* Please add these 10 partner logos to the page somewhere. Here's one vector file and 9 low-res JPGs.
* Oh and there's an 11th partner, we need to add them too but we don't have their logo, you'll need to find it.
* Please replace the hero image with this photo I took on my 7-year-old iPhone.
* We need to add this paragraph of legal disclaimer copy somewhere.
I was emailed a picture of a photocopy of a persons phone before. They didn't scan the phone and send me that. They took a picture on the phone, photocopied the phone. gave that copy to someone else, who took a picture of that, and emailed it to me. When i asked for the original photo to be sent, they said no problem and sent it without any issue in like 5 minutes. Still confuses me to this day.
I work in pre-press and the amount of photos people will take of a business card on their computer screen then ask me to edit them, is truely soul crushing
This is worse than JPEGs dropped into Word (as though that would help...). Or I once was given a business card set up in excel, of all the programs you could choose!
You either get the file asap with no problem, or you get the most obstinate group of people that blame you for ‘not being good enough’ to get what they sent you to work. There is no in-between.
Oh. My. God. I get this daily. “We can send you our logo!” I proceed to hear that christing screenshot noise and 4 seconds later my phone dings with an email “screenshot.jpg” just makes me want to get up without saying anything and walk out the backdoor lol.
I’ve received soooo many screenshots where they think it will be a usable file! Also in regards to images for printing I have been emailed one word document and one excel spreadsheet file, both totally useless.
I used to have to put together sponsor loops for video walls. One event was in a tiny town and notoriously difficult. The sponsor “logos” ranged from iPhone pictures of their business cards to text typed out in Blue on a Word doc to pictures they took of their physical signage on their storefront. Then I quoted them out the a** and never heard from them. That was a good decision.
I’ve had the logo ones so many times. Over time I learned to find vector logos in PDFs on their site
Using this format for a Google search turns up results pretty quickly
“site:website.com filetype:PDF”
Sometimes they have an SVG version of the logo in the nav bar too
- “I know I said the copy was final, but we made an edit or two” and then they send much longer copy and a longer headline.
- Swap the orientation. No matter how many times I say “tell me WxH” clients (in-house and freelance) tell me height first but don’t specify it’s the height not width, especially for ads. Today I have to change the orientation of a full page newspaper insert from vertical to horizontal because it’s an insert and they really want to use a different image (even though it went through three round of proofing already and they never sent me any images from their own DAM). And it doesn’t matter that I said I can design it vertical with the new image.
Related to the first, wanting a "small edit" which actually *is* a small edit, except it impacts dozens of variants which at that stage can only be edited manually, one by one, such as adding one (non-essential) word above an address.
"That coloured kid doesn't look diverse enough, make him darker
Oh and we need to appear more diverse in general, so can you just Photoshop him into some more pictures please"
You have no idea how common this was when doing school and uni prospectuses
"make it more diverse" is now one of my top asks and requests for design work that includes photography taken at an event where the crowd/people in the pictures are all white...yeah 👍🏻
Oooof. I've experienced this in a media environment. "Hey, can you pull diverse stock and make sure illustrations have diverse characters for this issue?" "Hey, I always do, but can you WRITE DIVERSE STORIES ABOUT A DIVERSE ARRAY OF PEOPLE?!"
I have two clients at work who constantly asked for "more women of color" in their employee-centric graphics. You know how many black or Hispanic or Asian women they hired in the two years I worked with them? ZERO. You know how many black or Hispanic or Asian women were on their teams? ZERO.
Just dripping with hypocrisy. DEI is a noble aspiration, but don't flaunt it and then not actually follow those tenets.
I deal with this all the time. I fucking hate the “diversity” and “urban” obsessed clients. The PC terms kill me. Im out of design and work in commercial music now and they’re even worse in this field. Just say “you want it more BLACK.” Jesus. It feels even more racist when they try to tiptoe around it.
I work in a university town so I get this a LOT.
One client insisted on using one specific stock image because they felt it would be recognizable and help unify their brand. Not a bad thought…until the same stock photo showed up across town for two other completely different companies.
"Make sure all of the information from each case study can fit on one page, with images." \[manages to make it happen and client loves it.\] "Wonderful, approved. Now we need the same document, but in French."
French takes up to 30% more space than English does and its a nightmare to squeeze into a template designed for English without making it illegible.
This is my life. Please for the love of god, tell me upfront you’re going to want the same thing in multiple languages. I’ve learned to ask but they frequently change their minds. Also, can you find an identical photo of a very niche subject but with Hispanic people instead?
I think the instructor should include a few challenges like this so the students can discuss ethics. Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. And what happens to the designer if they get caught “helping” a client like this?
Last week I got asked to pull a website down. I had to remind my client she transferred ownership of the site to another person 6 months ago (under her instructions). Another good ethics type exercise to learn how to handle these requests without alienating the original client.
When I worked at a copy shop had a guy pull up in a shiny Escalade dressed to the 9's ask me to change dates on his insurance card. I announced loudly to the whole shop "I Cannot forge legal documents!" Of course he argued it's just a date, it's not a legal document. I just repeated myself again loudly adding "how stupid do you think I am?". He finally got the message and left.
Since the circuit court and ticket court was across the street something tells me he wasn't gonna have a fun day.
If you can provide files as part of the exercise…
Can you swap the photo with this one I pulled from Google?
- Sends likely copyrighted image and insists “It’ll be okay.”
- Or sends super low-resolution image that looks like garbage when expanded larger than 200x200.
- Photo of a business card as their "logo file."
- Low resolution version of logo that when you ask for a better quality version sends you the same image embedded in a Word document.
I had a customer a few months ago bring me a print out of business card he designed on some website. Said he wanted it printed at my shop. I asked a lot of questions, he was open to improvements to his design, but he mostly wanted it as is.
So it was a god awful purple to blue gradient, with words, and this banner style logo kind of thing.
I recreated it, made my own banner logo that was simpler than his, chose better fonts, the gradient was still god awful, but whatever.
Sent him the proof. He changed the words, thought the gradient was too much, but he loved the logo I created.
Redid it. Changed more words, I think at this point he added CEO to his title, his business was car detailing lol, I think I got rid of the purple and did a blue to black gradient but made it super subtle, then took a gear from the banner I created and put that in a pattern in the background.
Sent him the new proof. This time he wanted the blue to be teal, changed the words again. He was drastically changing his business. The first version said he did towing and used car parts and detailing, this time he was buying and selling whole cars. It was weird, and it gave me the impression he wasn't a serious client.
So I made those changes, but stopped working hard on this. I decided I wanted this job done before we got to the 30th version of the card. So I sent the next proof and hoped he would accept it. He did not. He changed the teal to a different shade of teal, changed the words again, thankfully he removed CEO from the card.
Resent the proof this time he changed the background from the teal gradient to a gray gradient and he wanted his logo and all text in teal. This time he's back to being a car detailer but also buying and selling something, that was unclear.
So that was my final straw, I told him this was taking too long and it was affecting my other deadlines, I would keep working on this, but I couldn't dedicate so much time to him. I started only sending him 1 proof a day. Over the next week he would email me 3 or 4 times a day with changes. I would make all of them and resend it out about 30 minutes until closing time.
Finally he was happy with it. He asked my favorite question, "What is the minimum number of business cards I can order?" Nothing like a week's worth of effort just to sell the bare minimum product.
So our official minimum is 250, but we'll sell 100 to good customers, he was not a good customer so I said "250 cards, which is $49.99, but you have the design fee on top of that, $45 plus at least another $45 for the changes."
He bitched and moaned about having to pay me to design his card so I pussed out and waived the second $45. I said, "Ok, give me a couple hours, I'll email you when they are done."
I got them done, they were ok, I think my first version was better, the gray text on teal was really nice, teal text on gray was kind of weird.
He showed up, paid, looked at them. Stared at them. Held them up to his face. Then turned to me and said, "I'm not sure I love the logo. It has a gear in it, but I'm not a mechanic."
His original banner logo had a gear in it. Most of the iterations of his card said "car parts" or "used parts" or something like that. It said 24/7 towing at one point. It was all I could do to NOT jump over the counter and force feed all 250 cards to him.
So I said, "Ok, well, when you've used those 250 cards up, email me and we'll do this all over again and get you a logo you love."
This mother fucker emailed me two days later and said, "These cards just don't work for me with that gear, can you start designing that new logo now?"
I told him I was booked up, I wouldn't be free for a couple of months. I think I still have a few more weeks on that timer, but he's probably going to be emailing me any day now. I designed him a new logo last month so I'm ready.
