04 Aug Comments made by clients
Thoughts from web and graphic designers on the gems clients come up with.
The old adage of when the client tells you to jump, you ask ‘how high?’ is not always correct. It is our job as web designers, SEO professionals and graphic designers to give the client the best knowledge we can and if that means telling them no, it is not the right way to do something then so be it. We have to do our job and deliver the best services, information and procedures we can. That is what the client is ultimately paying us for.
So this led to me asking a few colleagues about some of the funny things clients have asked them or told them to do. These gems are all true!
• Client – ‘my neighbour‘s young son has designed my logo, can you just tart it up please’
• We were designing wallpaper graphics for an exhibition and the panel I was doing the artwork for measured 6 metres high. The client asked me to move a logo up by 4mm!
• Client approved the brochure we designed, on proviso we made the green on the front cover darker. I made the amend but by mistake, sent them back the original pdf. They signed the original off!
• Sent our retail client a visual of a strut card with ‘lorem ipsum’ in place until we received the actual text. Later, we received a call from them asking if the ‘lorem ipsum’ was welsh? We found out that they had printed the visual and put it in the window of their Oxford Street store!
• When doing artwork for large graphics we tend to work quarter or tenth size. Client thought I was having a Spinal Tap moment, so I explained why I had done it tenth size. He wouldn’t have it and insisted on me sending it to him full size. When I did this, he complained it was too big to view on his mobile.
• Before doing our own research, we asked our client which keywords and keyword phrases did they think was important to include. They said they were disappointed that we didn’t know that Google doesn’t recognise keywords anymore!
• No matter how many times I explain to my client that they will not be able to open an eps file, they still without fail come back to me and ask ‘why can’t we open that eps file?’
• We have had print ready files supplied to us in Corel Draw, Publisher, Excel and Word but not in the one way we asked for it.
• Client approved their new logo design, then a couple of months later came back to us to make some changes. They could not understand why we were going to charge for the amends, as they had not yet begun to use the new logo!
…and lastly there is the King of the Gems. ‘Can you do me a new logo, it will only take 10 minutes’