It’s not that all Graphic designers are primadonna’s, we like to be professional and conduct ourselves in a stress free environment (as much as possible anyway), especially if we are up against a deadline. We like projects to go smoothly so we can complete them to the specified deadline and that keeps us and our clients happy.

If the deadline pressure weren’t enough here are 10 ways that clients can really rub us up the wrong way.

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How to really annoy a graphic designer
Are you a potential client? A new graphic designer?
Or someone who just enjoys annoying people?
If you’ve never worked with graphic designers before or you simply want to tick us off, here are 10 ways to drive graphic designers mad.

Ask us to work for free and tell us “it’s good for our portfolio”.
The eyes of a graphic designer sparkle when they find work that would be good for their portfolios, but that’s not for anyone else to decide but the designer. We want to give you your money’s worth but we have to consider our cost of living.

Compare us to other designers..
Please don’t tell us about the graphic designers you found on the internet who charge $5 for a logo. Most professional graphic designers have had many years of formal training and experience .

You can see from a designers portfolio the calibre of their work, comparing us to
an automated design website is not going to give you the unique creative design
you’re looking for.

Haggle endlessly
Haggling is only minimally considered before the project starts. At the end of the day you ‘gets what you pays for’, you chose to use us because you like our work , we are in a creative market, not a fish market.

Ask us to edit flattened files
Although it is possible on some levels, there is a limit to how much we can edit your flattened files. Please make sure that you send us the original files with editable layers. Most final artwork files are usually saved to PDF, some of these are editable, but more aren’t. Jpegs and .png files are also non-editable.

Send low-res images in MS Word
Seeing MS Word file attachments in our e-mails makes us want to pull our hair out, even more so when you treat MS Word as a photo album. Graphic designers are always asked to scale images and it’s hard to stretch a low-res file without sacrificing its sharpness. It’ll be hard for us to “make your logo bigger,” (which is bound to be requested). Or what’s even worse, ask us to download images from your website.
The web has a resolution of 72dpi, we and all other quality printing companies the word over print at 300dpi. So any image taken directly from a website is unlikely to print properly.

Ask feedback from non-authorities
Go ahead and show our work to your friends and family but don’t rely solely on their feedback unless they’re adept with graphic design or marketing.

Business colleagues would be better placed to provide valuable input and will have some marketing experience to draw on, understanding your company mission, market position and target audience.

Ask us to make the ‘Logo Bigger!’
We hate hearing ‘make the logo bigger’, big isn’t always better. The client has to understand that the logo is not the artwork, it’s only a small part of it. White space is equally important, it allows the design to breathe.

Take too much time sending revisions
Before we started our project, we laid out a timetable to gauge the production time. That timetable can only be followed if we get your feedback for revisions promptly, you may not have a specific deadline, but we like to finish projects on time so we can get paid.

Expect Unlimited Revisions
There is a limit to how much we can revise our work based on the brief you have given us. We would have quoted for the job and estimated how long the job would take, with a built in contingency for revisions.

Continually asking for alterations to your original brief whilst not being willing to pay for them is going to cause friction. Having a clear and concise initial brief along with all the correct ‘spell checked’ content will make the project run much more smoothly.

Provide vague instructions
Can you Jazz it up a bit?
Make it more Stylish?
It lacks Sparkle.
There’s no Oomph!
Can you make it Pop?

Please try to be as specific as possible because vague comments lead to vague revisions.

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Design: Dean Williams & Lisa Cooper.

 

Embedded from Print & Marketing Blog

Danny Molt

Danny Molt is an all round follower of great design working for Print-Print Limited, promoting business and building your brand through quality printing. If you’re passionate about small business marketing then please get in touch info@print-print.co.uk