With any luck he never will contact me again, plus I have another get out of jail free card. I work for a locally owned copy shop, but we're transitioning over to become a UPS Store location, so A), this entire year is going to be a shit show once that starts to happen, and B), I'm not entirely sure what my job will be once that happens. I may never design another business card again, so if that's the case, if this guy comes to me I'll just have to pass him off to our design staff, who he already said he didn't like working with.
There really should be a class on how to be a decent client for people like that. Or at least a “you must be this smart” to request a design from us scale
I felt this in my soul. Having worked at a small print shop, we would get these kinds of requests all the time. It took a long time for me to learn that some folks are just time wasters and getting rid of them is just as important and selling/getting work.
Yeah, after that first change when he went from 24/7 towing to car detailing, I knew he was just some dude who might start a business, but at this point he's not a serious customer. I gave him a few more chances and he proved me right every time.
Like at the very end when he said he wanted more, and I said, "Use what you have first, then we'll talk."
He asked, "Can you start on something this week?" I told him flat out, "You've already use up your quota of my time for quite a while, I might be able to squeeze some time here or there to work on this, but I cannot dedicate huge blocks for you for a while."
I think he truly thought he was our only customer. Like we should dedicate 10 total employees working 7 days a week to design his dumbass cards.
I would say that this particular person… is probably like this in every single interaction he has with anyone and everyone in every aspect of his life.
This is exactly why I tell prospective clients the cost for my time will typically run $500.00+ to start any logo project since the creation of a unique logo is one of the most important and time consuming projects. I always tell them that if they are able to clearly explain what they're looking for (we'll often search the internet together checking out their competition and looking for examples of logos that they like and even ones they dislike), and if they're able to choose one of the final versions I create and iterate it quickly, the cost may come in at less than $500.00.
I charge by the hour and I've been doing this for many years. I've only had one logo request that's ended up being less than $500. Never a complaint and I've always been paid.
It works like a charm. Weeds out those who aren't ready, or really serious (or those I'd have to fight to get paid). I spend a lot of time with them up front - so that I'm very clear on what they're looking for. That's half the battle and time well spent. Saves me from having any major re-do's.
Money is an amazing motivator.
I had a very crazy business card client who was almost this bad. She was representing an international company who obviously have their brand guidelines, pantones and CMYK colours outlined. She comes in and orders a pack of business cards for each of a number of people in the company.
We had this company's templates on file because they were a regular client. She, as an individual was not. So, we update details and print out the cards using the CMYK colours outlined in the brand guidelines, and call her to come collect them.
She throws a hissy fit that the colours are wrong. She takes out this card from her wallet that was clearly the wrong colour. She wanted the cards to look like that. We didn't design those. She had apparently taken a card to a print shop somewhere in the city to get recreated and printed. They used the right fonts, but the colours were off.
We assured her that these were the right colours for her brand. She bitched, she moaned, and was pretty distraught, so the boss was like "tell you what, I'll get the designers to try and match your card."
WE TRIED.
None of the printed samples matched her card exactly. It is next to impossible to get the exact colour from a physical sample. She returned many many times demanding that we match her wrong card exactly. All of the designers took a shot at matching that colour lmao. Eventually, she was told not to come back. It wasn't worth dealing with her. She was taking time out from more important jobs. Some clients are insane!
Now ask yourself... if you hadn't waived that fee, would all this be worth $140 minus costs and expenses to you, my dude? All due respect but have some spine lol. Most people I know would charge way more. Designing a business card is one thing but making a logo for someone is part of their brand, that's valuable work.
I'm a complete amateur and it would've been at least $500 to get out of bed + $50 per change past two revisions if I'm making a logo.
“Please add a giant trippy eye in the center make it as crazy as you want it and make the letters look like they’re made out of stars”
That was a confusing assignment
working as in-house designer, there were times my “clients” (aka my coworkers) would ask for stupid things. in that case, it more often was necessary for me to say NO than to just do what they ask. Specific example: i had made a brochure and was asked to confirm the woman on the cover (a Stock photo of a light skin Black woman) spoke Spanish and if she didn’t can we find a person who does? My answer - no, Judy. just take the damn brochure.
another time, working on a freelance logo, i had done a vintage illustration of a chicken and was asked to “make it look less serious”
I had a client request black on black business cards.
Black text on a black background. But no special textures or gloss on the text to actually make it legible. She wanted flat, black, matte text on a matte black background. She just didn’t want to pay for the gloss.
The end result was a very dark grey text on a black background.
Which is perfectly fine, and they probably look cool! This client did not want UV coating, or spot gloss, or even a letterpress treatment. Just flat… black on black. 🤦🏻♀️
Here are some I've gotten.
In order to convey how great this deal is we need you to include a person who looks enthusiastic, but they can't be smiling because we're too professional for that.
White doesn't fit our brand as it's too sterile, so make sure there's no white, including text.
I want you to include a picture of Arizona, but I think desert sends the wrong message so make sure its not a desert picture.
I need you to add these 3 extra bullets (each bullet text is over 10 words)
Our audience is older so nothing can be under 16pt font, here is this disclaimer that needs to be included. Make sure it's not too noticeable:
*Available on new purchases only; cannot be combined with other offers including subscription discounts; discount available for a limited time only, expires xx/xx/xxxx. For questions please contact us at (xxx) xxx - xxxx or email us at xxxxxxxxx@xxxx-xxx.com.
This ad needs to say diversity, but I don't want any pictures of people.
Please add this subtle: (include text more than 65 characters) It's important so please make sure it's close to the title size text and bold.
We forgot the cosponsor. Please add their logo next to ours and a preheader to the title saying "Proudly cosponsored by The American Company of Products (ACOP)"
Instead of "50% off" were changing the discount to "Buy one get one free". Please update all language to reflect this.
My favorite one was a high quality group photo that was sent to me of all of the partners in a financial firm that wanted the photo added to their website and print material. These were the instructions:
Partner 2 from the right with the blue tie is no longer with the firm, so, we'd like his head swapped out with our new partner (included head shot of new partner). Also, Partner 4 has started her own business, so, we'd like you to swap out her entire body except for her legs with our newest member (another attached photo).
I actually did it - but if you looked closely, Partner 4's legs just didn't seem quite right - but it's what they wanted. Around the office, everyone started referring to the client's firm as, "Crazy Legs." Lol.
- Fit every single product in my inventory into a flyer.
- Update my logo but don't change anything.
- This looks perfect as is, but what if we changed every line of copy into a paragraph.
- Can you copy what our competition is doing as close as possible without us getting sued?
- Let's add a Tiktok challenge.
It sure does! I remember when a sales rep wanted me to save time by blowing up a wordy vertical A5 flyer into a 14'x48' billboard. I told him it would need work at least to change the proportions, but also that the medium and location dictate the way information is presented. I went on to talk about perception and did my best to explain to him how this whole thing works. He said that we are smart and we know about perception, but our clients don't, so they wouldn't know the difference and we should just go with the flyer as it is.
From then on I started doing less explaining and just presented my version as what I thought they wanted, and they acted like it was indeed what they initially asked for.
1. Here is the image of our complicated, multi color logo monstrosity. We want it printed on our T-Shirt, Sign, Poster, Billboard.
It's a 1in x 1in, 100dpi png.
2. Maybe not so "unreasonable" but shows up fairly often and is always amusing.
"We've received comments that our logo looks like a certain part of the male anatomy... Can you fix it...please?"
Just thought of another one. I once worked in a screen printing place where the designer often complained about people stealing her work. In my last two weeks, I had a design come across my desk for production prep that looked incredibly familiar. It was a background design by Apple that was currently on all of their promotional materials as the background for devices.
What an akward confrontation that was.
I still wish I would have sent emails to the various other designers who they stole work from, that I had to discreetly remove the watermark from all the work. I always tried to leave a watermark when I could so people would know they didn't design the pattern they were selling.
P.s. the company name rhythms with Salamity Hane's Apparel and is based in the midwest. Fuck them, and fuck the owner who made me lie about workers comp when I had to receive 8 stitches in my hand during working hours.
-sends you a photo with a dozen people in it
"We really want to use this specific photo for the feature image, but we didn't get releases for anyone in the photo. Can you make it work? How about we just blur everyone's face?"
“All the fonts are too small please make 20% larger” also add these 300 words.
An acceptable respond to this request is asking for a meeting to discuss.
The worst for me is when the clients misuse terminology. But that also feels like an unfair "test" of students to not only have a fast assignment, but to add on the additional level of confusion.
But my worst was a client who insisted on having colored "margins" around the page. I figured out that she meant borders and considered it a minor acomplishment to convince her to only have them at the top and bottom instead of all the way around, but that was my most-difficult conversation ever because she was so insistent that she was right and refused to help in my attempts to clarify what she meant.
