Why I stopped presenting three options

For years I showed clients three directions: a safe one, a bold one and the one I believed in. They almost always picked the middle, and the middle was always the weakest.

One direction, with reasons

Now I bring one direction and the reasons behind it, written in plain words. Next to it sit the two ideas I threw away and a sentence on why each one lost.

Clients still push back, which is the point. But we argue about the reasons, not about which of three logos feels nicer on a Tuesday.

What changed

Reviews got shorter and decisions stuck. Nobody asks to "go back to option B" in month three, because there was no option B.