Comments on: Stop being a Designer from Hell

By: David Bushell

David Bushell — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:19:37 +0000

Hi Lily, thanks for the comment. You’re definitely right in that the client is often misguided in regards to the design process, and probably more often than not. I suppose my point was that being the “service provider” it is our job to educate the client in that respect. I think it takes a level of understanding to be able to work well with any client and good designers do well because of that. I’m certainly not at that point myself! For that I do try and reflect on any project that wasn’t 100% perfect to understand how it could have been better.

By: Lily Dart

Lily Dart — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:12:35 +0000

I think it is just as naive to say that everything on Clients from Hell is the clients fault as it is to say the client is rarely wrong.

Being a graphic/web designer often means, because it’s a creative industry, that people don’t value your skill set because it has an indefinable quality to it. Someone telling me that my daily rate is too high because I’ve just got to ‘fling’ it together in photoshop, for example, is more to do with a lack of respect for my experience and training.

It’s easy to fudge communication with a client or misunderstand a brief, and that’s important to come to terms with and make amends for. But some clients will not be appeased regardless of what we do because they change their minds, or they disrespect the skill set, or they set briefs like “I don’t know what I want but I’ll like it when I see it”.

If you went into your doctors and said “I don’t know what my symptoms are or what I want you to do to fix it, but I feel a bit funny” you wouldn’t blame the doctor for not being able to ascertain a diagnosis, after all.

By: Bradley Castaneda

Bradley Castaneda — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 06:39:35 +0000

I agree with your perspective on the issue. Rather than “woe is me! my client sucks!” we should redirect to “What can I do to better work with these types?” – Great post!
Cheers,
Bradley

would love to hear what you think about my work as well on my blog.

By: David Bushell

David Bushell — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:11:43 +0000

Thanks for the comment Sergei! I think every designer is guilty of bitching a little over clients every now and then, it would be unnatural not to :) But I think it’s always worth taking a step back and seeing what you could have done differently and learn from that next time. After every project I have something new to consider.

By: Sergei Tatarinov

Sergei Tatarinov — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:39:45 +0000

Good point. To be honest, I am guilty in bitching a little about “bad clients”. That was long ago, though. With time, understading came to me and I realized that I myself did a lot of mistakes while communitcating with some of my very first clients, which affected our work’s results. I didn’t realize that at first but thanks to our generous internet community, I’ve learned my lessons. These days, establishing relationship with the clients is my top priority and I try not to miss anything, to ensure a perfect outcome for both sides.