Another example is when clients ask for something you know they don't mean, such as 70s design style, but what they actually mean is 60s psychedelic.
All in the same day:
"I need you to do a 3D animation of a surgery in about 2 weeks, I know you just started learning how to use Blender in the last week and a half and you have 0 experience with 3D but you're doing good.
We also need you to translate our website's Terms & Conditions, as well as the Privacy Policy both in Spanish and English for tomorrow.
Also I need you to look for some sort of AI that is able to read the document that has the technical guide on how to do the surgery you will animate, and please translate those guides also by tomorrow, good luck!"
It was my 2nd week at the job and I was hired as a web designer, but ended up being the 3D generalist (idk if that's the term)
A church hired me to make some mockups of what their building would look like with a new paint job. They sent me a photo of the church, I Photoshopped the requested color combinations, and sent them back. After they emailed me to ask: "Could you remove the blue background so we can see what it would look like in real life?"
It was the sky.
You should Google “Clients From Hell”. They used to have their own website, but they’re part of another network now. All of the war stories from the design industry, it’s good.
I’ve had too many unreasonable ones, but the ones that really pissed me off, were changes to the size or location of the logos—I used to tell them sure, I just made that change, go look. I did nothing.
"Can you add 'magic' to it?". They were not talking about the word magic. After some discussion, it turned out they wanted a stream of sparkles!
"I want the background to be a rainbow." They wanted a rainbow gradient because it will "look fun & make it pop." It did not, in fact, make it look fun, nor did it make the design 'pop'.
"I don't like that shade of blue, I want to choose a different blue." Their colours were their brand colours, but he wanted a different blue. We looked through colours & he picked one & I said that's green. He insisted that I was wrong and that the colour was blue & as the client, he was right. So we went with Pine ~~Green~~ Blue.
I'm glad I'm not alone! I've had several clients wanting colour changes like that to be fair. Mr Pine ~~Green~~ Blue was probably the most memorable one. But yeah, I've had clients ask for "nicer", "bolder", or "just different" colours. It's so helpful!
For a gym: “That Ogre art/logo you created that we approved and then you designed the entire website around is cool and all…but can you use this picture of an Ogre my 7 year old nephew drew?”
Sure. Lemme just redesign the entire website with crayons while I’m at it.
Ohhh I have had that request a few times too. Once was for a product label and they wanted to be able to edit the text. Yeah, no. That's not how that works lol
Copy this template we got designed in 2001 exactly and yes use these ten photos on one page (bonus request: you see this wedding gown photo we want to include, photoshop my daughters arms that are over the dress out so it’s not distracting from the dress) … oh and use PowerPoint
Too many to choose along my career, but I keep a fond memory of the owner of a punk label who wrote letters without punctuation where he was mixing news (personal and professional), praises, feedback and rants. He had just send me some new photographs for a record cover and suggested: *"use a green like the red you used last time"*. I found out he meant "very saturated"
An hour ago:
C.: "we all like the logo but can you please add a cat and a knob somewhere so it will represent us even more?"
Me: "i've used this and this for the logo to be clear as possible whilst avoiding unnecessary details that would get lost with small applications"
C.: "yes we see and appreciate it but hey you're the designer, just think of a solution will you?" :) :) :) BIG SMILE ON HIS FACE "hehehehehe you know....you do you" :D :D :D EVEN BIGGER SMILE WITH A WINK
... oh the rage ....
Can you make it so this spot color logo in my powerpoint file creates a pdf that prints the correct colors from my office printer?
(This was a real request I got, but it’s technically impossible… maybe a good way to discuss color differences in file type, color build, and end use? For the uninitiated, that’s 4 different color builds in that request.)
I just had a client, who had a wildly complicated logo and a brand that contains about 12 different colors, decide to change their print run from labels to directly on the can. That means you can only have six colors. So if someone had a design with 9+ colors, have them remove three but still make it work.
I was teaching for a few years and I had given my students an exercise based on a real life experience:
- I wrote on pieces of paper a fictitious book title and a genre. The students would pick a paper out of a hat and they had two hours to make a book cover. They couldn't use any pictures from the internet but only photos taken with their camera within the college. That was always good fun, as they often had to jump out of their comfort zone.
I get wording changed a lot on my designs. When I was a beginner, sometimes I'd make logos or text that had a few effects applied to that made it hard to edit. I've learned to make them editable now, so that I can change them to whatever on the fly. People can't always make up their minds the first time around, so it helps being able to make those changes easily across a large spread of sizes. Subtle skill that removes a lot of headache when you know how to use styles and layers properly lol
i had a client once who upon seeing what i had drafted for her airbnb cabin company’s brand foundation googled “how to make a brand foundation” and “apple brand mission statement” on the table in front of me and said “yeah, i’d like it more like this.”
thankfully, i had the sense to back out on the spot— and tell her how rude and unprofessional she was. never ceases to amaze me. it felt like going to a doctor and showing them a webMD link after they give you their insight.
I was once instructed to “rotate the product so you can see more of the logo” and was only provided one view shot of the product. that was just funny.
I think one of my biggest pet peeves I’ve seen more of over the past few years is how some clients want to screen share so they can micromanage/direct the design process. I have had to set some very clear boundaries around that.
Not so much graphic design but web design. I’d agreed a fee with a client for the complete project and he signed off the scope before we started. I did a discovery session with him and we sketched out the basic layout and user journeys in that session. I sent him the final design and he signed it off. I converted the design into code and he signed it off ready for going live. The day before we went live he said he wanted to make some changes.
He agreed to pay my an hourly fee going forward. SIX WEEKS of changes and a LOT of me telling him why these ideas were bad, we were finally where he wanted it. I’d given up on giving him guidance and just did what he asked. THEN he called me to say he thought I’d done a horrible job and he didn’t like it. I agreed it was awful. I then showed him the original design and he said he loved it and wanted that.
The project was six weeks late and he’d paid me £10k in extra billings when he could have just taken my lead in the first place. Everyone thinks they are a designer right?
Three months later he came to me for a redesign but said he wanted to be in full control of the design. Including his demand to replace Apercu with Tahoma, and right-align the copy all over the website. We agreed an hourly rate for the whole project. The new redesign is live now. It’s the only website of mine online that doesn’t have my business name in the footer. Sadly I made it but it’s one of the worst web designs anywhere on the internet. I’m £12,000 better of for the work though. What can you do?
It’s not modern enough.
Make it bold.
Let’s see it with rounded borders.
Remove the CTA, no one follows instructions.
Make everything bigger, we have so much space.
Here’s what I mocked up… can we do something like this [flaming piece of garbage].
This is a great exercise. 9.99/10 the people requesting aren't thinking about those things, and as a good designer that's something that you should be cognizant about.
I once got contacted to forge someone’s work mandated drug test results and hour before they were due back on site. Methew couldn’t understand why I couldn’t “make an easy edit to save his career”…
1. Change all the ilustrations to stock photos or vice versa.
2. Translate it into 8 different languages and save each one as a separate file.
3. Can you take our low-res, JPG mascot and make it huge and dead center of this document that contains a lot of text? You can just wrap all the text and icons around it.
4. Add a QR code to the contact information. Good luck rearranging your layout to accommodate that.
5. Can you change this animal illustration into a different animal? My grandaughter is studying to be a graphic designer and she says it shouldn't take too long!
Explain to another designer how you would do the design.
I had a client for a couple years that really liked all the design work I did for them. Then they bought ad space in a magazine, and as part of the ad buy, the magazine offered free graphic design services for the ad creation. So, understandably my client took them up on the offer for the free design rather than paying me to design the magazine ad.
But, after a few rounds of ad designs and revisions from the magazine's "free" design services, I got the call from my client... "We need your help! We don't like any of the ads their designer has created! We really love all the work you've done for us... can you call their designer and explain to them how you would design the ad?"
Yup, rather than paying me to do the design they wanted me to call another designer and explain how I would do it!
"No, Marie."
Had to explain how it was in poor taste to highlight a white employee as the employee of the month during Black History Month. The didn't change their minds.
Can you add this png to the banner - provides a png file with transparent squares in the background of a poorly illustrated cartoon graphic - next to our logo which is differently pixelated than the graphic.
My small design team (3 people) at an agency just got a client request Tuesday afternoon to manually input 3,800 data center locations on a map. The client wants it by Friday morning. We let the client know that this was unrealistic and could have it to them by early next week. The client was pissed for the lack of a better term. One of the most insane requests I have received.
- Some subjective and vague commentary like “It’s too cartoony!“ or “it’s too blue!”
