Client of the Day
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- oey_oey1
New client wants a website. Client is an Illustrator.
Front page should be like a blog with sidebar where there's info and news and links to other projects plus image of artist working in Studio and information about services.Portfolio should have not more than 9 images and there should be an extra page with all work.
Despite the actual portoflio now being divided by three pages containing each page 14 portfolio images.
I should not design mobile first.
Images in Lightbox should be clickable to open in same window and zoom in the max possible for visitors to see details.
I'm glad I have work to do!
- lolnb
- Are you complaining?
This would make a very effective folio for an illustrator.grafician - Maybe for some inspiration, this new folio for Handsome Frank illustration agency is very simply great: https://www.handsome…grafician
- no no grafician, the client doesn't ant something like that at all. when i mean sidebar it's not navigation. it's like links, news, recent work picturesoey_oey
- and other stuff to be quickly linked.
besides the main content on the front page.oey_oey - all white, which is no problem at all.oey_oey
- navigation menu on top under centered logo. menu items are illustrations, also in mobile.oey_oey
- Nairn1
I asked about material requirements for a small job for a fairly regular client in case I need to order more in for them as it's all very last minute. Client sent a few photos of the model they're working on, and I started swearing a bit as there was absolutely no context for its actual size from the very clean and professionally-taken photos, so all a bit useless. Until, that is, I scrolled down to the last DIY photo in which my client had dangled his daughter over the model, letting me know exactly how much material I'd need... .
- His daughter is 36.Nairn
- 36 what? Inches? hectares?Fax_Benson
- Bloody non-specific clients.Fax_Benson
- She was 9 months, that was me trying to be funny. I can guage the size of a model based on a dangled 9 month old.
It made me smile. This time.Nairn - made me smile too. I was being deliberately dim.Fax_Benson
- ha-nairncanoe
- nb0
I have a client who routinely phones me regarding issues that have nothing to do with me. About once a month I get a call (on my cell) from one of two guys who run this company asking why their internet isn't working. I always respond with, "That has nothing to do with me. I just make your website. Do not call me about this. Call your internet provider." Of course, they call me first because their internet provider puts them on hold. I've lost count of how many times I've said the words "Do not call me about this."
The best from them so far was, "Hey, this guy came in and set up a fax machine for us yesterday. It's not working. Why isn't it working?"
So in an attempt to stop them from calling me for everything little thing, I've started billing them for any phone call that lasts more than 1 minute. Today I'll be sending my first invoice that includes a bunch of line-items for "Phone Support." I'm interested to see what they say.
- a fine movescarabin
- Nice, post back their response!elahon
- no way!monospaced
- smoothdoesnotexist
- Do you charge per phone call? How much?freedom
- Nairn1
Not particularly interesting thing ahead:
Handed over a job to a new client today. Just met him yesterday after he turned up to the studio unannounced. Not a big fan of that. Nice enough guy, but he's not very good at explaining himself. Yesterday he wanted 'a thing' and showed me a representative piece of material, that was about 1mm thick. So, that's in mind. He asks for 1.5mm thick, so I have that too in mind. We end up going with a cheaper material that is 2mm thick.
Beyond mixing up dimensions in emails and not explaining how he wanted me to interpret his design, and with my sadly not being psychic, it took about three rounds yesterday to finally get around to what he wanted. All good, I deal with a lot of inexperienced clients, so it's a learning experience for us both.
Hand over the job today, and he's impressed, but surprised at how thin it is. It's cheap, thin material, as specified, so it warps when you bend it, as he bends it in hand. For the purposes he needs though, this is actually better, but whatever. He's visibly perturbed. "I thought it'd be thicker?". "It is thicker - it's 2mm, rather than the 1.5mm you originally specified". He realises that he's holding the two copies he asked for, so what he feels in hand is actually even thinner than what he expected. "I thought I asked for 2mm?". "Yes.. you did?".
Again, he's happy with how it's come out, and so we discuss ways of beefing it up for installation, but he's still perplexed.
He lifts up a thumb and describes a line with another finger at about its knuckle.
"How big is this, 2mm?"
"umm.. no - that looks about 35mm".
Right. I getcha. He meant centimetres. All this time.
For what he needs, thinner is better, but damnit, how do you get to our sort of age and make that kind of a mistake? Repeatedly? Again, nice bloke, and it's all good, but jeez.
