Art by Midjourney

Improving all three types of design communication has been a critical factor in my career growth as a Senior Product Designer.

There’s probably one part of the sentence that sticks out: there are three types of design communication? Yes. According to The Designers Guide to Product Vision, there are three:

• Written communication, which clearly defines tasks, responsibilities, and reasons for doing them
• Visual communication, which sells the idea or design to teams
• Verbal communication to move the team forward and negotiate decisions

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/the-designers-guide/9780136654339/ch02.xhtml#ch02lev1sec3

Learning all three types is crucial to articulating your design ideas and persuading your team to invest in your design recommendations.

Here’s how to get started with learning each of them.

Written communication provides the foundation for all design work

It only takes one fussy client or stakeholder to realize the importance of written communication. Many designers, including myself, have faced situations where clients described their visions verbally, leaving room for misinterpretation.

Perhaps the client imagined something in their head, but when they saw what was designed, they got mad at what was shown. Or, they keep asking for revisions or additions, like many clients from hell.

One key strategy for dealing with specific clients from hell

The problem is no one is a mind reader. If they don’t know how to describe what they want, you won’t be able to design it. However, what’s more important than just describing it is getting them to write it down: if not, they could change their mind and not leave a record of what was designed.