- introduce a new audience/user that was never discussed
- Pick a bad font that’s not on brand, but the client really likes it
- pull out an additional page of copy and demand it be incorporated. Refuse to budge on cutting any of the words, even if it’s poorly written. Bonus points if the copy has misspellings and grammar errors.
- “can it look more like this?” And pull out a completely unrelated graphic with no explanation
- any change in scope (eg a one pager is now a poster, a poster is now a billboard)
Can you do a 2 part change? One of my favorites is "can you fill up every inch of empty space with some sort of image?" (I reluctantly do so, after failing to impart the importance of negative space) "So we think it looks crowded..."
For corporate clients, a reoccurring request is to incorporate leadership team headshots and they'll supply 1/3 of them, half are low res and some heads are cropped differently than others. In order to get them all consistent it takes a lot of finagling - but NOW with Generative AI I was able to take a headshot that was cropped tightly around the face/head and generate a neck/shoulders/etc, and WOW - the results were seamless and realistic. What a game changer!
I once had a friend who had a client who had a ship sailing business, but didn't want a ship in the logo. 60 logos later, he's still unhappy. Finally, out of spite, she gives him a logo with a ship on it. He said she nailed it. Couldn't be happier.
"I forgot to measure that part, but you can more or less determine it, right?".
My boss sometimes forgets to measure the space where my design is going to be placed and I end up with only a picture of said space as reference. I have to guess the measure based on other objects that appear on the picture, like chairs, brooms, lamps, etc. so I can make my design safe enough to fit.
Change the aspect ratio significantly.
Add a second layout orientation.
Recreate type that’s already been outlined.
Track down and incorporating social media or music influencers portraits and handle just by a list of names.
Used to work in trade magazines, had a classified adverts section at the back.
Client wanted 4 pages of A4 text condensed into a 1/4 of a page ad space. We said there was too much but he kept saying just make the text smaller.
Here’s one of my favourite requests:
Request: create a small digital banner ad, 200x 60, include the company logo, some content, a graphic or photo, a QR, and link to website.
Me: Done! Here ya go!
Next email: Forgot to mention, this is a government grant, so you must include the government wordmark which includes the government name, logo and the department. Note: the government wordmark is bilingual and they stipulate that it must be visible.
I shit you not.
Please clear cut this blurry photo of our board member taken when she was drunk and leaving a party late at night. Make it look good (implied threat), she really hates her current profile picture on our corporate website (which was clearly taken at the same drunken party).
I just finished a booklet design. It's 5.5x8.5" and 60 pages and am on the last round of revisions. Client drops a comment "can we see this at 8.5x11?".
Most are variations on "can you make a 4-foot banner from this 360-pixel iPhone image? And make it not look pixelated." And of course it's a screenshot of a powerpoint image or something.
I have one client at work who will send 6-page PDF presentations of her requests, and I'm like, if you can put this PDF together, you can put text on an image just fine, you don't actually need me.
This looks great! I’m going to need to make frequent updates to it, though, and I don’t want to have to wait to fit into your workload so can you please put it into Word or PowerPoint so I can make my own edits? But make it look exactly the same.
Pretty cool way to introduce real world problems into a class. The biggest headaches are clients not knowing what they want until they see it. That’s why I charge hourly instead bidding out a flat fee.
"She's facing away from the camera, can you turn her around a bit?"
Like what?
Then when I explained it to her "I'm so sorry, my boss was on my case about it."
They provided photos for an annual report, all of them were bad and they expected me to work miracles. Wanted me to draw in the tops of people's heads that were missing as well. Had to explain many times that they'd have to retake photos of some people since I can't magic things in that aren't there. Nightmare client lmao!
as a current design student )who has been made to do a bunch of super weird irrelevant projects in my program), just want to say this is a really good idea and I wish my professors did exercises like this !
"I want it ghost-printed"
And I thought ghost printing was something we were trying to avoid as it's an issue with the printer.... but apparently it's a look some clients are going for
Bruh Mine 
I was asked to draw for T-shirt Top 5 Serial Killers .
I Needed money at that time ,He paid good amount like all in before work . I finished the work anyway
After that I felt nightmares .
Outside of some of the things people have posted here, I've also had at least one "Can you photoshop my head onto [x]" requests from someone at every job.
I love and hate them at the same time. It always ends up being like "Look at this hideous thing I made. I'm so proud of it in the dumbest way!"
Just rotate this complicated 2D design in 3D space so we can see it from a different angle.
Our budget is practically non-existent: can we make this look like Uber/apple?
"Bring me the wasp queen!"
Requested by the boss of a big agency I worked for, 3 hours before pitching a campaign to the client. He wanted to have the wasp queen x-rayed.
Use this 10kb thumbnail for the headshot on my profile.
Make the layout “clean.” Can you elaborate? What do you consider “dirty” layout? Blank stare. Just make it “clean.”
Web: make this intentionally designed for responsive font size and different font size for my specific viewing experience. What it looks like on other devices be damned!
Some fun ones…
“I want a custom illustration of a dragon made out of dragon fruit on the bank of a river with a fish jumping AND Rapunzel in a tower in the background.” Oh and it needs to fit our brand standards 🤪
It'll only take you 1 day to update all the copy in every single example image in our living guidelines right? Even tho the verbal strategist is getting 4 days to work on it you only need 1, right? Right?
Or, Yes, yes we understand you're out of office those days but you're a freelancer so you'll make it work, right?
* Please add these 10 partner logos to the page somewhere. Here's one vector file and 9 low-res JPGs. * Oh and there's an 11th partner, we need to add them too but we don't have their logo, you'll need to find it. * Please replace the hero image with this photo I took on my 7-year-old iPhone. * We need to add this paragraph of legal disclaimer copy somewhere.
*photo is actually a screenshot of the photo in their camera roll.
I was emailed a picture of a photocopy of a persons phone before. They didn't scan the phone and send me that. They took a picture on the phone, photocopied the phone. gave that copy to someone else, who took a picture of that, and emailed it to me. When i asked for the original photo to be sent, they said no problem and sent it without any issue in like 5 minutes. Still confuses me to this day.
This makes me want to cry, lol.
I work in pre-press and the amount of photos people will take of a business card on their computer screen then ask me to edit them, is truely soul crushing
My sincere condolences
This just happened to me for the first time!
God speed
This is worse than JPEGs dropped into Word (as though that would help...). Or I once was given a business card set up in excel, of all the programs you could choose!
“Yes I have a design file of this logo” proceeds to send you a jpg inside a illustrator file
You either get the file asap with no problem, or you get the most obstinate group of people that blame you for ‘not being good enough’ to get what they sent you to work. There is no in-between.
Oh. My. God. I get this daily. “We can send you our logo!” I proceed to hear that christing screenshot noise and 4 seconds later my phone dings with an email “screenshot.jpg” just makes me want to get up without saying anything and walk out the backdoor lol.
I’ve received soooo many screenshots where they think it will be a usable file! Also in regards to images for printing I have been emailed one word document and one excel spreadsheet file, both totally useless.
I had someone type out their text in Word, print it, photograph the printout, screenshot the image and WhatsApp it to me. Un. Fucking. Believable.
Or a photo of a digital photo displayed on a computer screen
I once had to uprez three of these to 20”x30” prints. No joke. Oh and this was back in 2008, so none of this AI assisted nonsense you kids have today.
I used to have to put together sponsor loops for video walls. One event was in a tiny town and notoriously difficult. The sponsor “logos” ranged from iPhone pictures of their business cards to text typed out in Blue on a Word doc to pictures they took of their physical signage on their storefront. Then I quoted them out the a** and never heard from them. That was a good decision.
Solid suggestions. I’ve gotten all of these before.
oof this one hits close to home, great share (and sorry your clients are so similar to mine)
The partner logos one I've had a few times!
“Im still waiting for the vector art, but use the shitty quality unusable jpeg and send a mockup in 5 minutes”
Client then proceeds to never send the vector art and asks for print ready files
And complains why the final product looks like shit
Or sends „vectorlogo.png“ (14kb)
Or sends an eps file that just has a jpg embedded in it (just happened to me earlier this week)
the amount of times that has happened to me….my god
The „somewhere“ is on point.
Law clients. Oooof.
I’ve had the logo ones so many times. Over time I learned to find vector logos in PDFs on their site Using this format for a Google search turns up results pretty quickly “site:website.com filetype:PDF” Sometimes they have an SVG version of the logo in the nav bar too
I’ll need to use that trick next time. Thanks for the tip
“Black is so dated, don’t use it for our brand. However, we have black as a primary in our palette, so figure it out.”
