Those are questions I’d never ask.
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I might ask them “What logos do you like and why?” That could lead to a conversation touching on issues that I’d like to know about.
As for some of the other questions, I probably wouldn’t ask directly, but I’d still like to infer a few things along these lines from the conversation.
One big problem that arises from asking certain specific questions is that clients have often never considered them. Once they provide half-baked direct answers, the doors close just a little bit on doing something different.
For example, when asked what colors they like, it puts them on the spot. Even if they haven’t thought about it and are probably open-minded to color choices, once they say, “Well, I’ve always liked blue and green,” it pretty much locks you into showing them at least one blue and green idea.
There’s room for direct questions on things where definitive answers are needed. On most everything else, I’d rather beat around the bush a bit with some general questions that enable me to infer client preferences rather than getting answers that lock me into directions that might not work.
At the agencies where I’ve worked, we never asked preliminary questions about clients’ likes and dislikes. Instead, we had casual conversations about the objectives clients were hoping to achieve by hiring us. We were more interested in defining the problem and developing workable solutions than delving into clients’ preferences for this versus that. They came to us with problems, and we delivered strategies for solving those problems. Whether clients liked this typeface or that color or preferred round to square or the other way around was largely irrelevant.
Those kinds of client preferences often became relevant once we presented them with proposals. However, we didn’t want to hobble ourselves right out of the gate with client-stated creative wishes until we had had a chance to show them our best recommendations and gain their trust.