us some new directions” is not feedback. Here’s what to say instead
Nobody in a recording studio says “I don’t like it.” They have better words than that. You should too.
“We want to see some new directions.”
That’s the whole note. No reason attached, nothing about what missed, just a request for more.
Fair enough, you’re paying for it. But look at what just happened. You commissioned a second round built on exactly the same information as the first, and the team put those options up because they believed they were ready to go. Nothing you said changed anything they know.
So round two is a coin flip. So is round three.
That isn’t feedback. It’s a retry.
Here’s what a band does instead
A track comes back from the studio and something’s off. Everybody in the room can hear it, but almost nobody’s first move is to throw out the song, because the song is usually the part that’s fine. The song is the reason they’re all in there.
So they go down the ladder. Here’s that ladder, and here’s what each rung is called on your project.
Is it the song? The melody, the structure, the thing you’d recognize hummed badly by somebody who can’t sing. On your project that’s the concept: the idea underneath, the feeling, the story the brand is telling. It’s the only rung where “wrong” honestly means start over, and it is the rarest problem in the building.
Is it the arrangement? Same song, different shape. The intro runs too long, the second verse should have been the first, the bridge needs to arrive sooner. That’s your hierarchy. The hero is carrying four messages, the proof belongs above the features, nobody gets to the point until the third screen. Same idea, reordered.
Is it the instruments? Same song, same shape, wrong voices playing it. Swap the electric for an acoustic and the record changes personality without one note changing. That’s your typeface, your palette, your photography. A geometric sans and a bookish serif can carry the identical concept and feel like two different companies.
Is it the tonality? Right instrument, wrong character. That same guitar, through a different amp. Warmer, dirtier, further back in the room. That’s the handling: the weight of the type instead of the type, the temperature of the blue instead of the blue, how much contrast, how much air. This is where most “it feels a little corporate” actually lives.
Is it the performance? Somebody’s flat on one note in the third chorus. Nobody rewrites anything, they punch in the one line and move on. That’s the caption set too light to read, the one radius nobody unified, the button that got an old shade of green. Twenty minutes of work, and it’s dragging your read of the entire board.
Is it the blend? Every part is right and they’re fighting each other. The vocal’s buried, the kick and the bass are sitting in the same place, nothing is wrong and it still doesn’t feel good. That’s composition. Three things competing to be seen first, spacing that never settles, a layout where every element is defensible and the page still doesn’t breathe.
Six questions. Five of them are refinements, and only the first one gets you a divergent iteration.
“Show us new directions” throws out the song. Every time, no matter which rung the problem was actually on.
So when it was actually the tonality of one instrument, here’s what comes back: a new concept, from the same designers, in the same typefaces, handled the same way. And it will feel wrong in the identical way you couldn’t describe the first time.
The concept is the rarest problem on the board, but it's the default assumption when specific feedback isn't given.
You don’t need to know how to fix it. That’s what you hired the designers for. Go back to the last direction you rejected and find the rung it was actually sitting on.
— Zach 😎