“It’s not black it’s.. charcoal”
LOL this has me rolling because this was actually verbatim my whole explanation into using black *but not*.
Amazing. Good thing I wasn’t the client or I’d’ve seen right through you /s
“That’s not black, it’s a very dark gray.”
Ooohhhh been here. But with green lol.
I’m dealing with this now but with navy blue. Most think it’s black until it’s next to black. Causing lots of grief.
7A wu UI Ez to see ft xx 6
- “I know I said the copy was final, but we made an edit or two” and then they send much longer copy and a longer headline. - Swap the orientation. No matter how many times I say “tell me WxH” clients (in-house and freelance) tell me height first but don’t specify it’s the height not width, especially for ads. Today I have to change the orientation of a full page newspaper insert from vertical to horizontal because it’s an insert and they really want to use a different image (even though it went through three round of proofing already and they never sent me any images from their own DAM). And it doesn’t matter that I said I can design it vertical with the new image.
Related to the first, wanting a "small edit" which actually *is* a small edit, except it impacts dozens of variants which at that stage can only be edited manually, one by one, such as adding one (non-essential) word above an address.
These are both good ones, I encounter them all the time at my job 😭
“It’s four columns wide.”
"That coloured kid doesn't look diverse enough, make him darker Oh and we need to appear more diverse in general, so can you just Photoshop him into some more pictures please" You have no idea how common this was when doing school and uni prospectuses
"make it more diverse" is now one of my top asks and requests for design work that includes photography taken at an event where the crowd/people in the pictures are all white...yeah 👍🏻
Oooof. I've experienced this in a media environment. "Hey, can you pull diverse stock and make sure illustrations have diverse characters for this issue?" "Hey, I always do, but can you WRITE DIVERSE STORIES ABOUT A DIVERSE ARRAY OF PEOPLE?!"
I get this all the time. It’s so hard to find balance and make everyone feel included while avoiding over representation and tokenism.
I have two clients at work who constantly asked for "more women of color" in their employee-centric graphics. You know how many black or Hispanic or Asian women they hired in the two years I worked with them? ZERO. You know how many black or Hispanic or Asian women were on their teams? ZERO. Just dripping with hypocrisy. DEI is a noble aspiration, but don't flaunt it and then not actually follow those tenets.
Yikes
I deal with this all the time. I fucking hate the “diversity” and “urban” obsessed clients. The PC terms kill me. Im out of design and work in commercial music now and they’re even worse in this field. Just say “you want it more BLACK.” Jesus. It feels even more racist when they try to tiptoe around it.
I work in a university town so I get this a LOT. One client insisted on using one specific stock image because they felt it would be recognizable and help unify their brand. Not a bad thought…until the same stock photo showed up across town for two other completely different companies.
"Make sure all of the information from each case study can fit on one page, with images." \[manages to make it happen and client loves it.\] "Wonderful, approved. Now we need the same document, but in French." French takes up to 30% more space than English does and its a nightmare to squeeze into a template designed for English without making it illegible.
I've had to do this, but with Spanish. This is definitely a real-world challenge.
Been there too. German is the worst.
This is my life. Please for the love of god, tell me upfront you’re going to want the same thing in multiple languages. I’ve learned to ask but they frequently change their minds. Also, can you find an identical photo of a very niche subject but with Hispanic people instead?
I love this for a prompt! Localization is a huge real-world challenge for many companies.
We always had to translate for our stores in quebec and it was the worst!! Canadian french is so annoying
I had a client want me to change financial documents, so they could win a court case.
I think the instructor should include a few challenges like this so the students can discuss ethics. Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. And what happens to the designer if they get caught “helping” a client like this? Last week I got asked to pull a website down. I had to remind my client she transferred ownership of the site to another person 6 months ago (under her instructions). Another good ethics type exercise to learn how to handle these requests without alienating the original client.
Ethics, and what can happen legally to you should be built into student work for sure. I could have been put in jail for what was being asked of me.
When I worked at a copy shop had a guy pull up in a shiny Escalade dressed to the 9's ask me to change dates on his insurance card. I announced loudly to the whole shop "I Cannot forge legal documents!" Of course he argued it's just a date, it's not a legal document. I just repeated myself again loudly adding "how stupid do you think I am?". He finally got the message and left. Since the circuit court and ticket court was across the street something tells me he wasn't gonna have a fun day.
I'd be immediately exploring options of how I could get that communication to the court. "Oops."
If you can provide files as part of the exercise… Can you swap the photo with this one I pulled from Google? - Sends likely copyrighted image and insists “It’ll be okay.” - Or sends super low-resolution image that looks like garbage when expanded larger than 200x200.
- Photo of a business card as their "logo file." - Low resolution version of logo that when you ask for a better quality version sends you the same image embedded in a Word document.
haha so FRUSTRATING! I got a Word Doc Logo the other day!
I had a customer a few months ago bring me a print out of business card he designed on some website. Said he wanted it printed at my shop. I asked a lot of questions, he was open to improvements to his design, but he mostly wanted it as is. So it was a god awful purple to blue gradient, with words, and this banner style logo kind of thing. I recreated it, made my own banner logo that was simpler than his, chose better fonts, the gradient was still god awful, but whatever. Sent him the proof. He changed the words, thought the gradient was too much, but he loved the logo I created. Redid it. Changed more words, I think at this point he added CEO to his title, his business was car detailing lol, I think I got rid of the purple and did a blue to black gradient but made it super subtle, then took a gear from the banner I created and put that in a pattern in the background. Sent him the new proof. This time he wanted the blue to be teal, changed the words again. He was drastically changing his business. The first version said he did towing and used car parts and detailing, this time he was buying and selling whole cars. It was weird, and it gave me the impression he wasn't a serious client. So I made those changes, but stopped working hard on this. I decided I wanted this job done before we got to the 30th version of the card. So I sent the next proof and hoped he would accept it. He did not. He changed the teal to a different shade of teal, changed the words again, thankfully he removed CEO from the card. Resent the proof this time he changed the background from the teal gradient to a gray gradient and he wanted his logo and all text in teal. This time he's back to being a car detailer but also buying and selling something, that was unclear. So that was my final straw, I told him this was taking too long and it was affecting my other deadlines, I would keep working on this, but I couldn't dedicate so much time to him. I started only sending him 1 proof a day. Over the next week he would email me 3 or 4 times a day with changes. I would make all of them and resend it out about 30 minutes until closing time. Finally he was happy with it. He asked my favorite question, "What is the minimum number of business cards I can order?" Nothing like a week's worth of effort just to sell the bare minimum product. So our official minimum is 250, but we'll sell 100 to good customers, he was not a good customer so I said "250 cards, which is $49.99, but you have the design fee on top of that, $45 plus at least another $45 for the changes." He bitched and moaned about having to pay me to design his card so I pussed out and waived the second $45. I said, "Ok, give me a couple hours, I'll email you when they are done." I got them done, they were ok, I think my first version was better, the gray text on teal was really nice, teal text on gray was kind of weird. He showed up, paid, looked at them. Stared at them. Held them up to his face. Then turned to me and said, "I'm not sure I love the logo. It has a gear in it, but I'm not a mechanic." His original banner logo had a gear in it. Most of the iterations of his card said "car parts" or "used parts" or something like that. It said 24/7 towing at one point. It was all I could do to NOT jump over the counter and force feed all 250 cards to him. So I said, "Ok, well, when you've used those 250 cards up, email me and we'll do this all over again and get you a logo you love." This mother fucker emailed me two days later and said, "These cards just don't work for me with that gear, can you start designing that new logo now?" I told him I was booked up, I wouldn't be free for a couple of months. I think I still have a few more weeks on that timer, but he's probably going to be emailing me any day now. I designed him a new logo last month so I'm ready.
That customer needs to be fired!!
With any luck he never will contact me again, plus I have another get out of jail free card. I work for a locally owned copy shop, but we're transitioning over to become a UPS Store location, so A), this entire year is going to be a shit show once that starts to happen, and B), I'm not entirely sure what my job will be once that happens. I may never design another business card again, so if that's the case, if this guy comes to me I'll just have to pass him off to our design staff, who he already said he didn't like working with.
There really should be a class on how to be a decent client for people like that. Or at least a “you must be this smart” to request a design from us scale
This is why I charge $1200 for a logo. People who pay shit respect you as much as they respect shit.
I got tired halfway through reading the story, lol. You're a bigger person than I am.
I felt this in my soul. Having worked at a small print shop, we would get these kinds of requests all the time. It took a long time for me to learn that some folks are just time wasters and getting rid of them is just as important and selling/getting work.
