Worst Client Comments Turned Into Posters

perfect:-)))

Amy Marie Churchman. Yup.

yep

oh man no words!! mind blowing!!

and Alyce Holzberger

love it!!!

LOOOOVE! Best idea ever

the obvious point isn’t missed, but the more subtler point is that the common person is so shallow that advertisers feel they have to make these silly requests.

My alltime favorite (fictional) dumb client quote: (Emperor to Mozart in Amadeus) “My dear, young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality
work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Cut a few and it will be
perfect”

So true

To which Amadeus replied, “Which ones?” LOL

I’ve heard too many of those in real life! Specifically “I did this” and “make it the same but different” more than once.

Here’s another. “Green is not a color typically found in nature”.

..electro Panda…muahahahha

client is king!

Hilarious… every day. ‘Why can’t you do it in word?’

Funny

those are hilarious!!!

Boy, can I relate to this!!!

hahaha! Oh, I can relate to so many of these! Love it!

Our job Sucks!

they are RELATABLE

I so love these lol….

it was a flashback! love all the poster!

This is so funny but true!

Are my clients also your clients? Sounds so familar…

Could you make this list more extensive and make it use less space?

This is true in any creative field. As a musician and producer I get similar stupid requests.

Fantastic Depiction!!! how irritated we designers while tolerating these situations from client, Managers, even some times our creative heads… ah

THANK YOU! That’s so brilliant and so true.

fn hell that takes me back to those madmen days and right up to the early eighties… then I quit!!!

My favorite is “Be creative.” I have discovered that means, “I don’t know what the hell I want, and I probably won’t like what you deliver (particularly if you get really invested in it). But waste YOUR time on it anyway – I don’t have the time to think about it.”

Oh man..this is soooo Dilbert. These idiots just want to make themselves appear very important making you waste your time instead of their’s

All so true. Dang it.

The text is too small

It’s okay if you cannot make it today, but i need tomorrow…

“We need something that is humble in a big way, but big in a humble way…”

Head of Agency briefing creatives for next year’s campaign.

You have to love it! What’s worse is being the messenger having to deliver these comments to your art and design colleagues…please don’t shoot the messenger!

this is post is not right

Text received 20 minutes after midnight when I’m already asleep,

“Hi Sophie, there seems to be something I don’t like on the website, I think the font for the intro text is too small, can you try to make it bigger, but fit into that space, and insert a picture too? I’ve sent you an email with the example I’ve written in MS Word in the font I want. Please use that font (Rockwell… -_-). It needs to be updated by tomorrow morning, thanks so much!” …….

Tech writers get that one a lot, too. Translation: We want you to do it in a program that we [think we] know how to use, so we can edit your work ourselves and not have to pay you as much.

How’s this logo? I did it in one night.

Step on to the other side !

I like this collection but can you put the funniest ones in order?

I have the same comments here in France… the only difference is, they say it in French!

We’d like to have Debby from the typing pool sit next to you and watch you work today. You don’t mind, do you?

I love these! Wish I ad saved my clients comments!

I’ve got a few others :

“May you make the guy on the photo looks like more truthful ?”

“Can you make this looks like more REALISTIC” (about a graphic object like pins, post-it pictures, sheet of papers etc.)

Unfortunately, even looking at these wonderful and very expressive posters, such clients will not understand what they do wrong

What I want to know is, do all clients go to the same school to learn these idiotic phrases, or are they just born that way?

But I bet it sounds better somehow..

Ahh ha! that’s where my clients have gone….to you.

Wow! I may not be in visual design, but the same thing happens to audio engineers like me….
Here a few samples:
“Can’t we just use Rhianna’s song and take her vocals out?”
“Can you put a cake sound for the cake?”
“Can you make her sound more interesting, more smiling?”

“Can the snow look a little warmer”

I lost it. ROFL

‘I like really the colour but can you change it’ needs a question mark at the end. I’m a qualified jobless designer who is also good at proof reading. Can somebody give me a job, please?

