"Although it is part of our job to provide ample of options and choices to our clients (this is what we are paid for) but don’t you think our suggestions are not valued? What I mean to say is that the endless instructions of our customers’ make us end with not-so- good designs. Being a designer, we better understand what kind of logo will be effective but some clients become too stubborn with their choices. Is it reasonable to slaughter our creative skills and instincts to follow our customers’ strict orders? Knowing that the irrelevant instructions by our client are leading to a disastrous design, we still pursue them. This leaves us with a BIG question mark???
1) Does your client murders your creativity skills?
Graphic Design is a field where clients are mostly influenced by people close to them and approve the final designs after consulting family and friends. It’s no surprise when a client says “my wife wants the background blue.” We are asked to make changes according to the recommendations of people who might be observing a logo so closely for the first time in their lifetime. There are many other statements you have to follow unwillingly
2) Does your frustration make you evil?
Every graphic designer believes in the term “Client is always right”. However, at times a complicated client can be frustrating, not leaving you with many options. In such circumstances your evil part overtakes and you decide to follow the clients’ instructions no matter how bad the outcome is. To avoid further hard work and argument with the client, I have seen many designers finalize an inappropriate logo design, with all evident flaws and faults.
3) How do you Deal?
We all know that chances are very few that you completely satisfy a client….he always sees a room for improvement. A client mostly does not have an idea that his required changes will leave his logo design unattractive. In such circumstances, you have two options…either you quietly make the changes according to your clients’ wish list (without warning him) or you try to explain him the faults (and gear up to prepare another series of designs)."
One of the newest experiences I have had to get used to recently is this whole working with clients thing. Before, I had only had to design something for a class or for myself, senior year has broken me from this and has put my design skills into the hands of real people who need real things designed. This transition has been difficult and at the same time easy, depending on the "client" obviously. I have two examples of this:
Recently in one of my classes I had to design a flyer for a non-profit organization. It was a flyer that was going to be used to advertise an event they were having. I created it in about 2 days with the information from the organization's website. I sent it to the client and about 2 hours later got a frantic email from her and my advising teacher, they needed some information added. No big deal really. Communication between me and the organization continued until around 10pm as I added what she needed, emailed it to her and had her email responses holding more information to be added. As it was difficult to add the amount of information she wanted, the professionalism and remarkable communication between the two of us made the process that much more less stressful for me.
On the flip side, I had to create a paid for flyer for the Graduate Office at my school, communication with the office was a little slow but I still got the design and page elements in time to create it, get it approved by them and send it to the newspaper to add it into the layout. Apparently the layout team thought it would be appropriate to change my (already approved of by the Grad. Office who paid for it)advertisement and make it something that was barely resembling the original. On my end, I did send them the Photoshop file, but on their end, they lacked in professionalism, communication and morale. This type of thing, in my opinion, is on the brink of becoming plagiarism, especially because no permission of mine or the office was asked.
I would like to know what everyone thinks about these design issues...
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