A client asked me to "make it look more premium." I asked one question and it changed the entire project. The question: "What does premium mean to your customer?" Silence for a moment. Then: "Honestly, I think it means they trust us with their money." That's a completely different brief. We stopped talking about fonts and whitespace. We started talking about what makes someone trust a financial product - clear language, no small print surprises, social proof from people like them. The visual work that followed was still premium. But it was built on something real. "Make it look more premium" is almost never about aesthetics. It's about what the client needs their customer to feel. Get to that first. The design answers itself. What's a vague brief phrase that unlocked something useful when you pushed on it?