Yo-Yo-Yoga

I’ve been a designer for a few years now, and have dealt with a fair share of crazy people.  I got involved with a friend’s Yoga Studio.  I did get paid to do some work, and then those willing people left the “co-op” yoga studio ownership program. So I worked out a deal with the remaining members including my original friend, that I would build them a website in exchange for my personal studio time. So I built a website. It looked really nice, just needed some input from the co-op on final touches/verbage. etc. Well after several attempts at getting the information, I gave up. They were going to have to stay with what they had. I had to move on. The group was too disorganized.  At one point I tried to show my friend how to built and maintain the website, how to make changes, FTP etc. He himself was wanting to become a designer and taking on projects with clients.
Anyways so all of a sudden the studio manager starts emailing and calling me wanting changes to the logo, remove this, take away that. oh the t shirt printer needs it in this format….
I went ahead a converted the logo ito every known format under the sun. .eps, jpeg, black and white… and said here, this is your logo package. STILL was emailing several times a day wanting this stuff. In the meantime I got my real job, family, real paying projects going on. He just didn’t want to pay the $20 art set-up for his banners, and newspaper ads.  It was getting real old quick.  He finally offered a little bit of money, and he wanted changes to the  site. He had me change this to “sage green” because the logo looked great on a sage green background, even though it was a pastel pink… it just looked  horrible, that I removed the link at the bottom of the site to my website. The kicker was he told me he needed the changes by Sunday, which was in a few days. Saturday morning he calls me and starts bitching me out for not having the site done. Hello agreed upon deadline?  He apologized, and did give me a little bit of money. As of now I have not used my “credits” with the studio, because they cannot get their act together on times, and communication.  I’d rather just move on, than to deal with such disorganization and unprofessionalism.  I’m not mad, I just know better next time.

I’ll still barder with people, it will just be on a better trading system. I’ll give you an hour of time, and you give me an hour of time…something like that

LESSON LEARNED:

Bartering with companies can be very advantageous, but you need to treat it just like any other project. You need to have a contract, you need to have a clear schedule with you and the client, and you need to set roles. If people don’t value what they are bartering, they probably won’t value your work.

I’ve traded plenty of things for design work. I somehow got a lifetime membership at a gym….that closed down a bit after. I did some work for a restaurant and got to eat for free for a while. Trading work is actually a lot of fun, but you need to make sure that it’s an equal trade for both sides.

If your client is being disorganized, you need to take a step back, and tell them what you need to do your job. Lots of times, clients don’t realize what you do or do not need, so I give my clients a list of what I need from them when I start a project.