August 2010
No questions asked
I can’t pay for this right now, but I have about a dozen old computers in my garage. I’ll tell you what: If you design this for me, I’ll give you an hour alone in there with no questions asked.
Client: “I am having a problem closing my cup holder on my computer. Can you help me?”
Me: “Your computer does not have a cup holder, are you talking about your CD-ROM drive?”
Client: “Oh is that what its for?”
“I don’t want any sound on the commercial, the text needs to be smaller, and the logo is up for too long. I want this commercial to be like an Easter egg hunt. I want people to have to look for information and search for the logo.”
[A few months later we were making a “Going Out of Business” commercial.]
“Unfortunately we do not like any of your logos so we will stop working with....”
“You mean every time you do work for us, you charge us?”
Me: “Worst case scenario, you can just email the text in the body of an email.”
Client: ”I will print, scan to pdf and resend via email shortly.”
I had spent considerable time photographing a local actor for the part of Hamlet using gridded spots to create quite a beautiful moody and dramatic look. The ad runs in the paper with the image looking like it was taken with an on-camera flash. I quickly call the theater and am told by the PR person that “You could only see one half of his face, so I ran it through the “auto-levels” feature in...
“We need to talk about these alleged “invoices”
Client’s Assistant: “He wants it simple yet dramatic, I’ve attached samples. Please call me if I haven’t been clear.”
[The client attached an image of center justified Times New Roman text surrounded by a box]
“Can we have gold on our website, or will that cost us more?”
Me: You don’t have a copy of the logo?
Client: No. I dunno. We lost it.
Me: Ok, then try contacting the designer who made your logo for you. I’m sure he won’t mind sending you another copy.
Client: No, no, we can’t let him know how to reach us.
Me: What? Why not?
Client: Because then we’d have to pay him!
“Can you make the download button fly all around the website. We want to show...”
Client: “How large is the font on the webpage?”
Me: “It’s pretty big - 13 point.”
Client: “Well, I’m about 8 feet away from the computer and I am still having a hard time reading it. Let’s make it bigger.”
“Please color this page for us so we can see your creativity. This will help us decide whether or not to hire you.” Attached is a child’s coloring page, a picture of a cat playing electric guitar.
Me: “Have you had time to look over the proposal?”
Client: “We really like your illustration style, very artsy. But, we don’t feel you can put a price on art. So can you do it for free?”
My client regularly downloads thumbnails off of Google Image Search and emails them to me to post on his site.
Me: “I’m sorry but I can’t post these on your site.”
Client: “What? Why not?”
Me: “For one thing, that’s copyright infringement, which is illegal, and for another, these are WAY too small to even be of any use. You need to use your own...
Client: “It didn’t work! ‘Which is the color of the sky?’ I said grey.”
Me: “It’s blue”.
Client: “How can I say it! It’s raining, it’s grey!”
Client: Your work has been wonderful, but we have re-evaluated our finances and simply can’t keep you on. If we have any further work for you in the future we will absolutely let you know!
Me: I’m sorry about your finances. Since we didn’t have a long-term contract I won’t ask for severance. Thank you for your recommendation while I look for more work, I appreciate that.
...
“It should only take an hour or two for someone who knows what they are doing.”
“We’re marketing it to those depressed kids out there; you know, all those...”
“We like this guy a lot. He’s perfect for the brochure. Can you make him African...”
“Can you show us the design of what our site would look like so we can decide...”
Email from a prospective client
I can offer you the insulting amount of $200 Canadian (which seems to be £123 just now), plus a copy of the book in its final form.
Please let me know how offensive you consider this, or, conversely, how desperate you are for work of this kind and how you must accept this project unwillingly. Thanks,
“I’d like you to “fill in the detail” for a 3’ x 2’ foot pencil drawing of...”
“I don’t have the money right now. Could I pay you with some of our puppies? How...”
“When the hell did a contract become some big, official thing? It’s just a damn...”
Client: ”I sure like dealing with you Australian guys, I love the accent! Which part of Australia are you from?”
Me: “I was born in and grew up in Scotland. That’s where the accent comes from!”
Client: “Oh my goodness, I’m sorry.. But you speak English so well!”
“Our bottled water is better than Perrier. And so we don’t think that we need a Perrier-like budget to advertise. It will become a market leader simply because it’s better.”
“Well, I guess we’ve paid all the important people. So I guess we could look at...”
“We find E-mail unworkable, time consuming and awkward. We prefer to work via...”
“I keep looking at this website and it just isn’t blowing my skirt up for some...”
“Why the heck should I pay for the domain of my company’s website? I own the...”
“But I really love your style, I don’t think I’ll get that from a beginner. Can...”
“We want a photo of large sunny happy smiling faces on the cover of the booklet....”
Can you make the site loader slower? We want it to feel more elegant.
“Just spray your creative juices all over it!”
“Make it so when a user clicks a link it disappears from the site so they know...”
Sorry about the deluge of posts, Tumblr’s queue malfunctioned.
[Client flipping through some anime that I had drawn.]
Client: “These are really great.”
Me: “Would you like me to draw some anime for the site?”
Client: “What!? This isn’t a porn site!”
Stars are not equal to dinosaurs
Client: “I want you to make a map of the different constellations found in the southern hemisphere. Please include some random stars - around 250 - that blink and which users can click on to donate. I need this done by the end of the week.”
On Thursday evening I receive the following email:
Client: “I’ve changed my mind. Please change the stars to dinosaurs instead....
While meeting with the buyer for a major retailer, we were showing them some Noah’s Ark themed stationary items that they had requested. The buyer liked the look of everything. but she had one recommendation:
“Is there any way we can make the orange in the color palette more Christian?”
“Please send me a reasonable estimate.”
Me: “How can we demonstrate to the consumers that your product is better than the competing products?”
Client: “Are you calling me a liar?”
All over the screen
I was contacted to do a branding project for a client who sold fruit juice locally. He came to my office and presented me with a storyboard of how the introduction animation for his website should run: The first few slides show a banana, pineapple, peach and strawberry happily dancing and cheering as they walk around in circles. About three or four slides in, they all jump into a working blender...
“I want something like Facebook. And don’t try to rip me off, I know that...”
“Please stop abbreviating “continue” to “cont.” It looks too much like “cunt.”...”
“These stock images are way too expensive, please just remove the watermarks in...”
“People say you should be happy with what you get when it comes to free work. I...”
A Three Page Site
Client: “Can you quote me for a three page site?”
Me: “Sure. What are the three pages?”
Client: “Home, Contact, and Login.”
I had to drive two hours to a client’s office after she insisted that the logo that I had sent her for print was not the logo that she had initially approved.
We sat down, she opened the jpeg that I sent her a couple of days before, enlarged it to about 500% (to the point that the picture was completely pixelated) and said, “You see, that is what I approved!
