"If you want average (mediocre) work, ask for it. Be really clear up front that you want something beyond reproach, that's in the middle of the road, that will cause no controversy and will echo your competition. It'll save everyone a lot of time. On the other hand, if you want great work, you'll need to embrace some simple facts:

"It's going to offend someone. If it doesn't offend them, then it will make them nervous. The Vietnam Vets memorial offended a lot of people. The design of Google made plenty of people nervous. Great work from a design team means new work, refreshing and remarkable and bit scary.

"(...) You don't know a lot about accounting so you don't backseat drive your accountant. You hired a great designer, please don't backseat drive here, either.

"(...) Don't get stressed about your logo. Get very stressed about user interface and product design. And your packaging."

"When I travel outside the US (a lot, lately), I keep finding a culture of design. A culture of aesthetics and style that seems natural in that country, but rarer (and often forced) in the US. Here in the US, we have Designers, Artists, Architects, etc.... and then the rest of us.. But in the places I've been visiting, those lines are often blurred. Outside the US, the appreciation for--and ability to create--beauty is not just something "left to the professionals." This design sensitivity/sensibility doesn't touch everything, but it seems far more pervasive than it does here. And I say this having spent most of my adult life in southern California, where you can't swing a cat without hitting a design school grad. It's not our US designers that have gone missing... it's a culture of design we seem to lack."