There’s a phrase. You know the phrase. You have, at some point in your life, said the phrase.
“Make it pop.”
I want to be fair here. You’re not a bad person for saying it. You’re just not saying anything. “Make it pop” is the sound a mouth makes when it can tell something’s off but hasn’t done the work of figuring out what. And figuring out what’s wrong is genuinely hard. It is also, and I can’t stress this enough, our job and not yours — but you have to hand us something to start from.
What “pop” is hiding
When you say make it pop, you might mean more contrast. Or brighter color. Or bigger type. Or more space around it. Or less. Or a different photo entirely. You don’t know which one. That’s allowed. But “pop” isn’t a direction, it’s a mood, and nobody has figured out how to design a mood. I need a noun. Give me one noun and we’re in business.
You don’t do this anywhere else
You don’t tell the dentist to make the tooth “feel more alive.” You don’t tell the accountant you’d like the taxes to “sing.” Design is the one field where otherwise reasonable people feel comfortable issuing a weather report instead of an instruction. “It needs more energy.” Energy isn’t a color. I checked.
The feedback that actually works
Useful feedback is boring and specific, and that’s the secret — there is no design vocabulary you need to learn. You just point at the thing and say what bothers you about the thing.
“The headline’s hard to read.” “This blue feels cold for a bakery.” “Can the logo be bigger right here.” That’s the entire skill. Three sentences and we’re off to the races, instead of you saying “pop” and me redesigning the same layout four times trying to read your mind.
Why it’s worth thirty seconds of your time
Every round of “make it pop” is another round of guessing. Guessing is time. Time is money. Specifically it’s your money, because you’re the one paying for the round. (This is closely related to the other thing people say to us, but that’s a separate grievance.)
“Make it pop” isn’t an insult to your designer. It’s an IOU for feedback you haven’t written yet. Go write it. We’ll wait. We do bill for the waiting — but we’ll wait.