Jan 21, 2013
Designers graphically represent awful client feedback [30 pictures]
In the spirit of Clients from Hell, several Irish creative companies joined forces on a series called “Sharp Suits”…
Ad creatives, designers, animators, directors, illustrators and more took time out to dress up their favourite worst feedback from clients, transforming quotes that would normally give you a twitch, into a diverse collection of posters.
As a non-designer, I think the popularity of mocking the people that keep designers employed is kind of petty and patronizing…but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.
So…here are lots of the best examples. And there are even more at their site…
* * * * *
As a Graphic Designer, These just made my day. I want them in my office, all over the walls, like amazingly wonderful wallpaper.
Hahaha. I took a couple courses on Photoshop in high school, this is hilarious! I can relate.
My god I love this. Just went through designer hell on Friday, and this is like a warm empathetic hug.
I like that analogy, but I think it feels more like a warm handshake.
LOL.
As a designer and illustrator, I just want to say that I sympathize with every one of these posters. They’re hilarious. Also, it is amazing how worldwide these things are. We swear it’s not about being patronizing, it’s just that its a very frustrating and common issue for your employers to say things like this. So much so that a series of posters was made about it.
I agree wholeheartedly. This isn’t about being petty. It’s poking fun at [most times] absence of common sense.
(The printing of an animated GIF kills me, by the way.)
The equivalent of this in a different business might be me going to my dealership mechanic and saying “I know the engine is making a loud clanging sound, but could you just install louder speakers so I don’t hear it anymore?”
Most clients don’t know what to say (naturally so, because its not their expertise), but they feel compelled to say something regardless if it makes any sense.
Maybe that’s not a perfect example, but I hope the point comes across, albeit, clumsily.
I’d say these posters are more about illustrating silliness than anything else.
I feel their pain. I don’t think that there is any need to apologize for calling a spade a spade. There is no fix for “stupid” and too often diplomacy is overrated. Laughing, and humor is a much better solution to what ails the world. I think every profession could produce a spread like this one-Kudos to them. Thank you!
Agreed! I was just about to say the same thing, about there being no reason to feel a need to apologize. Stupidity runs rampant in this world, and we’re supposed to always just sit and take it? Nope, not me.
It’s not “petty”, and you shouldn’t have to treat people’s stupidity with kid gloves just because you’re working for them. Good god, my boss is the biggest moron on the face of the planet – I only survive working for her because I can come home and mock the sh*t out of her to my husband, family, and friends. Humor is a necessary coping mechanism in life.
I’ve had a client specifically ask to use combine Chiller and Comic Sans into on piece. I laughed. He then assured me he was actually being serious. I cried.
In college i was working on a poster for a play, and drew some characters like Hank Hill and family, Not looking like them, but looking like an animation. The teacher said, “Can you make it more “cartooney”? Exactly what does that mean? Maybe I should have aimed for Snoopy…
I was told last week regarding a website I’ve been working on for a client
“You got it finished pretty quick. We feel like what we paid you should have taken longer. Can you just make the fonts change depending on what computer they’re using?”
Thankfully this is not my main source of income and I get to choose my clients. So I responded
“The question is not could, it’s why. How about I just send you your money back and we stop wasting everyone’s time”
Hilarious! And so true! My husband is a graphic designer and front-end developer, and some of these are so similar to what he’s had to deal with.
“As a non-designer, I think the popularity of mocking the people that keep designers employed is kind of petty and patronizing…”
As a non-designer, your opinion of these pieces is kind of irrelevant. Whatever you think of their existence, the reality is designers are bombarded with these types of comments constantly. In your non-designer job, you never go home and discuss the dumb non-designer comments you hear on the job? Ever?
The difference between you discussing the dumb non-designer job comments you get and the dumb comments designers have to deal with is that we have the skills to elevate those dumb comments to works of art.
THANK YOU!!
Love, a fellow designer.
OMG – I’m right in the middle of a client from hell project and this really lightened my mood. I’ve heard at least a half dozen of these verbatim in the past week! Now I can laugh at the comments instead of fume in frustration! thank you!
I suspect I often send our designers similar requests, sorry. I don’t think it’s ever been as bad as “I’ve printed off the GIF and it isn’t moving” or “can you turn it around in photoshop so we can see more of the front”, but sometimes it can be hard to explain why when you know something isn’t quite right.
Some of the comments I do understand. Asking for a logo rather than a font for example! When we ask our designers for a new logo, I don’t want something I could have done myself in 30 seconds using Word (which we have been sent before).