Oh, and to top it off - as I say, I don't much like random walk-ins to the studio here, but a friend called from outside to say this guy was outside looking for me (we have a large construction project in the building at the moment - everything's a mess) - not much more info than that. When I meet this guy, as far as I'm aware, he's a vague acquaintance of my friend, so treat him as such. The job is for a thing my friend is peripherally involved in and it's the sort of thing he'd recommend me for, so it made sense. It's only after I do the job and charge mates rates for it that I learn that it was just some weird coincidence and my friend had no clue who he was. flol. Aaanyway.
- fuck that was long, sorry.
really not worth it.Nairn - I stopped at, hand jobGnash
- forgive me but "1, 1.5, 2 then 35 a day later - sounds like right DOGE character" ILL BE HERE ALL WEEKkingsteven
- fuck that was long, sorry.
- noneck0
Hi noneck
Do you design logos? I need a quick cheap logo designed for our boat. Can you please give me a quote. We have an idea in mind just need to get it produced. let me know if you can do?
thanks
- Just got this exact email from an old client. I'm so excited.noneck
- The exact email? Your clients call you noneck? :)ETM
- some of the best clients are those with boats :)mikotondria3
- So just ignore the quick cheap bit and give him a quote, or a link to 99designs.Ranger
- People with boats could well have a different idea of what is cheap.Amicus
- Nairn0
I did a tiny wee job for my immediate neighbours, who work on a lot of good stuff (very smart girls), yesterday.
They want me to charge 4x what I was intending to - it's not a lot of money, but for what I did, it's waaay too much.
"We're paying you for your brain, Nairn".
"You can have it on a platter - the fucker causes me way too many problems".Not going to lie - the extra money will come in handy. I don't know what's happened, but the last week has been incredibly quiet, and I'm a mite concerned about the next weeks as I've only got one big-ish job lined up. The opposite of what I was expecting - I figured the positive vibes coming from vaccination rates would encourage hope and expenditure from clients, but.. huh. Not immediately apparent here.
- Maybe word got out that you're charging 4x too muchnb
- I'm just kiddingnb
- Discuss a retainer, quickgrafician
- Wait, did you ever give them a price?omahadesigns
- Nope. Regular client. They ask me to do something, I do it and charge what I think it should cost. Or, in this case, four times that.Nairn
- canoe0
Automotive aftermarket client is getting ready to develop apparel.
The agency shows me some comps. I respond with: has the client signed off on using the logo in place of the union on the American flag.
Their response: Yes! And who is going to stop it! The flag police? We are not in Portland!!!!!!
My response: You’re right, we’re not in Portland. But, we’re still in the United States:
- The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
- The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
- The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
Their response: Ok. Then stay away from the flag idea.
We still haven't heard from the flag police stationed in Portland.
- it was only recently that i discovered the stars and stripes must never touch the groundhans_glib
- Flags represent and mean so much, yet are just bits of fabric. Funny creatures are humans...shapesalad
- Are you a graphic designer shapesalad?canoe
- Yes. So i know all about symbolism and connotations. One has read Judith Williams decoding advertising. End of day, human creatures are an odd bunch.shapesalad
- Sounds like a good read.canoe
- Flag code is suggestion, not law. So much apparel shouldn’t exist. Good on your for caring though.imbecile
- *youimbecile
- Fax_Benson1
When we click on a client image and go through to their instagram, there's no link to get back to our site. Can you update functionality?
Of instagram? Yeah, I'll give them a call now, see what they say...
- don't we use target="_new" on external links to open it in a new window and keep site open?uan
- well yeah, but they were asking for a link to their site on 24 actual instagram profile pages.Fax_Benson
- pretty sure at this point saying LINK IN BIO in each post descrip is only way to point to a single, clickable link in profileprophetone
- ...just ask each of their clients to provide your client's link in each of their profile pages on Instagram. boom, done.prophetone
- sted2
I feel a bit fucked right now, we built a strict review method in the workflow and now i think it backfired because i'm a lazy fuck.
there was a request this morning by a nice client asking that is it possible to put together a simple sales export by 3-4PM?
Task was forwarded to the dedicated coder and a test engineer.
It was scheduled for 2 hour dev from 1pm to 3pm.
Task was done, tested and left marked without client or account feedback.
The account left the office at 2pm.
We agreed that I will pick up things where she left when I get back.
I did not moved a single thing today, so it was easy to forget about her stuff.
She called an hour ago asking about this project.So I started to panic and reviewed the communication to find out what is this actually, and got lost in the fact that the client will have a stakeholder meeting where they need this tool to review live sales data from 3 marketplaces with 3-4 different shops each, BUT WHHY?! maybe they happy with us?!% something isn't right with the orders?! stuff like that... and went to the data tools we have, just trying to make some useless conclusions.
She called again because the client didn't got anything, so I rushed back to the messages to review the stuff.