The life of the developer isn’t that different. The stupid client comments just refer to features and functionality rather than to designs.

Brilliant!!!

It’s called white balance.. and yes, you can make snow look warmer… and for valid reasoning. Designer totally wrong and ignorant about this one.

ahh i know these all too well

Um, making fun of your clients for not knowing how to do *your* job is not very professional. You’re the designer – you need to lead them and help them find the verbiage to tell you what they want. Cause guess what? If your clients were “smarter” in this area, they wouldn’t need you! Does your mechanic make fun of you because you don’t know how to fix your car yourself? What about your doctor? Does she laugh when you say it’s kind of a “burning, sharp, throbbing” pain? Perhaps you should all spend more time helping clients get specific instead of making fun of them. Might be a better use of your time. Just sayin’.

Exactly. That one was totally off.

Hilarious!

Um and just saying are phrases that make you sound like a total twat. A better use of your time would be to just appreciate these amusing pictures and refrain from posting. Just sayin’

My favorite real life comment that one of my designers almost quit over: “This looks like someone in high school did it.”

Consider it a bit of creative venting. “You’ve done everything we’ve asked for, it’s just not what we wanted”.

I got one more:
“I like this design, but can you make 5 or 6 more different ones so I can pick this one again?”

we just need to remove the babys ear or move it more to the side lol

‘Too many notes’ is a real quote from Emperor Joseph II, the rest of the line is added but he did famously say that. He was a classic dumb client!

You are presumably one of said dumb clients…

Not funny and not on the point.

“I know he doesn’t look happy in any of the photography, but my boss says these comps don’t say Christmas – and she feels the photography is fine, it’s your compositions.”

Here’s another actual customer quote from years ago, “I requested a color ad, but the fax you sent was in black in white”!

The best part about this is, as one of the “dumb clients”, all of the comments from the designers below has the same effect for me as the images above do for them. The designer may find the request ridiculous, but your attitude in these posts is exactly what makes you an ineffective designer in the first place. If your work elicits a “stupid” response, have you ever considered that it is because your work was not good in the first place.

5th one down happened to me once when designing Christmas cards for a client. “We like the winter scene but feel it’s too cold. Can you keep it the same but make it look warmer?”

Sometimes the answer is “No. Now get the -ell out of my office.” Then you pack your things and move to the south Pacific. Its comments like these that make graphic designers become mercenaries.

Inkj997, there are smart people, and dumb people. Dumb people do the same they do to designers to a lot of other people: they do it to doctors, asking to be given a particular medicine without diagnosis, they do it to mechanics telling them what to do with the car even accepting “they’re no experts” in the area. And “just sayin” is the perfect euphemism for people too coward to assume what they say.

You may be thinking that it is wrong to think of “smart” and “dumb” categories to look down on people. And I think, that you may agree with the “client is always right” axiom… If you think that it is because you have never been at a desk or treated with people.

When you do that, you realise that dumb people is everywhere and they tend to understimate things, just like you do with this article. You don’t think that this is done beacause someone feels like this, you don’t take the time to doubt and to give us a chance to be right.
“just saying” is no that, “just saying” is “i’m telling you what’s right”

I had a (french) client that even gave me the CMYK of the colors I had to use for the site. Colors that didn’t really go together but what the heck, client is king. After having finished the template he wanted the red warmer, the yellow replaced by another color. They already had a logo and the cmyk colors came from that. I finished up changing the logo to new colors

I can appreciate creative venting, perhaps my comment was a little harsh, so I apologize for the smugness.

However, I do feel it’s very unprofessional to make fun of people in this way. I get that we all have days that we want to bang our heads against a wall, but if I posted something like this and my clients ever found out, I would be fired for sure.