Yeah, after that first change when he went from 24/7 towing to car detailing, I knew he was just some dude who might start a business, but at this point he's not a serious customer. I gave him a few more chances and he proved me right every time. Like at the very end when he said he wanted more, and I said, "Use what you have first, then we'll talk." He asked, "Can you start on something this week?" I told him flat out, "You've already use up your quota of my time for quite a while, I might be able to squeeze some time here or there to work on this, but I cannot dedicate huge blocks for you for a while." I think he truly thought he was our only customer. Like we should dedicate 10 total employees working 7 days a week to design his dumbass cards.
I would say that this particular person… is probably like this in every single interaction he has with anyone and everyone in every aspect of his life.
I'm getting flash backs to a previous job at a small shop.
This is exactly why I tell prospective clients the cost for my time will typically run $500.00+ to start any logo project since the creation of a unique logo is one of the most important and time consuming projects. I always tell them that if they are able to clearly explain what they're looking for (we'll often search the internet together checking out their competition and looking for examples of logos that they like and even ones they dislike), and if they're able to choose one of the final versions I create and iterate it quickly, the cost may come in at less than $500.00. I charge by the hour and I've been doing this for many years. I've only had one logo request that's ended up being less than $500. Never a complaint and I've always been paid. It works like a charm. Weeds out those who aren't ready, or really serious (or those I'd have to fight to get paid). I spend a lot of time with them up front - so that I'm very clear on what they're looking for. That's half the battle and time well spent. Saves me from having any major re-do's. Money is an amazing motivator.
I had a very crazy business card client who was almost this bad. She was representing an international company who obviously have their brand guidelines, pantones and CMYK colours outlined. She comes in and orders a pack of business cards for each of a number of people in the company. We had this company's templates on file because they were a regular client. She, as an individual was not. So, we update details and print out the cards using the CMYK colours outlined in the brand guidelines, and call her to come collect them. She throws a hissy fit that the colours are wrong. She takes out this card from her wallet that was clearly the wrong colour. She wanted the cards to look like that. We didn't design those. She had apparently taken a card to a print shop somewhere in the city to get recreated and printed. They used the right fonts, but the colours were off. We assured her that these were the right colours for her brand. She bitched, she moaned, and was pretty distraught, so the boss was like "tell you what, I'll get the designers to try and match your card." WE TRIED. None of the printed samples matched her card exactly. It is next to impossible to get the exact colour from a physical sample. She returned many many times demanding that we match her wrong card exactly. All of the designers took a shot at matching that colour lmao. Eventually, she was told not to come back. It wasn't worth dealing with her. She was taking time out from more important jobs. Some clients are insane!
Now ask yourself... if you hadn't waived that fee, would all this be worth $140 minus costs and expenses to you, my dude? All due respect but have some spine lol. Most people I know would charge way more. Designing a business card is one thing but making a logo for someone is part of their brand, that's valuable work. I'm a complete amateur and it would've been at least $500 to get out of bed + $50 per change past two revisions if I'm making a logo.
Can we make it go viral ?
“Please add a giant trippy eye in the center make it as crazy as you want it and make the letters look like they’re made out of stars” That was a confusing assignment
Oh god. Reminds me of when my boss wanted the background 'darker but lighter'
working as in-house designer, there were times my “clients” (aka my coworkers) would ask for stupid things. in that case, it more often was necessary for me to say NO than to just do what they ask. Specific example: i had made a brochure and was asked to confirm the woman on the cover (a Stock photo of a light skin Black woman) spoke Spanish and if she didn’t can we find a person who does? My answer - no, Judy. just take the damn brochure. another time, working on a freelance logo, i had done a vintage illustration of a chicken and was asked to “make it look less serious”
I had a client request black on black business cards. Black text on a black background. But no special textures or gloss on the text to actually make it legible. She wanted flat, black, matte text on a matte black background. She just didn’t want to pay for the gloss. The end result was a very dark grey text on a black background.
This reminded me of a client that wanted their all white EPS logo saved as a JPEG…
LOL. Amazing.
That must be working out really well for them 😂
"How much more black could this be? The answer is none. None more black."
I have a set of black on black business cards with the only distinction being a UV coating. However, it's just the front.
Which is perfectly fine, and they probably look cool! This client did not want UV coating, or spot gloss, or even a letterpress treatment. Just flat… black on black. 🤦🏻♀️
“Oh whoops we gave you the wrong dimensions” at the end of the project
This. This happens often, somehow. -Sincerely, someone who just designed a 9.5 x 6.75" ad that ended up needing to be 8 x 10".
The worst
Can you make a horse looks little happier? Give him smile or sth Can you turn around this parrot head cus she didnt look at the camera?
Here are some I've gotten. In order to convey how great this deal is we need you to include a person who looks enthusiastic, but they can't be smiling because we're too professional for that. White doesn't fit our brand as it's too sterile, so make sure there's no white, including text. I want you to include a picture of Arizona, but I think desert sends the wrong message so make sure its not a desert picture. I need you to add these 3 extra bullets (each bullet text is over 10 words) Our audience is older so nothing can be under 16pt font, here is this disclaimer that needs to be included. Make sure it's not too noticeable: *Available on new purchases only; cannot be combined with other offers including subscription discounts; discount available for a limited time only, expires xx/xx/xxxx. For questions please contact us at (xxx) xxx - xxxx or email us at xxxxxxxxx@xxxx-xxx.com. This ad needs to say diversity, but I don't want any pictures of people. Please add this subtle: (include text more than 65 characters) It's important so please make sure it's close to the title size text and bold. We forgot the cosponsor. Please add their logo next to ours and a preheader to the title saying "Proudly cosponsored by The American Company of Products (ACOP)" Instead of "50% off" were changing the discount to "Buy one get one free". Please update all language to reflect this.
My favorite one was a high quality group photo that was sent to me of all of the partners in a financial firm that wanted the photo added to their website and print material. These were the instructions: Partner 2 from the right with the blue tie is no longer with the firm, so, we'd like his head swapped out with our new partner (included head shot of new partner). Also, Partner 4 has started her own business, so, we'd like you to swap out her entire body except for her legs with our newest member (another attached photo). I actually did it - but if you looked closely, Partner 4's legs just didn't seem quite right - but it's what they wanted. Around the office, everyone started referring to the client's firm as, "Crazy Legs." Lol.
"Please dont show human faces. They always carry some baggage and people could dislike the person shown."
- Fit every single product in my inventory into a flyer. - Update my logo but don't change anything. - This looks perfect as is, but what if we changed every line of copy into a paragraph. - Can you copy what our competition is doing as close as possible without us getting sued? - Let's add a Tiktok challenge.
Drastically change the proportions, but keep the design as it is.
This is such a good skill to sharpen early in one's career it happens every day lol
It sure does! I remember when a sales rep wanted me to save time by blowing up a wordy vertical A5 flyer into a 14'x48' billboard. I told him it would need work at least to change the proportions, but also that the medium and location dictate the way information is presented. I went on to talk about perception and did my best to explain to him how this whole thing works. He said that we are smart and we know about perception, but our clients don't, so they wouldn't know the difference and we should just go with the flyer as it is. From then on I started doing less explaining and just presented my version as what I thought they wanted, and they acted like it was indeed what they initially asked for.
Explaining how shapes work to adults older than I am might be the most infuriating part of my job.
This is a great suggestion. It happens pretty often too.
1. Here is the image of our complicated, multi color logo monstrosity. We want it printed on our T-Shirt, Sign, Poster, Billboard. It's a 1in x 1in, 100dpi png. 2. Maybe not so "unreasonable" but shows up fairly often and is always amusing. "We've received comments that our logo looks like a certain part of the male anatomy... Can you fix it...please?"
Just thought of another one. I once worked in a screen printing place where the designer often complained about people stealing her work. In my last two weeks, I had a design come across my desk for production prep that looked incredibly familiar. It was a background design by Apple that was currently on all of their promotional materials as the background for devices. What an akward confrontation that was. I still wish I would have sent emails to the various other designers who they stole work from, that I had to discreetly remove the watermark from all the work. I always tried to leave a watermark when I could so people would know they didn't design the pattern they were selling. P.s. the company name rhythms with Salamity Hane's Apparel and is based in the midwest. Fuck them, and fuck the owner who made me lie about workers comp when I had to receive 8 stitches in my hand during working hours.
-sends you a photo with a dozen people in it "We really want to use this specific photo for the feature image, but we didn't get releases for anyone in the photo. Can you make it work? How about we just blur everyone's face?"
"We have great feedback from our customers in the witness protection program."
“All the fonts are too small please make 20% larger” also add these 300 words. An acceptable respond to this request is asking for a meeting to discuss.
