You're My Favorite Client: What Great Client-Designer Relationships Look Like

Mike Monteiro wrote two essential books about the design business. One teaches designers how to sell work. You’re My Favorite Client teaches the other side of the table: how to buy design well. Its premise is uncomfortable and true. Clients get the design they deserve.

What is the core lesson of the book?

Design is not a deliverable you purchase. It is a relationship you participate in. The quality of what comes out depends on what the client puts in: clear goals, timely decisions, honest feedback about problems, and trust in the expertise they hired. Monteiro’s blunt observation is that most design failures are client failures wearing a design costume. Vague briefs produce vague work. Approval-by-committee produces committee-flavored work. Feedback like “make it pop” produces designers who stop trying.

The good news is that being a good client is a learnable skill, and the book teaches it directly: define what success looks like before work starts, respond to work against those goals rather than personal taste, and make decisions like someone who will be judged by the outcome, because you will be.

What do both sides take away from it?

• For clients: hire expertise, then use it. If you knew how to design it, you would not need the designer.

• For designers: difficult clients are partly your responsibility. Educating them is part of the job.

• For both: feedback should describe problems, not prescribe solutions.

Why does Tremoloo share this book?

Because it describes the working relationship we aim for with every client: honest, goal-driven, and collaborative. Clients who read it get more value from us, and we say so openly.

Want to work with a design partner built on these principles? Meet our strategy team.