I fired a designer I had contracted on behalf of a client because she posted something similar on Facebook. She never even named the client (and I know she wasn’t even talking about me or my client because of the way she phrased it). But the fact that she would complain about her “client from hell” publicly made me lose all respect for her. I have no interest in working with someone so immature and with so little respect for the people who put food on her table. Some of the comments above are quite specific… how many clients ask to remove a baby’s ear?

And, FYI to all who replied, “Just sayin’” is simply a way to say, “FYI”. Yes, it’s tongue-in-cheek, but then again, isn’t this entire post?

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Have a wonderful day everyone!

“Everyone knows that girls under 25 don’t wear skirts.”

Here’s a kicker: During a tv shoot the client said, “I like her acting in the animatics better, can she do that?”

There are questions that make sense like, “is it there a color that would better capture the personality of the brand”, but there are also stupid questions that go “can you make the snow look a little warmer.”

These posts make fun of the latter.

well, what about the client who said that people might not associate the big apple with NEW YORK??! i died, really i did

did you ever have a client who asked where the storyboard of the radio commercial is ?

“Can you make it bigger, oh not that big” “Can you tilt it at a 2% angle. More. More. Oh, too much. Make it go back. 0.555898889995444532%” “I want it to be 4 pages.” “I said I wanted it to be 2 pages!”

Cherry picked to death.

So true!

Not true in the least! The playing field is leveled with people who believe they can design because they own the software or can use the software on a limited basis. Shops like Etsy, O-desk, and many other freelance sites allow ANYONE… WITH no training or training to apply for the same work… so in essence, graphic design does not have the same reputation it once did. Some of the clients who request design work don’t want to pay for research or don’t care to fill out a creative brief… they simply want what they want when they want it and want to change it as many times as they want without paying much for the service. That attitude is more prevalent than the client who listens to the trained communication professional. That is part of what Graphic Design is. A way of communicating an idea visually. There is some psychology to it all. SO these vents and funny posters are just that. Nothing more than humor…. Like a comedian. Every industry employs such humor.

these are the kinds of comments that come from clients where there is a hierarchy of folks approving the work – somewhere in there are two or three people who do not know what they are talking about but feel like that have to make a comment or criticism. It’s maybe a little shameful, but I would always leave one or two things uncorrected to draw the focus of such people.

It sounds like you did that designer a service by firing her.

soooo true. tough job it is!

Bike manufacturer: “Can the advert be more visual?”

so good I have to tweet this! one you missed out…”my kid did this, can we use his design?”

Really?? Printed an animated gif but it didn’t move….You are defending that?? Let me guess you tried it..lol

Sorry, but can you remind me what poor design choice elicits the response: “…can you make the snow a little warmer?”

I have one. and other one is make it full tone not in half tone i don’t like half tone.

That is unbelievably hypocritical. Everyone complains about work. “My day was so long because we had people in the store until midnight.” Or, “I couldn’t believe this woman today, who started off by just yelling and cursing at me for no reason.” People complain about things that are annoying. What is most annoying to any designer are clients that believe they know better than the professional, despite their zero experience or training, even though they are paying the professional to do it for them. Clients like the ones the pictures are joking at are typically the ones who don’t really want a graphic designer, they want a monkey who can read their mind and then dump it on a screen for them, simply because they don’t know how the programs work or else they would do it themselves. No one tells their surgeon “That incision looks good but I really think you should have done it this way.” Too many people in our society have very little respect for any artistic career as a “legitimate” job, and treat artists like they would their maid. I really believe that venting about that is the true point of the OP.

amazing, BRAVO

How about “I’m going to use it anyway, but I’m not going to pay you for it” < every female client I ever had…
It's not sexist if it's true!

HEH! I do video engineering and graphics, so I really got a kick out of this.
Can we make the stage brighter, but bring the lights down a bit?

One More: I need you to send me the photos in vectors please.

