Sorry, a wee rant here
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- bruised_blood
How to wind up a Designer #4635:
Designer sends client 3 design variations to choose from.
Client prints the three out, cuts into bits and pieces, sellotapes it back together again into a different order, scans it in and sends it back over.
Designer ceases to care about job.
- jimzyk0
designer should cut up a picture of the client, with a picture of a goat and stick it back together... and send it to client.
see how they like them apples
- Dancer0
Nup, part of the job mate.
No you change it with his thoughts in mind and make it better- No=KnowDancer
- FFS!!!!!!!
Know=Now
Dancer - Dancer fail english? Thats umpossible!shitehawke
- +1, that's the magictypist
- I can never ever fucking type. I am amazed that in nearly 10 years I have ever only had one typo in a print jobDancer
- heh. I consistantly spell my own name wrong in emails. How fucking sad is that?shitehawke
- haha. Yeah I just use one letter:
DDancer - LOLWeLoveNoise
- put my spelling to shame aliWeLoveNoise
- kelpie0
sound to me like their way of arriving at the place a process of wireframing the content structure would have got you, you know how I mean? I doubt its meant as a slight
- shitehawke0
I have to agree with you here, Ive worked on those projects where no amount of cajoling or discussion can sway the clients mind, despite the fact that it just looks wrong.
Just do your best with what you can and leave this one out of the portfolio.
- Autokern0
That's the reason why the design variations needs to have the same underlying grid, and, if a web page, a modular IA. So you can shuffle them around without too much pain.
- bruised_blood0
well mainly it's really frustrating that the wireframes, colours, illustrations and content were signed off weeks ago. The rest of the site has been designed. But somebody further up the chain (you can see where this is going), hadn't seen it yet, and stuck their oar in. So these were colour variations to appease her. Three different colour schemes. But what i've received back is a frankenstein cobbling together of the three colour schemes into one new page.
- oh, and designs signed off too.bruised_blood
- Well, yeah that kind of thing Sucks. But the chance to happen is proportional to the size of the client's business.Autokern
- ah, ok. I see. that blowskelpie
- we work together, don't we?monNom
- dajaniel0
If it's out of scope and different to what was signed off, it's all chargeable...
- neue75_bold0
shall I warm you up some milk and rub your belly for a bit?
- happens to us all, me constantly..neue75_bold
- sometimes 6 months after things have been 'signed-off'...neue75_bold
- "yeah, so we were thinking about that blue you've used everywhere for the past half-year... not so sure about it anymore"neue75_bold
- anymore.. In one of your earlier designs you used green, can we go with that?"neue75_bold
- moth0
I do this with my own visuals often. I'm with dancer here - all part of the process. More so with web if you want to get it right.
- boobs0
See, this is why things were better back in the stone age: when you incised a design into a slab of rock, THAT DESIGN STAYED!
- boobs0
Oh, and make sure to include bits of cellotape onto the new site layout!
- Gifto0
I've had a run of this experience lately — another classic is when the client says "we were thinking you could try this, but are open to suggestion". You ignore this comment (usually a shit idea) and try something better and explain your reason for doing so. Then they come back saying "why didn't you do what we said?"
But I am off this week, so fuck them all.
- somatica0
dude that totally SUCKS! lol!
not to hijack your thread but i got one that happened the other day that i have to share.
we're dealing with a really difficult client right now who has their own in-house creative director who says he used to work for leo b.
we pitched them an idea and they loved it. then we gave them two mood boards and they went bananas over the one and choose a direction. then we gave them not 3, but 5 home page comps (we thought they were all really strong) to choose from based directly from the mood boards. well, their CD, two days before we presented gave them his own interpretation of the designs and sold them on his shitty idea.
picture a high-end brand like bugatti with old rustic sign posts, a deserted, desolate, barren wasteland of a background image, fire, yes fire, and worst of all their tag line is one giant fucking typo. i dunno how he did it but he talked them into believing it's in fact NOT a typo, but a deliberate play on words. which of course it's not.
so anyways the client jizzes in thier pants over his design and forces us to use his. so we tell him to send us his psd files so we can grab elements from them.
his files...
he pulled a getty comp, 513x333 into photoshop and built the page at that size. his nav text was 4pts. we were all wondering why we couldn't read it but we just figured he didn't know how to show the thing. the main elements were all flattened and extremely low resolution. everything was rasterized, there is absolutely NO copy on the page for seo let alone something for the user to read to be like 'ok, wtf page did i just come to' and honestly, it's bugatti meets lord of the fucking rings / land of the apes.
- aarrgghh!!bruised_blood
- In-house people get really defensive if an outside studio is used. We got bit by this lately, too.welded
- jimzyk0
holy schmoley!
- vaxorcist0
bruised_blood and somatica.... both of these situations seem more about politics and client psychology than design or art direction....
Somatica, I'm loving the planet of the apes story..... very WTF.... can server logs show "back" button clicks?!? That "Leo" guy probably did print... there are lots of "Leo Burnouts" in Chicago...
Bruised Blood... this sounds like some issues I had as a freelancer, in my case the client did similar things because there was a change in marketing aim.... it was more "action" and less "branding " oriented all of a sudden, so they "just wanted to add this call to action" .. but I insisted on a refocus meeting, as this wasn't a question of design, but rather direction....
But seriously, an odd thing about freelancing is client psychology... Why? in an agency, we do get spoiled by the account people (curse and bless them at the same time) who deal with this constantly, and good account people prevent client egos from going sideways, whereas bad account people just tell designers to go sideways when the client's ego goes sideways...
So..... as a freelancer, you have to be a good account person too.... argh! Yes, I though being a freelancer I could escape those subhuman irritatants called account people....
Late changes like this usually mean somebody wasn't given enough attention early on, and if you didn't know they even had authority, well, that's a sales 101 lesson... learn who the decision makers REALLY are before engaging in any business....
I've got a friend who's a high-end salesrep, I take him out for a beer now and then and learn alot about sales 101..... especially qualifying prospects and getting the right meeting with the right people, not just "a meeting"
- my errrr.. that in-house ex-Leo "creative director" probably did TV....vaxorcist
- fooler20
Rant # 345245
Freelancing because their in-house designer is "overwhelmed" with other projects. They show me a rough layout of what they have, say they only like the product grouping everything else should change. Background, Fonts, colors etc etc. I bounce some ideas they say "cool". I'm up all night, few hours of sleep, wake up early finish 2 comps send them off.
I just get this back
"You went the direction we talked about (stylized, game-ish) but after looking at it, it's too much :-\"
Then gives me direction to change it back to basically exactly like she had it in the first comp.- maybe this is why the in-house designer is "overwhelmed"....vaxorcist
- seeessess0
Send client 1 design?
- +1000
(in any possible case)invisiblechamber - http://www.foraker.c…inkblot
- +1000
- CGN0
The crap you do for money. At least they didn't tear you a new hole.
- Cptn_Uncanny0
...Wow.