I was going through a lot of design posts and I thought why not have you read something really hilarious and fun. This must settle a fraction of the total agony of all the designers against their dear clients!
Dear clients and potential clients of the world,
We, your graphic designers, web designers, and other creatives have some things we’ve needed to tell you for a long time. Now is the time for us to be honest and tell you how we feel.
It doesn’t matter how big you think your business will be “one day”, we need to make a living too, and as such we need to charge you a fair rate, both now and when you’re more successful.
We can appreciate that your wife/son/niece/hairdresser has an “eye for this kind of thing”, but we’re highly trained professionals and make the decisions we make for a reason. Their input will only get in the way.
Having a picture in your head of what you want doesn’t help us unless you can communicate it clearly, and even then it restricts our ability to effectively do our jobs. The best thing you can do for the project is to let go of your existing ideas and let us do our work.
Asking us to bring you ideas so that you can hire us if you find one you like is just insulting. Generating ideas is what we do for a living. Asking us to work “on spec” is like ordering five meals at a restaurant and expecting to only pay for the one you eat.
A logo is shorthand for your business. It needs to subtly imply a lot of things and compliment every aspect of your business, so the process is more complex that choosing a font to write your name in.
While that logo needs to imply many things, it does not need to tell the whole story about your business. If it did, every department store’s logo would need to be 100 feet long. Simplicity is your friend. Just let us take care of it.
That’s fine that you like how Papyrus and Comic Sans look together in your corporate newsletter, but you hire us to have better taste than that. It’s our job.
We’re happy to help you in every way we can, but we’re not here to help you figure out how to use your computer or to figure out why your internet connection isn’t working. There are people who do that for a living and they’d be happy to have your business.
In conclusion, we are professionals who have worked very hard to develop the skills and knowledge that you’re hiring us for. We’re on your side, so we need you to be on ours. Let us do what we do best, and together we can make the world a better-looking place to be.
Sincerely,
The Graphic Design Community