YES. Because making additional concepts is as easy as clicking a mouse in Photoshop or something, right? -_-

I love these posters, they are great! I had to avoid using yellow in anything for a few years because of one client. I think a lot of clients simply don’t know how to articulate what they want, as art director, I had to mark up the designer’s work–a LOT. I tried to get them to come to the solution on their own, without saying “make this blue.” I was trying to “grow” designers who could think for themselves, but clients just don’t know how to “design-speak”. Every once in a while you get a client that tells you exactly what changes they want–those are the ones I love, even though you may not agree with their decision, you do it and they are happy. You may not be creating a portfolio piece, but you are getting repeat business. In this economy, we have to do what we have to do to eat.

Funny and true

I’ve had some of these comments first hand from clients – hilarious and so very true! Enough for you to just stare at the comment and think ‘wtf’? hahah

“Can I come in and stand over your shoulder to show you what I mean?”

one from this week “can we make the site ‘pop’ more”

This feels too masculine, and we think we are going for something more feminine, but strong feminine, sort of similar to this masculine. (Talking about plants)

Since you agree this post is tongue in cheek why did you feel the urge to respond with your smug comment? Just sayin!

Love. Got a poster for: “Thanks for delivering the project, it was a hit at the trade show. When can you meet again so we can finish it up?”

o ease up! this is all in good jest.

These are all beautiful in their own right (purely as designs). Great job!

Come on! You can do everything with Photoshop!!!!

<>
Can I just kill him ??? !!!

What font is that? could you put a drop shadow on it?

Not only the life of a designer. But more the life of rhe Account!!

Here is a reply to u from an account:
Ur comment is totally irrelevent. We all know clients do know somthing abt design and that is why they are hired in marketing communication departmt. If the company made a mistake and hired a mechanic eng instead of a marketere then we should also make fun of the company. So let me summerize : doctors dont make fun of me because that is not even close to my field of study tho they do laugh sometimes when we say funny words like” does that mean i have cancer!?” The mechanic doesnt laugh as well because i ddnt study car planning or car mapping. But marketeres in the right positions all studied creative courses and advertising principle because they need to direct the routes of creative or maybe they should be ex agency, If u ddnt/arent then u need to really read some Books man because sometimes these comments are way far from needing a direction but its more like mind laziness!
A client once told me: ” emailer (Edm) is approved please send me the high res” i think thats dummy for a big brand marcom person on high position not to know that Edms are sent in html and not in high res for print. Some readings or updates can help this doesnt need to pay an expensive professional for an advice!

Interestingly enough, “burning”, “sharp”, “throbbing”, “shooting”, etc. are all diagnostically relevant phrases to a doctor. If two different people say a pain is “throbbing”, they likely mean the same thing. And different conditions produce different types of pain.

Phrases like “make it different but keep it the same”, however, aren’t useful.

I completely agree that designers should educate clients to whatever extent possible, but if you work with enough clients over a long enough period you’ll come across a multitude of clients that don’t seem to want to be educated.

This conversation actually happens with surprising regularity:

Client: This site doesn’t work!
You: Okay, are you having a problem with loading the site, or are you having a problem clicking a link, or … ?
Client: It doesn’t work!
You: Okay, when you try to bring up the site, what do you see?

Client: It doesn’t work!
You: So are you seeing a blank page? Or is it giving you an error?
Client: I TOLD YOU, IT DOESN’T WORK!

Repeat for three more exchanges – and the whole time there might be a perfectly descriptive error message that details *exactly* what the problem is.

That’s the frustration a lot of designers, programmers, developers, etc. are dealing with. It’s not that they don’t want to help their customers communicate; it’s that some customers don’t seem to realize that they *aren’t* communicating.

Which client do you work for?

I have totally had several of these from commissioners XD or at least things close to them…

Just what I was thinking.

This is also how life works for a game designer in the playtesting and iteration phase.

My sympathies.

I love the one to turn around the elephant to see it’s front using Photoshop. But they are all hilarious.

