Client Ditched My Work
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- jon_d0
the new stuff is boring and too 2001.
- BusterBoy0
JSK, did you read that story on snopes? Absolutely no way in Hades that is a true story.
- JSK0
BusterBoy
Nope. A friend of mine. I didn't believe it either until she ask me and my other friend to review the offering document.
She apparently helped them when they had no funding. Paid her in 1,000,000 shares. It was just 5 guys who ran the shop. Apparently, they never thought that they would get bought out or get funding. They got few rounds of funding in recent years and got bought out by a company after that (most likely pressured to sell from the investors). The company sold for $98 m.
My question is, who in their right mind give someone 1m worth of shares? Not the brightest business guys. Also, the offering to her wasn't even an actual stock offering, it was just a form of promissory note with out determined value or date, which in essence was just an IOU with no value.
- ian0
Yes, d_rek its happened to me before, loads of people and it will keep happening. Sometimes the work after is awful (I've even used that car metaphor before) but sometimes its what works for them.
I think you may have summed it up in your original post:
Even if what I had come up with didn't communicate their intent I believe my solution was much better than their current choice.
Their intent may have changed, making them look at the identity in a new light, forcing them to change and perhaps when they did, they had to get something done fast.
It may be a reflection of your work, or it may well be a reflection of their opinion on design. Either way, you got paid for your services, you can still show the work in your folio and perhaps when the company has more time/money they will contract you again to do more work.
Its disheartening, I know from experience, but the nature of this industry is perpetual motion.
- gramme0
Paul Rand woke up from the dead several times this year just to shit his pants over his desecrated identities and then die of a heart attack all over again. It happens to the best and deadest of us.
You're a dead guy, right?
- NONEIS0
Lets see it
- smooth_E0
Shit happens, brodie.
- jon_d0
"and perhaps when the company has more time/money they will contract you again to do more work."
doubtful. just move on.
- autoflavour0
you got paid..
end of thread
- vaxorcist0
well hey... it's better that the don't use your work at all anymore, than if they mangle it completely with "extra enhancements" done by some random "other designer" and your name is still somehow associated with this now-monstrous design.... that happened to me once....
- orrinward0
A guy in my office just had the same thing happen. He spent 4 months going working with a company creating a new brand and refining it. They put it live for a few days then switched to an in-house 'developed' brand that essentially uses the ever-so-unique lowercase Helvetica Neue Bold with no treatment whatsoever, and what appears to be stock kerning.
He still got paid, but 4 months of work and the client's internal brand team decided 'fuck it we'll just type arc out in helevetica neue and put gloss on it'
- identity0
"Even if what I had come up with didn't communicate their intent"
A client needs to feel like they contributed to the experience. They need to feel like THEY were the geniuses behind this idea. It's hard - I KNOW - but taking our ego out of the equation is the only way you're going to be able to do great work and have the client accept, pay and produce it.
In this case, it sounds like you weren't very inclusive of the client in the process - even if this is THEIR fault, hound them with emails, set up calls, it may seem annoying but they'll appreciate your effort (just don't ask dumb questions). Also, by your own admission, your creation did not communicate what it is they do and YOU are not even happy with it. I would rather have no logo produced than something out there with my name attached to it that I'm not proud to show everyone from my Mom to Michael Beirut.
What the client got in the end is a mediocre product - but I bet he was micro-managing the shit out of it and he TRULY feels like it's his creation. You didn't give him that.
- identity0
^ just to add - my BEST work has been when very close collaboration WITH the client. It will produce an insight and understanding far greater than any amount of extraneous research you could do.
- d_rek0
@identity,
I would have to disagree with you on a few points.
First, I don't think I really pretended to have much of an ego about it. I understand that Business is Business and these things will happen.
I actually was in very close contact with the client the entire process. I did many rounds of sketching and shared with them before delivering any final solution. All in all I felt it was a pretty successful collaboration between myself and the client. And they were really good about feedback too.
And I guess I mispoke when I said it didn't "communicate their intent". What I was trying to say is that THEY did not have the goals and values of their company defined enough for me to successfully produce something that captured the intent and focus of the company.
I also did not say I was not happy the work because I was happy with it.
And I don't think they got a mediocre product by any stretch. I think they got a really solid, good identity for the money they paid. They even micromanaged to a degree. And i'm not so proud or naive as to think that I was solely responsible for the idea and output of the work. The client was every bit as responsible for the work they got as I was.
Again, it's not a matter of bruised ego. Like I stated before I feel like they traded up a Beamer for Pontiac. But I guess a Pontiac suited their needs better. Plain and simple.
- identity0
Hey D,
Wasn't trying to offend - more waxing poetically about some situations that sound similar that I've come up against and found some similarities with yours. I certainly don't know the whole situation. I'm not saying you have a giant designer-ego (infact, based on your additions to posts on here, I'd say the opposite) I was referring to the ego we ALL have of wanting to see our vision come through and, at times, the vision of the client's gets lost in that. Based on what you wrote you seemed to not be pleased with it - but it appears that's not the case. Again, no offense meant :-)
- instrmntl0
lets see the identity!
- JSK0
Who cares, they didnt like your work and moved on.
Come to think of it, not sure if anyone would care to email to you see the work.
- Don't you have a stock ticker to watch?d_rek
- Also, I have presumed much. My apologies. I should know better than to expect anything but hostility and apathy.d_rek
- It's even quite presumptuous to believe someone would read this comment.d_rek
- You assume that your work is actually good. Lose the ego and stop whining.JSK
- Eat shit?d_rek
- Get some talent?JSK
- come on guys. hug it outsherm
- ladies ladies! settle down.dewilde
- cat fight!nbq
- mikotondria30
Similar shit happens to us all from time to time.
You'll roll up to look at some work you'd done a while ago and then you realised that some form of daft politics and association has caused them to get a far inferior site to the one you'd done for them. It happens.
- Continuity0
Sadly, it happens.
They probably got begged by the secretary's neighbour's mother-in-law to let junior loose on the logo with MS Paint, because he's 'really a talented boy, and this would make him so happy', despite the fact he's a biology nerd with terminal social maladroitness, especially when it comes to girls his own age.
I wouldn't take it too personally.
- or maybe OP's logo sucked, I mean we can't judge without seeinganimatedgif