Nidahas » Musings on design, web standards and free software from a Sri Lankan geek.

Three Clients and a Designer

2005.08.03

Client No.1

One of our potential clients wants to prevent anyone from copying stuff from his website. Access to content is already planned to be controlled through logins, but that is not enough for him. Nobody should be able to copy text from his web pages. He gave us an example site where IE users can’t select text.

It’s amazing how far behind some people are.

Information is meant to be communicated. Ideas are meant to be shared. Knowledge is meant to be transferred. Unless you are working for the US government, you have nothing to gain by hiding your precious little content. If you can’t show it now your world-changing idea doesn’t exist. Someone else will come up with it tomorrow today anyway. Grow up dude, look around you. The world has moved ahead.

And of course, security through obscurity doesn’t work.

Client No.2

Recently we submitted 3 logo comps for a very high profile client. In a meeting with their Advertising and Promotions team and the Project team, the head of marketing gave us his feedback on the designs: “Nah, they aren’t good” (followed by facial expressions that show disgust, and a rather embarassing, long silence by everyone else).

Naturally, any self-respecting designer will be pissed off. And I was.

When sending the designs we had mentioned that any feedback they provide has to be specific. If you don’t like that particular colour there, tell us why. Don’t like that typeface? Why? You don’t like the creative arrangement of that spiral? Why? WHY?

After the initial pain of rejection gave way to curiosity, it occured to me that there’s no why. People are not rational beings. You need not have a reason to fall in love with a person, and to hate another. The same goes for everything else. “Shove that logo up your ass” is as acceptable as any other way of providing feedback.

Client No.3

A client wants you to do a logo. Since you know the guy very well, you don’t insist on a 50% advance payment. Three design revisions later, he goes to some other agency and gets a logo done. You only get to know it when he sends it to be used in his website that you are supposed to do over the weekend, the website for which you haven’t recieved an advance payment either.

Some clients are just lucky to be people you respect.

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