Can’t we just make the pixels bigger?

wonder how much comments like this i’ve already heard xD so great!

have also one: »i don’t know what i want – surprise me«

You sound like a bitter unemployed former creative to me.

My mechanic WOULD make fun of me if I asked him to “make my car lighter, but don’t take anything out.” My doctor wouldn’t laugh at that because believe it or not those adjectives are legitimate descriptors of pain. She WOULD, however, laugh if I asked her to give me medication but I don’t want pills, syrups or aerosols, I hate needles, and I don’t like topical creams and patches.”

I was hired as a writer and my boss asked me to submit projects involving graphic designs. Btw, it was my 5th time to use adobe photoshop. So when I presented him my output, he said, “QUALITY CONTENT!”

Client email at around 5pm: “We don’t need anything fancy, anything you can come up with in a jiffy! Can we have around 6 of them by tomorrow morning?”

The next morning client responds: “We’re not too sure about the designs you sent. They kind of look like they were rushed. Can you send a few more by the afternoon?”

my mum once endured 17 huge changes on a farmer’s market postcard including suggestions from board member’s 12yo daughter. free. never again.

BEFORE: “I’ve sent 75 photos for your designers to chose from. Totally up to you! You’re the creatives – whatever best suits the layout and colour scheme, heart heart thx etc”

AFTER: “You chose THAT photo? What kind of IDIOT would put that in a press ad?”

TRANSLATION: I’ve sent you 74 photos I never want to see again as long as I live, but they cost me a lot of money. See if you can pick the odd one out. I might tell you if you’re getting “warm” – or… not. MUAHAHAHHHHHH!!!!!

Client: I’ve photographed this lovely crystal chandelier on my phone, in the warehouse. This is the ‘hero’ shot for our full page ad. Can you just “drop out” the background; we don’t want to see all that other furniture and cartons and signage. I want it De-Petched and if you could turn on the light so it sparkles.

Me: Still looking for the button that gets rid of the Petch. So much Petch, so little time…

Yes! Just “Have a play!”
Because it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an iPhone.

Actually? It usually means, “Keep guessing what I want. I’m incapable of expressing it, but it’s YOUR job to keep trying until you get it right. And, I’m not paying until you do.”

Game Suggestion:
Their logo at the top. LARGE. Because, you wouldn’t buy a product from somebody whose logo didn’t take up half the page, right?
Then, everything in RED TEXT on a black background – to Stand Out. And, you can never have too many STARBURSTS
Use punctuation: and……… Capitalisation Totally randomly. If one exclamation mark is good, five are BETTER!!!!!

Look, If my mechanic makes the car work, I’m not going, “Yeah, but I imagined it would fly, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…”
If the doctor fixes my ills, I won’t be all, yeah, but why don’t I have six arms now, like that Hindu goddess?

Helping a client to “find the verbiage” isn’t the job. If they send something cobbled together in Word or Publisher or even a jpeg, our job is to translate that into something better, and, more often than not we can and do, and everyone’s happy.

But, if they send a grubby lo-res jpeg file, and say “Turn THIS into a full page ad, here’s my artwork”, it’s like if you went into the mechanics or surgeons with a photo or a sketch of your car or loved one and said, work on THIS… I’m not telling you what is right or wrong with it, but this is IT. Fix it.

Hiya, In response to your client’s request for the eDM to be in hi-res, whether it’s print or digital, designers commonly send initial layouts with pictures in low-res till the ad gets approved, whereupon they then use the hi-res pictures. So maybe that’s what he meant?

Management training. They are almost all idiots.

I put a beautiful full page shot of a gorgeous bride in classic white in the feature magazine we’d won a PAMPA award for the year before… was told, no, there are no ASIANS in this neighbourhood, we aren’t going to ‘star’ an asian bride…. Although there were two asian heritage girls in our office, and everyone bought lunch from the local Thai or the Vietnamese bakery…. No. Asians. Here.

