Tales of woe are great, but how accountable are "WE" in these cases? Sometimes I find my own urgency and impatience can create these unfortunate situtations we're all outlining. I liked this string because it helped me look things from a two different angles, theirs and ours. Thanks!!

So you send the client the invoice and he says "That's an awful lot of money for pressing a few buttons."

To which I reply, "Would like to compensate me for all the years it took for me to lean which were the right buttons to push".

Don't you just love the clients who demand that you drop everything you're doing to take care of their project... immediately? I finally blurted out this week, "We don't have a drive-thru window here!!!" Maybe I should have added, "Would you like cheese on that!"

I recently had a client who wanted to be present while I worked so she could direct me, as she's very picky. I've never heard of any designer working this way and I don't like people hanging over my shoulder when I work. However, she was paying by the hour and it was only for a few hours a week so I said okay. She wanted to be the designer, she just needed someone to "drive" because she doesn't know how to use the software. But not only did I dislike her ideas and her sense of "design," it took more energy than I thought. I would dread our meetings for hours beforehand, bite my tongue during the meeting to keep from losing my temper with her and then feel stressed for hours after our meeting. Not at all worth it, so I had to cut her loose. Fortunately she was very understanding and the relationship ended on good terms. She paid me more money for the project than it would have cost her if she just left me alone, so I can't complain about that.

Most of my clients are a bit clueless. It's OK though. I have to separate myself emotionally from the art. If my client is happy, that's really all that matters. Of course I try and explain why things are balanced the way they are, why I chose the font I did, colors, etc. etc. But, bottom line, if they pay me, that's why I'm working - right?! If I want to do things that look beautiful and are just the way I want them, I have to do them for myself.
So, you have to make brown water for a company named "Highland LAKES" (yes... brown, NOT blue water). And you get to design a 40 page catalog and have the owner of the company "play" in Photoshop to create the cover - which TOTALLY ruins the whole thing (and looks like crap I might add). I could go on and on with the horror stories.
In the end though, I'm known in my circles for being able to read my clients' minds and I give them just what they want. And, I'm fast. Because of that, I get to charge a lot more and my paychecks make me smile. I just don't include everything I make in my portfolio. My motto - make the customer happy!

When you have a (#*$^*^) client that wants to make unecessary changes because of his wife or sisters kid tell them goodby and it was a good businesslesson working with them. The send them to http://99designs.com/ The client can get logos and art real cheap. They are not worth your time neither is 99designs.com. If you want to submit your designs against 27 other designers for peanuts go there. Bruce

In response to swrathe who wrote: Has anyone come up with a good way to preempt this kind of thing? Some kind of contract the client has to sign up-front that basically tells them to let us do our jobs? Maybe we rely too much on asking them to "pick their favorite" direction when we should be asking them how each one makes them feel, or some other way to redirect the process?

Oh, yes, the old "mix and match" routine. It is truly maddening. It doesn't always work, but when I submit comps, I tell them that what they see has been carefully balanced and considered to be effective. I further state, "Successful design isn't about what I like, or what you like, in the end. It's about sales and communicating with your target audience. So please try to keep that foremost in mind when you request changes. I've concluded it's not about us at all...it's about the client's personality. Some people respect and accept what we do, and others can't rest until they have changed everything. In my quotes, I include a fixed number of hours for changes. I let them know when that amount of time has been exceeded, and then I'm not shy about charging for the extra time. It's the only thing that stops some of them. The REALLY funny thing is that when we do as they say, and they finally have a design that looks like s**t, they're thrilled and they tell everyone what good designers we are. So I guess we have to be happy with that.

Michelle52's comment hit it dead-on. The difference was that 'back then, we billed like lawyers... all the changes you want buddy, it's all on the clock.
The key is the contract. Write it out, get their signature, and hook up with a lawyer, 'cuz you're gonna have to sue somebody eventually to get paid. But, if your work is good, you'll be surprised how your level of respect and quality of client will improve.

I had a client similar to Ultimate Designers and Clueless Company. This client wanted a site done quickly so he'd be ready for a sales presentation, then we'd go back and add more features. He had no content ready, so I created the design and content. A few days before the meeting, he copied all content onto a templated "create your own" site, then told me he wasn't going to use my site. He then proceeded to tell me that I should have made a formal presentation with all options available and several different pricing options.

I take Acad files (drawings) from our Engineering department and redraw the images in Adobe Illustrator . When asked why I do this by the engineers, I explained- Acad can't draw circles very well ( it's really a segmented curve) and can't draw a solid object ( it's a scribbled line to fill an object). To which they replied , Oh ! ..... A few days have passed, Now they are adding text to the images !!!! When I redraw them as normal for me to do, I find the fonts and font sizes won't fit in the object box. Long story short - They were using default fonts in Acad, not the Swiss bold, Arial, Futura or even Helvtica that they were calling out for... Most of them did not have them installed on their computers!!! Arrrggg..... They just won't listen sometimes.

Similar to the wife hates green situation, I designed an A.R. for a client, an association of Farm/Ag Truckers. Developed a color palette appropriate to the audience: earth tones, steel gray. Client called up and said, gee, his wife had redone their den and used burgundy and silver and he really liked that, so please change the color palette to that.

I just love it when clients try to save money by providing their own scans, decorative elements, etc. The files are always terrible, and then we have to spend more time teaching them how to do it right than we would have spent creating the files correctly in the first place.

This week, my client's 14-year-old son, who is "teaching himself" Photoshop supplied corner elements for the pages of the cookbook we're laying out for her. Yes, you can imagine. On top of that, she keeps requesting that they be made larger, so that now the only thing you see on each page are the damn ornaments with the recipes set in 8 point type to fit within them. No, they can't be gray to look attractive and subtle. They must be solid black, because that's the way her son wants them.

I've been in this business for 35 years, and I remember when clients used to let us do our job and didn't second-guess everything. It's astonishing, really. I can't imagine any other field where the amateur tells the professional what to do in such excruciating detail.

I'm based in Vancouver, BC and design a lot of restaurant menus. On more than one occasion, clients have asked me to come up with something more high-end than what they currently have. Realizing that terms used by people to describe a style are highly subjective, I try to get clients to clarify what they mean. Are they talking about stock, number of colors, length of item descriptions,etc.? Imagine what went through my head when one of them proceeded to show me a menu he had pilfered from a very high-end restaurant in New York City. To him, it was the quintessential high-end menu that he wanted to emulate (rip-off). It was legal size cream colored cover stock with all the headings in 18pt. Times Roman Italic, the item names set in Times Roman at 14pts and all the descriptions were Times Roman Italic in 12pts. All the copy was centered. There was no kerning, there were two spaces after each period and the version he had had no prices. (It must have been the wife who had to stick her menu in her purse.) This was High-End?!

I worked on an annual report for a large corporation. We pounded through this thing for many weeks, taking it through all the layers of management for reviews and changes. The company had grown considerably in the past year, so we were using a "growth" theme complete with pictures of fresh growth in nature as abstract illustrations. A nice forest green color theme also dominated throughout. The day that we brought the press proofs for final approval, the chairman of the board was in the office, and management wanted him to take a look. He took one glance and immediately retorted, "Green? My wife hates green! Change the color now!"