Things clients blithely say to graphic designers

"We don't want it properly typeset, can you just do a really smart Word file?"

🙁

"Stop being such a drama queen and give me what I ask for, not what you think I need!"

This is something of a classic in the world of graphic design – bit like the Picolax thread on STW…

http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

That must have hurt. Did they not understand you know best?

But who's paying?

LOL @ precious graphic designers.

Where's binners when you need him 😉

They are, but having them change their mind halfway through the job is annoying and a waste of time.

COOOEEEEEEEEE. I'm here.

My favourite phrase is "can you just……."

normally followed by "knock us up a 24 page brochure for about 4 o clock please"

and of course….

http://www.makemylogobiggercream.com/

They are, but having them change their mind halfway through the job is annoying and a waste of time.

It's out of scope, so you get to bill them more.

did your 'problem' resolve itself binners? Hope you found the twunt who did it… 👿

well it was always going to be damage limitation, but could have been worse. I've come to the conclusion though that its not too bad, all things considered.

After all: I don't have to look in the mirror every morning and stare back at a bitter, swirling void of spite, malice and emptiness where my soul should be. So its all relative really 🙂

After all: I don't have to look in the mirror every morning and stare back at a bitter, swirling void of spite, malice and emptiness where my soul should be. So its all relative really

I tried that once. I thought I looked like Les Dennis!!

…will there be bullet points?

That nowt. We've just had a pitched battle over Spurious Capitalisiation. I had Rank pulled on me.

I hope they don't read the Guardian, or get introduced to sans serif Body Text, they'd have an aneurysm.

You use capital letters? You can't be a proper designer then 😉

Worse still, I am the dragon that is a sub-editor. I think I need to breathe more fire, becuase I don't seem able to put people off their assorted fuckwittery.

the fav round here is

"Its just a five minute job"

followed by "what I need is a pdf presentation, 40 pages all hot linked, you can get the images off the net, cheers"

if they can design that lot in five mins, ther welcome to **** do it! GRRRRRRR

Working for old fashioned people is really demoralising "have you got an old english style type?" 😥

This is something of a classic in the world of graphic design – bit like the Picolax thread on STW…

http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

quality!

All professions get this. Why are graphic designers so precious about it? Is it because they are insecure as their job is basicly 'using a Mac'?

🙂

I'd have thought "nice Saab", would have been quite high up the list.

"nice Saab"

That's an oxymoron, no?

'Can't the computer just do it'?

Yeah, the F12 function key interprets randomly received client requests and performs said request in seconds.

No need to charge for it, we do it for the love of it.

Things that graphic designers say to clients:
'I don't think you're the kind of client we'd want'

(Me reviewing initial ideas: 'There's not really much there I'd like to develop')

stever – they go hand in hand I guess. Either they are crap at their job or the client is crap at understanding what works for their audience.

As we often say to clients – we aren't designing this for you, we are designing it for your customers.

Graphic designer 2, this week…

Me, best whiney-begging voice: 'I've been let down on a print job, any chance of replicating this for tomorrow morning if I get you all the artwork.'

Knock at the door 2 hours later. 'Here you go Steve.'

It was the former Mastiles. All the preciousness, none of the skills 🙂

Another personal favourite is doing a 'photo shoot' (ie: get some dick to take some photos on a crap digital camers, then saying "can you just photoshop this out, photoshop this in, take that out, get rid of this, put this in ….. blah blah blah

Here's an idea: why not get a proper photographer to take some quality pictures instead. It'll save me dashing my head in with a rock, give someone decent some much-needed business, it'll end up cheaper (how much are you paying per hour for this photoshop work?) and the end result will look ten times better

No. We haven't got the budget

Well my hatred of Word has reached new heights. I'd have finished the job if i was using InDesign.

I'm just thinking of the iPad i can buy with the fee from this work…

Agreed

I recently designed a suite of stationery and the client wanted the letterhead copying as a Word template – it took longer to figure that out than it took to design and artwork the letterhead in the first place.

Hateful software.

I do all my quotes and invoices in InDesign now. Much handier for pdf-ing and emailing to clients. That way they can't arse about with them too much (unless they're also graphic designers of course).

I seem to remember:
"Can anyone knock me up a logo for fifty quid?"
causes a lot of blood to boil..

"I'm just thinking of the iPad i can buy with the fee from this work… "

😉

Right.

Imagine that your client is actually hundreds of people, and their knowledge of what they want is fragmented across all their various brains. Now imagine that they can't comprehend what they've asked for, and don't know what is good or bad (a bit like someone blind from birth asking for graphic design work). Now imagine that they don't know how to communicate with each other or you.

Then they want regular progress updates and demand to see the things they don't understand but think they do because they are using the previous version.

Then put hundreds of millions of pounds on the whole deal.

That's IT.

I seem to remember:
"Can anyone knock me up a logo for fifty quid?"
causes a lot of blood to boil..

I think that was a real lack of understanding of the processes of graphic design, by the OP of that one. Fair enough, I don't think it was intended as a piss-take, and to be fair, quite a few folk were simply insulting, rather than trying to explain things. Matters weren't helped much by the OP asking people to submit designs, which they 'might' choose and pay for. I think they learned something from the episode.

Graphic designers can be up their own arses mind. Think because they've got a **** iPhone and a dockside studio that they're somehow something special. In my honest opinion, many churn out formulaic shite bereft of any real creativity, charge shitloads for it, and think because they've been to St **** Martins or wherever, that they are somehow an authority on design. Half of them can't even dress themselves without incurring the derision and disgust of others. Ponces.

I'll do the work better than them, and for cheaper. 🙂

I **** hate dealing with clients. I really want someone else to do all the "dealing with people" stuff… I spent 2 hours with a client today going through photos for their website, so frustrating – just pick a **** photo, nobody cares if the fence needs repainting as its likely to be so small you can't tell anyway!

I really need to get out of this freelancing thing and into a job where I just get handed down stuff to do rather than actually go out and meet people 😆

That's IT.

that's just business
same idiots, same crapness, different job titles
business is just a great big black hole of mindf*ck

Fred talks sense!

I don't know how you can bear it. Billing someone for 2 hours of your time whilst you watch them pick a photo?

Do a few weeks working with a shovel and you might gain a sense of perspective.

Hateful software.

To provide the opposite perspective…

An agency did a new corporate identity for us around 10 years ago. Included in the brief was to do a Powerpoint template (because that's what people use in the real world 😉 ) that we could use to prepare and email presentations to clients/potential clients. Their idea of a solution was to do a spiffing looking design in Adobe something-or-other then paste the graphic as the backgrond in a Powerpoint template – meaning that the presentation was several Mb before adding any content (too large to email). It took about 2hrs to reproduce the design in native Powerpoint objects at a few hundred Kb.

Conclusion: a few 'creative' types and some Apple Macs may look the part, but aren't necessarily going to deliver real world solutions…

Said agency demonstrated similar genius on other projects and, perhaps unsurprisingly, went out of business (owing lots of small local businesses work / cash) – before coming back as a phoenix company which the local 'Business Link' was happy to puff-up in their newsletter. 🙄