January 2010
173 posts
A client is worried that someone will steal their logo from their website. They need us to protect the logo somehow and are willing to pay to have the right mouse button disabled.
“I SAID MAKE IT BLUE NOT BABY BLUE!”
December 2009
241 posts
Client: Our site has been hacked! There are little orange boxes on it!
Me: Yes, those indicate RSS feeds. You’ll see them on all major sites.
Client: Well, we should remove them, they look like hacking.
We Own the Sky
My client was an outdoor events company and upon seeing a competitor using a blue sky in their advertising, emailed me telling me to call this company and let them know that they had to change the colour of the sky in their ads,”because we own copyright of blue skies in this country so no-one else can use them”.
“Can you make each page on our website fade in and fade out when you click on a...”
“Last night I was sleeping and Jesus came to me in my dream and had this image in...”
“Can we change the green of her shoes red to feminize it?”
Another red flag...
Client: We have to put graphic boards together for the presentation…should we use Times New Roman or Arial?
Client: You see where you have a full stop at the end of the first sentence?
Me: Yes.
Client: Can you change it to a comma?
Me: Er, well I can, but you should put a full stop at the end of a sentence.
Client: Oh, that grammar stuff is very old fashioned.
“You gave us ‘70’s… We wanted millennium”
“The video looks great! Now upload it to youtube and make it go viral.”
“I briefed you yesterday, and you guys haven’t still given me the first cut?...”
CLIENT: “We LOVE what you’ve created. The only change we would like to see, is on the second video. Can you remove the music and just make it so we can slide through the photos at our own pace, that way we can talk through them?”
ME: “Yes, that’s possible. It’s called a Power Point.”
Client: We are not moving forward with the project, the shopping cart doesn’t meet our needs.
Me: Ok there is still a balance due on the project that needs to be paid.
Client: We don’t see it that way, so we aren’t going to pay.
Me: Completed work does need to be paid for.
Client: Again, we don’t see it that way.
“The logo with the goose and buoy should be the main focus of the ad. Make sure...”
“Can you make it red, but not red, you know? And maybe try a primary color, like...”
“Is $300 a fair price for your time? Or if you want, I can pay you in X-Men...”
“I want it to be small enough to not be too noticeable but bright enough to draw...”
“I want exactly that but different.”
“The grass in your rendering looks too clean cut and cared for. The maintenance...”
Client: Can you un-blur the background on this photo?
Me: Unblur?
Client: Yeah, I want the whole image to be super sharp. I don’t particularly care for that whole deep field thing you keep telling me about.
Me: You mean depth of field?
Client: Yeah, whatever. Just unblur it.
Me: That’s impossible.
Client: I’ve seen it done on CSI.
Backstory: Textbook illustration on a 2-page spread titled “Where Does Milk Come From.”
Client: Please redraw this so we don’t see the cow’s udder.
“That’s not Quark red. I want Quark red.”
“I’m not paying you anything extra to do the website because it is simply a...”
“I prefer that you create all the designs in Microsoft Word as this is a much...”
Client: “You’re fired.”
Me: “Why?”
Client: “You printed it upside-down.”
Me: “You’re holding the board upside-down.”
Me: “You still owe me money from the last set of changes which hasn’t been paid for six months, so I won’t make any more changes or provide you with an unlocked PDF until your account is up to date.”
Client: “What do you stand to achieve by doing this?”
“Please make the flyers larger, like a half sheet or a whole sheet. Men judge...”
“I like it with the light coming from the top, but can you make it so there is no...”
Client: sdfpiuaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu””””’[]
Me: What the fuck?
Client: Sorry, my cat got onto the key-board
“Ok, can you make the website accept only mails from the big corporations, then?”
“Can we change the black and white images on the website to color? I don’t want...”
Photo Website
Client: I’d like to create a place where photographers can post their photos and everyone can go to the site and look at them. It will be like a portfolio.
Developer: Sounds great, but there are already great sites out there for this (Flickr, DeviantArt, etc). How will yours be different?
Client: Ahh, you see there is a flaw with all of those websites.
Developer: What’s that?
...
No limit
Client: [when briefing a designer] I am not going to tell you anything, because I don’t want to limit your creativity.
“Since I’m paying for this magazine, I don’t want any wasted space. Please get...”
“Do you have a little extra time so we can go through about 50 designs we found...”
“We need a quotation about our next project - but it is still top secret so I...”
“Well, if it’s going to be that much I’ll just open up Microsoft Word and do it...”
Cheap Client
Client: I want to hire you. I applied on elance but most only know basic layout skills. How much do you charge?
Me: Looking at the requests, I would charge about $500 as it requires a lot of work.
Client: But on elance, they were able to do it for $150-$200
Me: They have basic layout skills.
I had been taking pictures of students having lunch in the school cafeteria while making promotional material for a university.
According to the school board, there were too many music students in the pictures to give a fair representation of all of the available courses.
Again, the pictures showed people eating.
Me: “Here is my proposal and budget for the video production, which you requested.”
Client: “Hmm, X dollars seems kind of high.”
Me: “This is how I arrived at that total: X, Y, and Z. This is based in large part upon the previous video we did.”
Client: “I don’t know. Still seems high. I mean, I have Photoshop.”
The 14 Worst Words For A Designer To Hear
“I’m not sure what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it.”
We’d like you to illustrate this (diagram of traffic tunnel and four-lane highway), but we’d like you to make it look like this (watercolour of budgie doing aerobics).
“Can you make the font more dangerous?”
Client: Can you make the colors on the website warm like a cheetah?
So I created the design around a warm color palette (oranges, yellows) and sent the proof off.
Client: No, I wanted blue.
Client: I need video streaming, contact forms, a small database for customer comments and a new logo made and hosting for 3 years with a bit of a download option for the videos too
Me: That all sounds reasonable, your original request terms this “Cheaply” what is your budget and I’ll advise as to what can be done realistically.
Client: £20
One client on seeing a logo design said “if you filled in that bit there and held it at angle squinted it would look like Mickey Mouse, so can you change it?”
After designing a brochure for a client, their last request was that I put a bright red triangle in the bottom right hand corner of the cover with a bold “OPEN ME” on it because they were afraid people wouldn’t know it was a brochure and that they could open it.
I was sitting with a client going over the site and they were wondering why when they underlined the text and made it blue in the CMS it didn’t “become a link.”
“It needs more razzamatazz. More flair.”