Also, “can you make the snow look a bit warmer” might not have been phrased particularly well, but if it’s supposed to show global warming then you need to make it clear the snow is melting.
“As a non-designer, I think the popularity of mocking the people that keep designers employed is kind of petty and patronizing”
You should give it a try sometime, you will instantly understand and identify with the practice of mocking clients. There are too few decent ones and way too many bad apples. Essentially, these posters aren’t making fun of anyone that MEANINGFULLY employs the designers.
Designers can get confused sometimes and think they are “artists”. I would never use any of the firms that allowed themselves to be associated with this.
Anyone than MEANINGFULLY (sic) employs the designers will have to communicate what they want the design to convey. The designer’s job is to interpret that. The language between industries and professions is obviously going to be different. A good contractor will work to understand this and try to best interpret what the CLIENT wants. An “artist”, (whom I’ve had the pain of having to deal with in the past) will insist on using their language and will put their efforts into posters like the above.
Try doing your job without clients. You’ll find yourself reading websites like this even more than you already do. Designers are in the service industry like barbers and barmen – suck it up and stop being such whiney prima-donnas.
As a designer, I also think the popularity of mocking the people that keep designers employed is kind of petty and patronizing – at least when it’s a general supercilious attitude of ‘all clients are so stupid, we hate them all’.
However, most of the examples in these posters are not that kind of thing at all. Every profession will have the same problem; clients/customers who think they know what the job entails but don’t really, who ask for things that are against common sense… Teachers, plumbers, car mechanics, typists… I’m sure they all have a good laugh at the daft things that are said to them!
Nurses too, you have to laugh or you’re going to cry.
There’s silly clients who make you shake your head (“this Apple product is supposed to Just Work, are you stupid or are you going to have it fixed today?”)
But then there are clients who think they know how to do your job better than you: this isn’t limited to design, but it is common among industries where people feel they have a layman’s understanding.
The term here is “bike shedding.” Go into a board meeting, ask for a million dollars to add a new compression manifold to a nuclear plant. It gets approved in ten minutes because the nuclear expert says “yep it’s mandatory” and the accountant says “it’s in line with our budget.” Then go and ask for a thousand dollars to repair and repaint the bike shed out back. Suddenly everybody’s the expert, an hour later they’re still arguing and it gets tabled until spouses and uncles can be consulted.
Same thing with websites and other user-facing parts of a computer. You can repair a devastating virus, but they’ll whine about their desktop icons changing places.
omg, these SO hit home. painfully. besides the ubiquitous “can you make the logo bigger?” my three favorite un-favorite client requests/comments, so far, are:
1. my nephew’s taking graphic design at (whatever school), and he says this is all wrong.
2. love the copy for the whole, 43-page brochure. just love it. but i hate that word, “it.” can you rewrite the brochure before our presentation at 3 o’clock, and take “it” out? just wherever you see “it.” change “it” to something else.
3. i don’t like the way you’ve spelled this word, “constellations.” can you respell it, but use fewer Ls?
It’s funny – I saw Louise Fili speak at an AIGA event and she said a logo should never be a font, so maybe the person who dropped that line wasn’t so inane.
Also, I’ve said the “I like the colors, now change them” line more than a few times. That’s part of maintaining a brand. Everything you like doesn’t necessarily serve the brand.
The Target Audience and Animated GIF quotes? No excuse for those!
Oh – I LOVE these. I once had a board member tell me that I needed to make the educational workshop I was writing about eating disorders “more fun”. I was speechless, but not for long.
I have printed it out, but the animated GIF is not moving!! Holy cow!!!!
I can see where you’re coming from about the biting-the-hand-that-feeds you side of things. I can imagine it’s difficult to get a balance. After all, clients can have a distinct idea that they want *something*, and what that might mean, but not be as skilled in knowing the ins and outs of *how* designing actually works (a lot of the above involve a lack of technical understanding or where come more common sense would be useful), and not yet having learned to really trust that someone who has trained to put messages across and been paid to do so for years might have a more successful way of doing so than yourself. Each person has their way they would get creative about a task so I can see that some clients might be tempted to get a little too involved in the design part without having learned all the practical reasons why their ideas aren’t practical (or are too particular to them). Some of them though are just the client asking for too much.
I guess it’s a reminder to us non-designers. Remember not to ask for too much, or to get too hands-on. If we could do it ourselves, we wouldn’t be paying a designer to do it ;)
I had a customer ask me “I plugged in the programming cable, does the ‘widget’ have to be powered up to get programmed”……. you just cant fix stupid no matter how hard you try.