I recently heard that we can “drop out” the background in a photo… Like, deep etch something? In two seconds? Sadly, my keyboard doesn’t have that magic button *cries*

No. If a client says, I want Red writing on a Black Background to “Make It Stand Out” I will have to say you can HAVE red, or, you can make it stand out. You can’t have both. Red will not stand out on black, end of story.

That is not being an “ineffective designer”, just stating the facts, and it IS a ridiculous request. What we TRY to do is take on board what the client WANTS but do it in a way that works; like “THIS” is what they want to stand out, as the most important message, and I will manage that. But it can NOT be red on black. Get it?

It’s like getting in a taxi. Tell us where you WANT to go, and we’ll get you there. If you don’t say where you want to go, and don’t trust the driver, you just sit in the back saying, left here, right there, etc, we’ll end up in a tunnel someplace with no way out.

I did this at home with Microsoft paint………..my client…..

I like how you basically looted EVERYTHING from Sharp Suits and crammed it into this post. Classy as fuck.

Classy as fuck.

LOL awesome

How about one from the clients perspective that shows the fun they have to deal with from self-righteous graphic designers who have no real marketing skills, think that they actually know a clients market from a half page brief, ignore basic direction, design something in the same style they design everything else in regardless of service or product, and then bill you for 6hrs to change a font?

beautifully done.

Bos : Can u do like a “corporate look”…
just a simple word & plain background…that what i call DESIGN!!
Me : better u do with “microsoft word” sir no background & simple word…
No need designer do by ur own!! don’t waste ur money to pay me anymore!!
( stress )

Yeah, and then you guys send your files to a printer with missing fonts, broken links, in RGB not CMYK, copy that’s misspelled and PMS colors included where none were specified in the quote.

I got no sympathy for you guys.

This isn’t about bad work. Bad work results in dissolution of the contract. This is a client who sees that the designer did their job, and they want to see what else they can get. An initial proof and a couple, three revisions are pretty standard, but when you get down to the client asking you to make snow look warmer, they’re just dragging it out, most likely because the agreement was for a flat fee, and absolutely because the client doesn’t understand the process. It’s called ‘scope creep,” and a lot of clients try it. Also because there’s this weird notion that creative work isn’t actually work. It is.

“I know it’s a fifteen second commercial, but will it be a LONG fifteen seconds”

You’re not working with designers. Sorry. I got not sympathy for you hiring “design” work at $20/hr.

Sharp Suits is attributed top and center. That’s classy and responsible.

In the Netherlands we face the same problems. You put a smile on my face. Thanks!

Hilarious posters! “Can you turn it around in Photoshop?” I’ve really had this request and was so stunned by it, all I could mutter was “no”.

Good some one expressed it well. no modifications go ahed for printing!!

Could you make this more high-end looking?

Will this picture I pulled from the internet be good enough for a billboard?

Can you make this look totally unique, but keeping within our brand standards?

Here’s a genuine one for you…”could you give me the 4 colour breakdown for cyan?”

They’re born this way. They have to be. If there is some sort of training or education that creates this kind of stupidity, we’re all going to hell. In a hand basket! LOL (I get more psycho clients than stupid ones. However, the psychos are also about as bright as a box of hammers.)

That. ^^^^^^ Exactly that.

I keep getting clients asking me to do this for the. Uhh, no. Although I can extract an image intact from some backgrounds, it doesn’t always work perfectly.

Or go postal. LOL

i’m guilty of asking a few things around here! especially about the logo instead of the font and making the logo bigger now i know what our artists are thinking when i make a comment

yeah yeah yeah yeah you creatives have such a hard life. I sat in endless meetings with creatives trying to spin something bad into something good with their mouth. Creatives simply can’t take critical remarks because they think that the rest of us don’t have eyes. Just.get.it.right.or.you.don’t.get.paid. Simple as that. Having spend tons on worthless designs by huge name companies, I found out that things like designcrowd etc work perfectly.