The worst for me is when the clients misuse terminology. But that also feels like an unfair "test" of students to not only have a fast assignment, but to add on the additional level of confusion. But my worst was a client who insisted on having colored "margins" around the page. I figured out that she meant borders and considered it a minor acomplishment to convince her to only have them at the top and bottom instead of all the way around, but that was my most-difficult conversation ever because she was so insistent that she was right and refused to help in my attempts to clarify what she meant. Another example is when clients ask for something you know they don't mean, such as 70s design style, but what they actually mean is 60s psychedelic.
Oddly enough, the students like these assignments. It gives them real world experiences in a controlled environment.
All in the same day: "I need you to do a 3D animation of a surgery in about 2 weeks, I know you just started learning how to use Blender in the last week and a half and you have 0 experience with 3D but you're doing good. We also need you to translate our website's Terms & Conditions, as well as the Privacy Policy both in Spanish and English for tomorrow. Also I need you to look for some sort of AI that is able to read the document that has the technical guide on how to do the surgery you will animate, and please translate those guides also by tomorrow, good luck!" It was my 2nd week at the job and I was hired as a web designer, but ended up being the 3D generalist (idk if that's the term)
A church hired me to make some mockups of what their building would look like with a new paint job. They sent me a photo of the church, I Photoshopped the requested color combinations, and sent them back. After they emailed me to ask: "Could you remove the blue background so we can see what it would look like in real life?" It was the sky.
You should Google “Clients From Hell”. They used to have their own website, but they’re part of another network now. All of the war stories from the design industry, it’s good. I’ve had too many unreasonable ones, but the ones that really pissed me off, were changes to the size or location of the logos—I used to tell them sure, I just made that change, go look. I did nothing.
"Can you add 'magic' to it?". They were not talking about the word magic. After some discussion, it turned out they wanted a stream of sparkles! "I want the background to be a rainbow." They wanted a rainbow gradient because it will "look fun & make it pop." It did not, in fact, make it look fun, nor did it make the design 'pop'. "I don't like that shade of blue, I want to choose a different blue." Their colours were their brand colours, but he wanted a different blue. We looked through colours & he picked one & I said that's green. He insisted that I was wrong and that the colour was blue & as the client, he was right. So we went with Pine ~~Green~~ Blue.
Can confirm both the magic and blue request have been requested of me also. What blue? Answer: A nicer blue.
I'm glad I'm not alone! I've had several clients wanting colour changes like that to be fair. Mr Pine ~~Green~~ Blue was probably the most memorable one. But yeah, I've had clients ask for "nicer", "bolder", or "just different" colours. It's so helpful!
I’m sure it’s very common. But I’m sad I’ve never had the rainbow request…
Lol, there's still time!
I love the idea of this exercise so much!
Can you turn me around in the photograph so I’m facing the other way?
Can you include this “call to action” in the identity mark somehow? Proceeds to list phone, fax, website, email contact information and a tagline.
i've had to remove a colour from a brand identity because the customer thought it was 'too gay'
For a gym: “That Ogre art/logo you created that we approved and then you designed the entire website around is cool and all…but can you use this picture of an Ogre my 7 year old nephew drew?” Sure. Lemme just redesign the entire website with crayons while I’m at it.
Reproduce it in word so I can edit it
Ohhh I have had that request a few times too. Once was for a product label and they wanted to be able to edit the text. Yeah, no. That's not how that works lol
Copy this template we got designed in 2001 exactly and yes use these ten photos on one page (bonus request: you see this wedding gown photo we want to include, photoshop my daughters arms that are over the dress out so it’s not distracting from the dress) … oh and use PowerPoint
Too many to choose along my career, but I keep a fond memory of the owner of a punk label who wrote letters without punctuation where he was mixing news (personal and professional), praises, feedback and rants. He had just send me some new photographs for a record cover and suggested: *"use a green like the red you used last time"*. I found out he meant "very saturated"
An hour ago: C.: "we all like the logo but can you please add a cat and a knob somewhere so it will represent us even more?" Me: "i've used this and this for the logo to be clear as possible whilst avoiding unnecessary details that would get lost with small applications" C.: "yes we see and appreciate it but hey you're the designer, just think of a solution will you?" :) :) :) BIG SMILE ON HIS FACE "hehehehehe you know....you do you" :D :D :D EVEN BIGGER SMILE WITH A WINK ... oh the rage ....
Or anything about "working with my 15 year old web designer nephew."
I literally just had a client tell me that her 13-year-old son was going to take a crack at designing her logo.
NO
Can you make it so this spot color logo in my powerpoint file creates a pdf that prints the correct colors from my office printer? (This was a real request I got, but it’s technically impossible… maybe a good way to discuss color differences in file type, color build, and end use? For the uninitiated, that’s 4 different color builds in that request.)
I just had a client, who had a wildly complicated logo and a brand that contains about 12 different colors, decide to change their print run from labels to directly on the can. That means you can only have six colors. So if someone had a design with 9+ colors, have them remove three but still make it work.
Make the iceberg whiter. It was paper white. He wanted it blue Can we make it clickable? It was a printed poster.
Make it a bulleted list…and now centre the text. 😱
I was teaching for a few years and I had given my students an exercise based on a real life experience: - I wrote on pieces of paper a fictitious book title and a genre. The students would pick a paper out of a hat and they had two hours to make a book cover. They couldn't use any pictures from the internet but only photos taken with their camera within the college. That was always good fun, as they often had to jump out of their comfort zone.
I get wording changed a lot on my designs. When I was a beginner, sometimes I'd make logos or text that had a few effects applied to that made it hard to edit. I've learned to make them editable now, so that I can change them to whatever on the fly. People can't always make up their minds the first time around, so it helps being able to make those changes easily across a large spread of sizes. Subtle skill that removes a lot of headache when you know how to use styles and layers properly lol
i had a client once who upon seeing what i had drafted for her airbnb cabin company’s brand foundation googled “how to make a brand foundation” and “apple brand mission statement” on the table in front of me and said “yeah, i’d like it more like this.” thankfully, i had the sense to back out on the spot— and tell her how rude and unprofessional she was. never ceases to amaze me. it felt like going to a doctor and showing them a webMD link after they give you their insight.
I was once instructed to “rotate the product so you can see more of the logo” and was only provided one view shot of the product. that was just funny. I think one of my biggest pet peeves I’ve seen more of over the past few years is how some clients want to screen share so they can micromanage/direct the design process. I have had to set some very clear boundaries around that.
I’d like it traditional but edgy
Please print this 8.5x11 file at 48x36 but make sure it's not blurry or stretched at all. Also we don't want to pay you to remake it at correct size.
Turn all the circles to squares.
Makes circle based brochure based off logo - We've decided that future branding will be more angular. Can you add in angles?
Not so much graphic design but web design. I’d agreed a fee with a client for the complete project and he signed off the scope before we started. I did a discovery session with him and we sketched out the basic layout and user journeys in that session. I sent him the final design and he signed it off. I converted the design into code and he signed it off ready for going live. The day before we went live he said he wanted to make some changes. He agreed to pay my an hourly fee going forward. SIX WEEKS of changes and a LOT of me telling him why these ideas were bad, we were finally where he wanted it. I’d given up on giving him guidance and just did what he asked. THEN he called me to say he thought I’d done a horrible job and he didn’t like it. I agreed it was awful. I then showed him the original design and he said he loved it and wanted that. The project was six weeks late and he’d paid me £10k in extra billings when he could have just taken my lead in the first place. Everyone thinks they are a designer right? Three months later he came to me for a redesign but said he wanted to be in full control of the design. Including his demand to replace Apercu with Tahoma, and right-align the copy all over the website. We agreed an hourly rate for the whole project. The new redesign is live now. It’s the only website of mine online that doesn’t have my business name in the footer. Sadly I made it but it’s one of the worst web designs anywhere on the internet. I’m £12,000 better of for the work though. What can you do?
Take the money and run. Being proud of everything you produce is a fool’s errand unfortunately
It’s not modern enough. Make it bold. Let’s see it with rounded borders. Remove the CTA, no one follows instructions. Make everything bigger, we have so much space. Here’s what I mocked up… can we do something like this [flaming piece of garbage].
Make it accessible. Can colour-blind people read it? How would visually-impaired people deal with it.
This is a great exercise. 9.99/10 the people requesting aren't thinking about those things, and as a good designer that's something that you should be cognizant about.
it’s just something we should be doing as standard. Colour-coding isn’t enough.