This is what is on the project url, it works properly does what they need with some extra like the buttons are replaced with blow-up animgif on click :Dthe client
is pharma.- spaceballs animgif
impact as font
and this: https://i.imgur.com/…sted - huh?shapesalad
- heu? they made this and i didn't had time to review and change it so we don't end up getting kicked out because of a stupid joke.sted
- spaceballs animgif
- interface3
- That's a great video. The client / designer annotations are just gliding the lilly.Fax_Benson
- Bennn1
I want images 1 and 2 to be printed at 88w by 40h inches and the image 3 at 88x18 inches please.
- Client*Me opening the images* ...
image 1 is 250x480px
image 2 is 1015x745px
image 3 is 945x945px:-|
To image the situation, she's asking me to print a square image as a rectangle and that square image needs to be upscaled 50x ... yeeeeaaaahhhh
- I did a quotation from an icon-sized logo in an email signature recently.Nairn
- ^ hehehe!oey
- I've also been asked for a quotation on a job with possibly up to 1000 units, but despite asking repeatedly, I've no idea how big they're supposed to be. TrickyNairn
- < you can do it! but not with the results they're expectingoey
- get gigapixel, profithans_glib
- corel photo?oey
- sted4
We lost a client in the weirdest possible way because our key account is a lesbian. No singed contract so I'm not sure that I should post the guys contact details or just send a gay birthday squad to his workplace?
- monoboy4
'We don't like this image, it's not on brand.'
Isn't this the image you've just used on all your press adverts and billboards?
Long pause.
Hello. Hello, are you there? Can you hear me? Hello.
- monoboy2
I had my first 'please put Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, trip-advisor and Youtube icons at the bottom' of a printed item of the year.
Then the follow up consternation when I explain why that's a bad idea.
- In isolation, with no call to action or context. The usual.monoboy
- Why is it bad idea to list the links? Or just the icons and no other info?bainbridge
- Just the icons. Completely pointless.monoboy
- IMO, if you have to put any social media stuff in print, you're doing it wrong.monoboy
- monoboy0
Here comes another moan...
Working all weekend (and most of a fortnight) on a decent sized brochure job.
I get it ready to go at the crack of dawn today, all lined up for a digital print on nice stock.
Super tight deadline, seat of pants stuff.
Get an email this morning whilst it's on press...
'Is it too late to change it from A4 to A5?'
- monoboy0
Just about every client I've worked with NEVER has a scalable vector of their logo, but a multitude of heavily compressed jpgs.
Do they literally throw .eps files away when given them?
- Absolutely. It's just something that clients never think of or understand. They can't open them in powerpoint so think they are not useful and bin them.Hayzilla
- Love the Wall E analogy. haha.
My favourite that happens LOADS is renaming a .jpg as .eps and sending me that. LOL.Hayzilla - The best (worst?) is when they place said compressed jpeg into a word document, distorted out of proportion, and give that to you.monospaced
- My fave is the attached word document with a tiny 32k gif inserted into a table.monoboy
- 'Can't you just photoshop it?' is the usual response to we can't print this.monoboy
- ^ ha, mono. Your post didn't show as I was typing mine.monoboy
- Ha. And then you realize they don't even know how to save files to their computers and have been taking screenshots the entire time.monospaced
- Yup. Had that one before.monoboy
- I just avoid the inevitable client idiocy and get the logo from their site - company reports and news PDF normally contain vector versions. Fuck em.face_melter
- @face, I do that too, but I never tell themmonospaced
- noneck2
Client asks for a pylon sign. No problem. Throw their logo on a box that fits the sign and send it.
Client says no. Proceeds to ask for exactly what I gave them in round 1.
Send the same file again. "Is this what you're looking for?"
Client, "Yes, perfect. Great job!"
- noneck1
Client: “Site looks good, and you can go ahead and launch it. Can we make sure that when people search for us on Google that we come up first? Here are the terms we should be #1 for: <20 keyword pairings> Thanks.”
- Some company contacted me offering #1 Google for one keyword w/ one minor Canadian city (not TO, Van, or MTL) at a cost of $10,000/month per city.nb
- It's a great service. I've never actually used them, but it's VERY useful as something to quote to clients when they ask for guaranteed rankings.nb
- Because for some reason the clients asking for #1 on Google never ever expect it to cost more than an hour or two of work.nb
- ^ Gonna steal that.noneck
- Yeah, I just calmly tell them, "Sure, I can put you in touch with a company that specializes in that. They charge..." haha always a funny reaction from clients.nb
- Literally wanna kill people on that one. "Someone told me you can just buy the top spot from Google". k.section_014