And ? You can’t do that? Or perhaps lay-out and font of the website aren’t important? Don’t forget, some companies have websites that can be seen in other countries so midnight is not that strange. Also,if someone has paid a lot of money for a site design (which the ‘creatives’above probably had some low-paid India worker do) there might be a process where he/she wants to show it to peers or superiors to justify the money/time spent. So, yeah, fix it. ASAP. The client is always right . IF they pay $ 2,00 instead of the invoiced $2,000 for a web design, you’d be texting 20 mins after midnight too.

don’t worry. With current Dutch prices, crowd-generated designs from India will shift you lot out of the job anyways. No-cure-no-pay.

No — get the work done and you pay. Do you go to a restaurant and decide to pay for it after you’ve eaten it? Do you take a Mercedes-Benz and decide not to pay for it for XYZ reason here? It’s our job to determine if the work is right. It’s yours to determine if it communicate your message. I’d have no problems sending you to collections or hauling your ass to court. Haven’t done it often, but people like you aren’t quite as smug when I do.

I took your concept home last night and reworked it a bit.My wife really likes it.

Do you have a MAC or a PC?
- I have a DELL.

.. HAHA

You mean you don’t work while you sleep? Tsssk tssk.

I’ve been both a creative and a client, and I had to say this one on ‘client’ mode so my favourite design boutique would be chosen by my boss. I would side more with my designers than with my boss

Today I learned graphic designers are too stupid to link “warm” and “happy”.

Most clients are filters to creativity and innovation. Generally they are not culturally updated to understand the upcoming visual codes like a good designer does. Therefore, they don’t understand, they don’t trust, they don’t risk. Solution: D2C Designer to Consumer. Which means designers should create their own businesses. CEOs must be designers.

I know exactly how all of these feel….

for animators: “Can we make the car travel faster, but take up the same amount of screen time?” That’s bending the physics of space-time!

“make the ribbon 20% less flirty”

“” I like the idea of a Lady and the Tramp in this context but can you change the big stray mutt to a mini poodle as my wife does only like small cute dogs…?”

“What I want and what I say I want are 2 complete different things”. Uttered by my first boss 29 years ago, and as yet unsurpassed by anyone.

It is very difficult when clients ask for things that are just bad design or technically impossible. Can we add some clipart – here, I found some on the internet. My 4″x6″ postcard – can’t you just make it into a 4′x6′ banner? I’ve seen your portfolio from the past 15 years – wonder if I don’t like your design? Can you just – work up some designs before I hire you?

cool

This is why I gave up doing logos.

As a former event videographer, my favorite request was “My bridesmaid and I aren’t speaking any more. Can you take her out of my wedding video?” [sigh...]

“after the 25,201 iterations that you carried out based on our instructions, we believe its better to go back to the original layout that you had designed”

“What’s all that white space? Fill it up with something!”

Hah!

Gosh, they actually didn’t say not to add any other colours, should have presented red on black, and red on black with white stroke. And get them to pick, after all.. you are the designer. BTW, I hate TAXIS..

Bwahahahahahah! The sexy pig killed me!

This is a dumb comment, clearly the client’s request is absurd for. And…no, the client is not always right.

John, you have just really clearly demonstrated while all these people are so annoyed at their dumb clients. You have leapt in to defend the absurd request to INCREASE FONT SIZE AND INSERT AN IMAGE IN THE SAME SPACE. This illustrates that you either didn’t read it properly, or don’t understand it, yet you still feel qualified to tell people how to do their job.
Also, the Rockwell request is dumb. Despite recent advances, web text still looks dire on a whole load of screens, so using a font like Rockwell is a mistake. But why would you care that you don’t know what you’re talking about? You’re the client, so you’re always right…

BTW, the kind of extreme dumbness illustrated in the posters is a sign. When a clent starts showing these symptoms, get out. Run. Run for the hills. This type of client will also be impossible to pin down on what they’re paying for, and you’ll end up doing six times more work than you can bill for, and then they’ll quibble about the invoice, pay late and finally badmouth you to everyone for your efforts. Fire them (you can fire clients, you know) and get different, better clients. There are plenty of reasonable people out there, and that is all you should ask of your clients. The dumb ones will suck you dry if you let them.