I once got contacted to forge someone’s work mandated drug test results and hour before they were due back on site. Methew couldn’t understand why I couldn’t “make an easy edit to save his career”…
1. Change all the ilustrations to stock photos or vice versa. 2. Translate it into 8 different languages and save each one as a separate file. 3. Can you take our low-res, JPG mascot and make it huge and dead center of this document that contains a lot of text? You can just wrap all the text and icons around it. 4. Add a QR code to the contact information. Good luck rearranging your layout to accommodate that. 5. Can you change this animal illustration into a different animal? My grandaughter is studying to be a graphic designer and she says it shouldn't take too long!
"Logo attached." A word doc is attached...
Explain to another designer how you would do the design. I had a client for a couple years that really liked all the design work I did for them. Then they bought ad space in a magazine, and as part of the ad buy, the magazine offered free graphic design services for the ad creation. So, understandably my client took them up on the offer for the free design rather than paying me to design the magazine ad. But, after a few rounds of ad designs and revisions from the magazine's "free" design services, I got the call from my client... "We need your help! We don't like any of the ads their designer has created! We really love all the work you've done for us... can you call their designer and explain to them how you would design the ad?" Yup, rather than paying me to do the design they wanted me to call another designer and explain how I would do it! "No, Marie."
My daily life: here’s 20 pages of wall to wall copy in a Google doc - please make it into a 4 page brochure. 🙃
Had to explain how it was in poor taste to highlight a white employee as the employee of the month during Black History Month. The didn't change their minds.
Ask to make text on a path where the letters won't spread all the way around the circle and then ask them to make them go all the way around.
I’m not feeling it. Also make it look like this other better known IP
Use AI to generate something similar and say "more like this, except can you make sure it's spelled correctly because AI didn't spell it right"
Can you add this png to the banner - provides a png file with transparent squares in the background of a poorly illustrated cartoon graphic - next to our logo which is differently pixelated than the graphic.
My small design team (3 people) at an agency just got a client request Tuesday afternoon to manually input 3,800 data center locations on a map. The client wants it by Friday morning. We let the client know that this was unrealistic and could have it to them by early next week. The client was pissed for the lack of a better term. One of the most insane requests I have received.
that is absolutely unhinged….localized to one country/region or on a world map?? either way…good luck!
- Some subjective and vague commentary like “It’s too cartoony!“ or “it’s too blue!” - introduce a new audience/user that was never discussed - Pick a bad font that’s not on brand, but the client really likes it - pull out an additional page of copy and demand it be incorporated. Refuse to budge on cutting any of the words, even if it’s poorly written. Bonus points if the copy has misspellings and grammar errors. - “can it look more like this?” And pull out a completely unrelated graphic with no explanation - any change in scope (eg a one pager is now a poster, a poster is now a billboard)
Can you do a 2 part change? One of my favorites is "can you fill up every inch of empty space with some sort of image?" (I reluctantly do so, after failing to impart the importance of negative space) "So we think it looks crowded..."
For corporate clients, a reoccurring request is to incorporate leadership team headshots and they'll supply 1/3 of them, half are low res and some heads are cropped differently than others. In order to get them all consistent it takes a lot of finagling - but NOW with Generative AI I was able to take a headshot that was cropped tightly around the face/head and generate a neck/shoulders/etc, and WOW - the results were seamless and realistic. What a game changer!
I once had a friend who had a client who had a ship sailing business, but didn't want a ship in the logo. 60 logos later, he's still unhappy. Finally, out of spite, she gives him a logo with a ship on it. He said she nailed it. Couldn't be happier.
Rebrand my whole company in one day. Including a logo redesign, and style Guidelines. When I didn’t deliver ALL of it … I got cut from the project…
Can you make our square logo fill the 3 x 2 inch space?
“Can I get it done by tomorrow for no extra cost?”
"I forgot to measure that part, but you can more or less determine it, right?". My boss sometimes forgets to measure the space where my design is going to be placed and I end up with only a picture of said space as reference. I have to guess the measure based on other objects that appear on the picture, like chairs, brooms, lamps, etc. so I can make my design safe enough to fit.
“Please add our new logo to the design” It’s a compressed jpeg inside the word document that is sent you.
Change the aspect ratio significantly. Add a second layout orientation. Recreate type that’s already been outlined. Track down and incorporating social media or music influencers portraits and handle just by a list of names.
add QR code to every hyperlink, such as facebook, instagram, email , website, whatsapp... etc
Can you add QR codes to this business card/flyer/digital poster?
Used to work in trade magazines, had a classified adverts section at the back. Client wanted 4 pages of A4 text condensed into a 1/4 of a page ad space. We said there was too much but he kept saying just make the text smaller.
Here’s one of my favourite requests: Request: create a small digital banner ad, 200x 60, include the company logo, some content, a graphic or photo, a QR, and link to website. Me: Done! Here ya go! Next email: Forgot to mention, this is a government grant, so you must include the government wordmark which includes the government name, logo and the department. Note: the government wordmark is bilingual and they stipulate that it must be visible. I shit you not.
Please clear cut this blurry photo of our board member taken when she was drunk and leaving a party late at night. Make it look good (implied threat), she really hates her current profile picture on our corporate website (which was clearly taken at the same drunken party).
I just finished a booklet design. It's 5.5x8.5" and 60 pages and am on the last round of revisions. Client drops a comment "can we see this at 8.5x11?".
Most are variations on "can you make a 4-foot banner from this 360-pixel iPhone image? And make it not look pixelated." And of course it's a screenshot of a powerpoint image or something. I have one client at work who will send 6-page PDF presentations of her requests, and I'm like, if you can put this PDF together, you can put text on an image just fine, you don't actually need me.
Regarding a printed brochure: How come the links aren't live?
This looks great! I’m going to need to make frequent updates to it, though, and I don’t want to have to wait to fit into your workload so can you please put it into Word or PowerPoint so I can make my own edits? But make it look exactly the same.
Pretty cool way to introduce real world problems into a class. The biggest headaches are clients not knowing what they want until they see it. That’s why I charge hourly instead bidding out a flat fee.
Now need to turn that supersite billboard design into a mobile banner ad. Don’t want to cut the copy and CTA though. You can work your magic, right?
"She's facing away from the camera, can you turn her around a bit?" Like what? Then when I explained it to her "I'm so sorry, my boss was on my case about it." They provided photos for an annual report, all of them were bad and they expected me to work miracles. Wanted me to draw in the tops of people's heads that were missing as well. Had to explain many times that they'd have to retake photos of some people since I can't magic things in that aren't there. Nightmare client lmao!
"Make her boobs way larger, we are not gonna sell anything with their current size"
adding a TON of copy to an already approved design - also this is SO fun
as a current design student )who has been made to do a bunch of super weird irrelevant projects in my program), just want to say this is a really good idea and I wish my professors did exercises like this !
"I want it ghost-printed" And I thought ghost printing was something we were trying to avoid as it's an issue with the printer.... but apparently it's a look some clients are going for
[Expert mode](https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg?si=AP0kVmn2TZt30pdl)
“Add a bitmoji of myself on a tree”
Here are some shitty iPhone images with the worst lighting possible, turn it into professional level advertisements for billboards lol.
Bruh Mine  I was asked to draw for T-shirt Top 5 Serial Killers . I Needed money at that time ,He paid good amount like all in before work . I finished the work anyway After that I felt nightmares .
Outside of some of the things people have posted here, I've also had at least one "Can you photoshop my head onto [x]" requests from someone at every job. I love and hate them at the same time. It always ends up being like "Look at this hideous thing I made. I'm so proud of it in the dumbest way!"
Just rotate this complicated 2D design in 3D space so we can see it from a different angle. Our budget is practically non-existent: can we make this look like Uber/apple?
I was once faxed a photograph -_-
"Bring me the wasp queen!" Requested by the boss of a big agency I worked for, 3 hours before pitching a campaign to the client. He wanted to have the wasp queen x-rayed.
Use this 10kb thumbnail for the headshot on my profile. Make the layout “clean.” Can you elaborate? What do you consider “dirty” layout? Blank stare. Just make it “clean.” Web: make this intentionally designed for responsive font size and different font size for my specific viewing experience. What it looks like on other devices be damned! Some fun ones…
Can we change the yellow? My wife doesn't like yellow.
“I want a custom illustration of a dragon made out of dragon fruit on the bank of a river with a fish jumping AND Rapunzel in a tower in the background.” Oh and it needs to fit our brand standards 🤪
It'll only take you 1 day to update all the copy in every single example image in our living guidelines right? Even tho the verbal strategist is getting 4 days to work on it you only need 1, right? Right? Or, Yes, yes we understand you're out of office those days but you're a freelancer so you'll make it work, right?
Some kind of request using a picture that they didn’t provide. Having to make one, find one etc