I just had a large, regular client call me and request the following.
We need a logo for one of our research divisions. It needs to be blue and green. It needs to be in the shape of the world (a globe). The continents and oceans on the globe (western hemisphere) need to be composed from the 35 words I’ll send you later today. It also needs to have the name of the research division superimposed over everything else. And if it’s doable, make it a see-through globe so that the words on the other side are also visible. We need it by Monday to fill the one-inch space we’ve left for it on website we’re launching Monday afternoon.
It’s my birthday tomorrow and we were planning on heading out of town, but that’s gone now. I’d normally turn down this kind of thing — both due to the last-minute nature of it and also due to the impossibility of successfully executing the awful idea they cooked up — but it’s too large of a client to turn down.
This seems like a lot of points- shape creation, but you might find a vector globe on the net… then you could just fill the shape layer with text within the shape… wouldn’t be so bad… but definitely a rather complex logo… but if that’s what the client wants… you have to give it to them
If you need any help with it, i’m available at night.
For what it’s worth, I ended up getting a photo of the earth, tracing the outlines of the continents and carefully filling in the oceans with a word cloud of type using all the text they sent over.
It’s what they asked for, but It’s butt ugly and illegible at the size they’ll be running it. I suspect they’ll realize that when they see it. I also drew up a couple of alternative ideas they didn’t ask for that I’ll try to sell them on.
Clients’ bad ideas are nothing new. It happens as often as not. Usually, there’s an opportunity to talk them down and into a direction a little better suited to what they need before too much of their money is wasted.
This especially awful idea, arriving at the last minute on Friday afternoon left no opportunity for anything other than wasting a weekend (and their money) on something that I’ll spend the first part of Monday morning trying to talk them out of using. I’ve said it before, but honestly, I think clients are often their own worst enemies. All too frequently, they almost seem to go out of their way to sabotage what they hire us to do.
Probably a better chance that they’ll love it. Some people have no taste and love their own ideas coming to life, no matter how Frankenstein monsterish.
Yeah, that could be the case. Either way, though, the money is the same.
It’s always a tight-wire act getting clients to abandon their less-than-great ideas. It’s counterproductive to come right out and tell them so. Instead, it’s a matter of constructively working through the problem with them until they conclude on their own that the idea won’t work and that this discovery was largely theirs.
Yuck. It sounds like what they’re suggesting is going to break several logo design best practices. It also sounds like they’re asking for an order taker for this. If that’s the case, why not subcontract it to another designer?
Otherwise, offer them a (more expensive) option of a few designs that would do it right.
I’d also charge double the rate for the ridiculous timeframe.
Read the first sentence of B’s first post.
You don’t subcontract THAT to another designer.
Nor do you muck around with cost regardless of time frame other than the usual “rush,” which most clients of any size understand.
I’m sure there is a reason B gave them exactly what they asked for.
Major client, no time to line up a subcontractor, and easier to do it myself. Anyway, despite the weirdness of this particular project, they’re too important of a client to chance handing off to someone else. Besides, I wanted to work up some better alternatives for them.
It is really kind of a difficult task to making this kind of design, beside it you got birthday. Clients thinks about their worker they are like robot Client command from this side and it will come up instantly from another side. Kind of bad and lame urgency.
Wow. Not sure what I was thinking… I did read the post.
I speak from experience and getting reasonable rates that I should and that designers deserve to charge… for 21 years. I also have colleagues who regularly have me deal with their clients when they take vacation.
Easer to do it yourself doesn’t necessarily mean “profitable.” Depends on what you’re trying to do with your business.
I guess offering other ideas is not an option in this forum.