Brilliant

I could not agree with you more. Usually, these people show signs they are going to be a freakin nightmare in the beginning. NO Money is worth that, that is if you get paid b/c these are also the types that like to put that part off for as long as they can

I’ve got one. Building an overall design for a one-stop shop (news/real estate/kijiji wannabe) portal website. Client: This isn’t what we want. We want …. more sparkle!

How many times do you tell your mechanic how to fix a car?

I completely agree. I would never publicly make fun of my clients like this!

Re book cover design: We really like it, but could we have a different font and a different image.

It’s perfectly alright to show these morons the door… And let them know why. “Sorry, but we don’t do business with idiots.”

And my personal favourite…”Why’s there so much white, cant we add more colour”

“Make the logo bigger” is funnier and more irrelevant than it seems.

these are amazing! i want a poster

“Arty it up by Monday”

“I’d do it, but I’m too busy”

Wait, I have an idea how you can make designers seem even more whiny… nah, on second thought, I don’t…

Why is it when it’s said with a British accent, it all make sense?

I don’t know…they all seem like reasonable client requests.

I think a “burning, sharp, throbbing” pain (probably with a location provided) is MUCH MORE DETAILED than “use your creativity” or “whatever you think is good.”. Just saying.

Comparing a field with a “right and wrong” and a field with no “right and wrong” was … unwise.

I didn’t think they were making fun of their customers either.
They didn’t exactly mention any names.

I don’t tell the mechanic what to do to fix my car. If I did, then you can bet he’ll make fun of me, and with reason, because I don’t know what I’m talking about and standing in his way to fix the problem.

We don’t really know what we want yet but how much will it cost?

We want a professional logo. Can you make little dancing star-people to place all around it?

We want a professional logo. Can you make little dancing star-people to place all around it?

Can you make it pop?

Or it tells you how little respect the client has for their own clients!

If this wasn’t such a true depiction of life I would be laughing instead of crying. (╥﹏╥)

You should be ashamed of yourself. The fact you micromanage your contracts far enought to be involved on their social media, and then cut ties with the contract based upon their venting, is a surefire sign you are one of the clients none of us should work for. You should be ashamed of yourself for cutting a contract that someone expected to eat and pay their rent and bills with. That is an overeach and Im sure you and the client you contract for do this in all facets of your business, I wish you the best with that strategy… I hope you think about it before you go to sleep at night. You are a bad client, and a bad person with a bad heart.

did you feel victimized after seeing one of your questions on the stupid question list?

“My wife took art for a year in high school and made this sketch….”

Can you remove the red colour and use something that looks like like red?

can you make the green greener? i want it designiger.
wtf?! daily business…

“I really like the ad, just change the headline, image and body copy”.

This is Hillary

© can you make the logo less like that one and more like McDonalds?

Emmmmmm, no that is called plaugerism.

Could you do it anyway?

I like this article, but can you make it more self explanatory?

my favorites:
“can you make those circles less round?”
“can you make that a lighter shade of black?”

Class! I’m going to get ‘Make the logo bigger’ carved on my gravestone.

John, you don’t have a clue mate. Rockwell? Really? Did you read the post properly?

Same happened at my job, with a car photo provided by the client. Can you turn it around 15 degrees so we see more of the side? When I HAD to say no, that’s impossible, you really DO need to take the photo you want to use, they were all “Okay, I get it, not to worry” and five minutes later they are on the phone to my boss, saying I’m being Difficult.
“Your people HAVE computers, don’t they? What am I paying for?”