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SUBMIT STORY

A while back my boss asked me to do a full-page magazine ad for an upcoming trade show. 

I mocked up the advert and supplied it to him for feedback and never heard back.

A couple of weeks passed and I forgot about it. The magazine landed in our office and I spotted the advert I thought I'd designed, but it was slightly different than what I did. 

Me: Er... What's this? It looks like our advert but it's been amended?

Manager: Yeah, the client's Head of Marketing convinced him to go with a freelancer for this based on your concept. They paid £800.

Me: But it barely looks any different.

Manager: (shrug)

The "freelancer" turned out to be a good friend of the Head of Marketing.

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I run a small Wordpress site for one of my clients. Recently, they got a new business partner. This is how our first conversation went: 

New Business Partner: Hi! I'm looking forward to working with you. I know my way around Wordpress, so we won't bug you with every little thing from now on! 

Me: Hi! It's nice to meet you!

Literally five minutes later:

New Business Partner: I'm so sorry, it looks like I broke the whole website. 

He actually did. 

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I’m currently unemployed/freelancing here and there, and I offered to make a new website for my dad’s company since his current one was seriously outdated. I pitched him the idea and even offered to take photos of all his products for the site. He agreed and we settled on a price.

Now that the site is COMPLETE, he wanted to give me only half of the payment until we could “sit down and go over what needs to be corrected” which won’t be for at least two weeks. He also says I need to present the site to his management—NOT discussed beforehand— in a thirty minute presentation. It’s a basic site with five pages and some photos.

He's also telling me that I need to “go the extra mile” and “this attitude will serve me well in life.”

You know what will serve me well in life? Having a contract, not being taken advantage of, being firm with my worth and my time, and not working for family ever again.

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I had a meeting with a potential client to review a marketing campaign, and this involved their website.

Client: Our last web designer has left. As you can see, their work was an abomination.

Me: Yeah, it could be a lot better. It will need a redesign as part of what you’ve discussed for the new campaign.

Client: Yep. It’s really disappointing they left - they offered us free changes for a year in their price, which we paid in full and upfront. Serves us right for hiring a college kid, I guess.

After getting the full scope of the work, I give a detailed quote that included the website redesign.

Client: Nice try with the quote! But we caught you!

Me: Huh?

Client: You try sneaking in a few for the website as well! We’ve already paid for it, so we won’t pay again!

Me: We’ve never worked together before, so we’ve never had any payments from you?

Client: Bulls**t! I know you creative millennials are all leftie-socialist pigs, living your communal lifestyles on the back of hard-working folk like us! We’ve paid you once for the website and like f*** we’re going to pay you again!

Client at this point shows me some Alex-Jones-Infowars inspired news article claiming all socialists have one central bank account that they receive payments into and draw money from. 

Me: I don’t think we’re a good fit for each other. I’ll see myself out.

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Yesterday a client came into my graphic studio to print some booklets. I had never met him before.

Client: What's your email? I'll just send you the file that way. 

When I checked my email and what I had was an email with a link to the website of google drive and the written email address and password of the account.. So... the client straight away gave me his email information. So now, if I wanted, I could send emails to everyone from his email account, check what he receives and know all his secrets! 

Also important to mention, he wasn't a normal day to day client that wanted something silly to be printed. He worked for a political party. 

Also also: the files were done in PowerPoint with fucked up sizes and he kept saying: "you can do this quickly, it's easy." 

 

 

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I was designing a flyer for a client. They gave me so many revisions that it was now more their own design than mine. Eventually when they ran out of "constructive" feedback: 

Client: I feel like all the elements are good but I feel the feng shui is a bit off. I don’t know how to suggest to fix it. Anyway, if you find this impossible to understand we can leave it as is it guess.....

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I created new branding for a small fruit orchard business, including logo, website, video material, print materials, package design, etc. We differentiated the product from the few competitors who went for 'funky', by going for a classic, premium look. It was well-received by the client and their customers.

Six months after the bulk of materials were done the client was still requesting new product designs.

Client: Could you create a cartoon fruit mascot character? Like a mom and pop fruit stall on the roadside would have. I have written a treatment, see attached.

The write-up killed me. It contained phrases such as "I'm a sweet, juicy lime..." and "you can cut me, squeeze me, juice me, whatever you want!" That and a few other phrases accidentally made the character sound overtly sexual and somewhat kinky.

Fortunately we were able to convince them that this was not in line with the brand, and we haven't had to deal with any more ideas spawned from cocktail hour.

 

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I worked as an external programmer for a graphic design agency; it was my first job for them.

They told me that it took two years to discuss the design with their client. I saw about 50 different pdf-files with slightly different colors and illustrations. I thought this meant the issue had been thoroughly discussed and was decided.

I've never been more wrong. Nothing was clear, everything was up for argument. Every time the client emailed us they asked for another minute change to the typography: kerning, line-height, anti-aliasing, font-smoothing. We actually discussed quarter-pixel values. Again: I was a programmer - this shouldn't have been my problem. But it was. 

After 10 weeks I finally finished my work. All I had to do was transfer the website to the server. Then I received another mail from the agency:

Agency: The client found out that the font we used will cost a license fee. They will not pay it. Use an GoogleFont instead.

Then the whole process started over from the beginning. 

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I've spent and charged a ridiculous amount of time to a client regarding a set of icons meant to communicate the speed and direction of a vehicle being displayed on a map. I kept pushing for a clean, easy to read design, the client kept asking for messy, ugly features that muddied the information.

I finally thought we were ready to wrap up the design and then I got this feedback...

Client: Can we have speed lines coming off it, similar to this image?

Attachment: Cheetah running.jpg

 

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Two people I knew were setting up a podcast and asked if I would like to be involved. One of them already had a successful web series, so I was confident things would pan out.

I offered to design a logo for free since I was going to be a key member of the project:

Client: No, no. We'll pay the market rate. 

I was thrilled. Eventually, we settled on a design we were all happy with.

A few weeks went by when I didn't hear anything. I posted several messages in the Slack chat we had created for the podcast.

Me: Hi, guys, just wondering where things on your side?

I didn't get a response. In fact, I never heard from either of them again. It turns out that the two of them were dating when they came up with the idea for the project and I had no idea. The silence in the Slack corresponded to what had apparently been a very messy breakup. They were no longer on speaking terms. Needless to say, the project didn't go anywhere. I never did get paid.

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