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: .jpg
I'm not a designer, but I am a frequent visitor here. I just saw something that brought horror even to a non-designer like me: YouTube instructions on how to design a logo in Word. Just letting you know so you can know what to expect from clients from hell in the future.
I work as a part-time bookkeeper/ general assistant at a real estate office. Part of my job requires me to format and send out a monthly newsletter that is more or less a stream-of-consciousness from my boss.
Client: I was thinking, it's such a hassle to download attachments. Instead of emailing a PDF of the newsletter just copy and paste the words into the body of the email.
Me: ...Okay. I can do that.
Client: Oh, and can you send it like I have it in Word?
Me: The original document is in alternating neon green and blue boldface comic sans. The website shows a readable black typeface that I think fits more with our look.
Client: I like the colors it makes the newsletter look spring-y.
I am, unfortunately, at the mercy of both my boss and my paycheck.
A client who runs a software company wanted me to design an e-mail newsletter. He didn't give me much direction, just that his goal was to get people to sign-up to receive for a promotional giveaway. I was already seeing red flags, but I decided to go ahead with the work anyway.
I designed a newsletter that matched the colors and fonts of his logo and website, with tech-savvy phrases, modern colors, and fonts.
Client: Here, let me work on it.
A day later, I looked at how he re-designed the newsletter. It had neon BOGO!! and BUY NOW!! phrases all over it, in bright green and red colors and large bold Times New Roman Font.
I didn't follow up with him after that.
The client wanted me to update their website where they sold products for weddings. The website had a few images of couples with the products, but I thought it would be nice to add a variety of wedding-themed imagery to make it look more lifestyle-oriented. I did some research online and found romantic wedding themed photos to show her.
Client: Why did you choose images that show wedding couples without our products? We just want to show our products.
Me: I thought it might be nice to have a more conceptual look, with wedding couples in romantic settings. Basically, we create a romantic feeling and then introduce the products.
Client: That doesn't make any sense. I just want to show the products. I'll send you photos of me with the products soon. You can use those.
So instead of having professional, attractive photos of dream weddings, they have a series of poor quality photos of her and her husband pointedly using their own products. Very romantic.
The client came to me with a bad logo design from an agency, which was basically a photo with a gradient. The client asked me to come up with new logo concepts.
I am a graphic designer with many years of experience. I came up with 7 concepts to get started, with colors & fonts that looked to be a good fit for the overall idea of the products & the brand. I didn't hear back.
Weeks later, I receive an e-mail from the client's daughter.
Client's daughter: Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself [...] I created a marketing re-design proposal for this brand
Note: she was neither wasn't a logo designer or a graphic designer.
Client's daughter: I hope to chat with you soon about this.
I took a look at the logo designs. They looked like the first logos anyone would design in school - not very good.
Me: Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate your hard work, but a logo re-design can take many weeks or months to work on. I think we should do some more research and look at various examples of what other brands have done.
She didn't respond. Neither did the client... that is, until months later.
Client: Well, I worked with my daughter on this over the summer! Thanks, though.
I got contacted by a 70+ man who wanted to publish his book. He asked for a quote and the terms for working with my publishing house. I gave him a good price but he decided to go with someone else because they were pushy, even though they gave him a higher price for ONLY the printing services.
A week later:
Client: We want a reprint. This time we will do it with you, because we like the way your books look. We will send you our previous layout and cover so you can have a starting point.
Me: Great! I'll submit to you in a couple of days a new layout, something that looks a bit more 2019.
Client: Well, we used as inspiration this book
He sent me a cover of a book published in 2004.
Anyway, I sent a layout and three new covers and told him we'd be using a serif font throughout the book. He agreed with the layout and design so we started working on preparing the book for print.
Two days later:
Client: Mr. publisher, we liked your layout, but we want you to change it a bit. Serif fonts are hard to read, we should use sans serif.
Note: he had no idea what those words meant a week ago and now knows better than me on the subject.
Client; Also, about the cover. We like yours, but my son said we should use the old one. Yours is a bit reddish and we think the beige version was a bit warmer.
That moment when you realize that the color red isn't warm enough.
Client: Oh, and my name has to be in italics on the cover. It is a must!
Me: So we should reprint the book the way it was before.
Client: Yes, but we hope they will look as good as your books.
Then let me design them! Argh!
Dealing with an influx of work from the newly created cannabis industry has brought in a new level of clients with no clue. We are working on jar labels and boxes for a client. He has a new "flavor" that we needed to create labels for.
Client: I have a new strain I need jars labels and boxes, same layout as all the other, but this one has a new name and i want to have it in 3M yellow, I included a color chip link I found online.
Me: Ok here is the proof, for the yellow, we are matching the RGB from your color chip with a print in CMYK, but it should be close.
Client: Hey, this looks great. I'm not happy with the yellow. Can you make it look more like Predator Blood?
Me: You mean, like the movie? Predator?
Client: YES! Like the blood that the predator drips on leaves. I'm sure you can google it.
I worked on a logo for over a month with an out-of-state client. After I provided many different logo options and proofs for them, they still had no idea what they wanted.
Client: Yeah these are good I guess, but I think maybe something that represents our brand more, and what we do less.
Me: I’m not entirely sure what you mean. I’ve given you more than enough ideas to work with, each designed to your requests for them at the time. Can you give me some other specific examples of what you would like your logo to look like?
Client: We just don’t really know. We were hoping you could be creative and go crazy and see what you can come up with that makes our brand look sexy!
Me: (Staring at the email chain) I have given you some of my original ideas already, and without any clear direction on where I should take it, I’m at a loss for what to do for you at this point.
Client: We like #2, but can you add some “shimmer” to it?
They sent me metallic gradient examples of what they wanted it to look like.
Me: I can do the gradients, but a metallic texture that is that detailed would be difficult to reproduce as a vector image. There is lots of complex shading and lines that may not turn out correctly if I try to convert this to a vector image. And it may end up looking cluttered and unattractive; remember, when we started you said you wanted this logo to look "clean."
Client: Yeah we like the gradients, but can you make it shimmer like the colors that are on it? We like the look of the colors and how they fade into each other, but if you can’t do that then we can just do a gradient.
Me: …
I created a new logo for a client. They also asked for a pure white version.
As a jpeg.