What’s the worst thing you ever worked on?
We’ve all done it. We’ve delivered a project that you just want to pretend like you never did! I know I have at least. I’ll share mine first….y’all tell me about yours too though. Cause this is embarrasing if it’s just me.
A couple of years ago, I had some guy call me up about creating a website for a dog / cat supply company. I had just gotten a dog, and I forget how we met, but he said he could train my dog, if I could do a banner on his website.
“Sure, banners are easy, I can do that, and you’ll work with me on my dog? Great deal?!??!”
So we sit down on the computer, and he shows me his website, it was one of those horrible template things where you can’t change hardly anything! I begin to work on the banner design and spend about an hour on it. I go to grab a drink, and come back and see the monster I had made.
It was seriously the ugliest thing I had ever done! It was blue beveled paw prints with a yellow outline. Then behind that was this horrible photo of a dog house! It was so nasty. I erased it, and started doing something else. I spent about another hour, and then realized I had done something even worse. This time, everything had drop shadows, outlines….it was like I had woken up in some designer zombie hell.
Needless to say, I called him up and said “I’ve changed my mind” and now my dog will only pee inside. That didn’t work out so well!
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about 7 months ago
I once had a client that wanted a logo designed to encourage people to vote yes on a piece of legislation, she insisted that the logo be of an eyeball covered with the word “it” (the ayes have it). I couldn’t talk her out of it and had to pass.
Another client wanted a photo of New York City’s skyline complete with the Twin Towers in it on the cover of a brochure a month after 9/11. He wouldn’t budge because he had already bought the photo from a stock site. Another I had to pass on.
I’m constantly amazed by how much bad design there is out there and how the clients don’t seem to know the difference.
about 3 months ago
This is easy for me.
I had a client come in and give me the specs on what he needed. Turns out, the guy was just a guy that worked at the company, not the actual owner or anyone with any buying power…thats who they sent to talk to me. Yeah I knew we were in trouble right then and there. But stay tuned, it gets better.
So I finally got the owner there to talk to me. His company needs a new logo. He told me, they were a decorative concrete finishing company. The kind that does all the expensive, elegant concrete decorations on patios and walkways for people who have too much money. I asked him what his primary market was and he told me that it was older women who were wealthy and had large, very nice homes in a well-to-do part of town. So immediately I begin strategizing as a graphic designer is apt to do.
I begin crafting a logo based on demographic information, doing sketches, research, testing etc. and come out with this elegant, upscale logo based on their company name and his request that it have a woodpecker in the design. At the next meeting, he proceeds to trash my design and insult me to my face and generally act in a totally unprofessional, inappropriate and generally douchey manner. He then tells me that he wants a cartoon woodpecker smoking a cigar, with a tattoo on his arm pecking the logo into some concrete. Keep in mind is target demographic is old women with lots of money. Woodpecker with tattoo and cigar….Old women, lots of money….yeah sounds perfectly reasonable to me /sarcasm.
Long story short I did one sketch to appease them and show them the absurdity of their request and kindly told them they would have to look elsewhere for their design. The next day they had the guy that answers their phone make them a logo in microsoft paint using Impact and Comix Sans.
I still sent them a bill.