Challenges between client and designer?

#1

Hi Guys !! I am having trouble with my own clients so I started to make research on designer and client relationship. I would appreciate if you can tell me about what is your biggest challenges with your client ?

1.What is your job title ?

2.Are you a freelancer or company or agency ?

3.Do you meet with your client face to face, online or sometimes face to face sometimes online ?

  1. What is the challenges that you are facing when you are working with a client ?

  2. When was the last time you meet with a client ? What was it for ? was it face to face or online ?

  3. How many times do you meet with the client in a long project ?

  4. What is the challenges ?

  5. What is the challenges of working digital ?

  6. Are you considering your self proffessional or amateur ?

  7. What is your biggest problem with your client ?

Requests, payment, timing etc…

#2

1.What is your job title ?

Graphic designer.

2.Are you a freelancer or company or agency ?

Company.

3.Do you meet with your client face to face, online or sometimes face to face sometimes online ?

Sometimes face to face, sometimes virtual.

  1. What is the challenges that you are facing when you are working with a client ?

Every client and project is different.

  1. When was the last time you meet with a client ? What was it for ? was it face to face or online ?

Two weeks ago.

  1. How many times do you meet with the client in a long project ?

Every client and project is different.

  1. What is the challenges ?

Every client and project is different.

  1. What is the challenges of working digital ?

Every client and project is different.

  1. Are you considering your self proffessional or amateur ?

Professional.

  1. What is your biggest problem with your client ?

Every client and project is different.

#3

1.What is your job title ?
Principal/Visual Brand Expert/Creative Director

2.Are you a freelancer or company or agency ?
Company, mostly solopreneur, for 15 years

3.Do you meet with your client face to face, online or sometimes face to face sometimes online ?
Rarely in person, sometimes video calls

What is the challenges that you are facing when you are working with a client ?
Laziness, as in they don’t read emails or answer questions sometimes

When was the last time you meet with a client ? What was it for ? was it face to face or online ?
Video all a month ago

How many times do you meet with the client in a long project ?
Rarely

What is the challenges of working digital ?
As opposed to what exactly? I don’t have issues doing the work that way, they don’t have a problem working that way.

Are you considering your self proffessional or amateur ?
20+ years professional

What is your biggest problem with your client ?
Laziness

#4

What issues are specifically encountering? That would allow us to help more than answering these questions, which really don’t provide insight into what your issues are. I’ve had all kinds of clients issues over the past 20+ years around all kinds of different issues. Some of them are solved differently from others. For example, if you’re attracting crappy clients, it’s likely your marketing, your positioning… If they aren’t paying you on time, you need to implement better policies.

#5

Not to sound skeptical (yeah right, Sarah), but the OP’s questions don’t ring true for me.

They sound more like a survey, as in either a school assignment, or perhaps the next post will be a link to a “solution” to our client issues, or maybe a project management solution.

Mostly, actual designers with actual client issues will come on and describe the type of problem they’re having, and how would we handle it.

So…betcha. :wink:

2 Likes
#6

I’m working on one job, and I haven’t even spoken to him 1ce

#7

  1. What is your job title ?
    At work, we don’t pay much attention to titles, but it amounts to creative and communication director with a bunch of marketing supervision stuff thrown in. I haven’t given myself a title for my freelance work.

  2. Are you a freelancer, or do you work for a company or agency?
    I freelance, but I also work at a company/agency.

  3. Do you meet with your client face-to-face, online or both?
    It depends on the situation.

  4. What are the challenges you face when working with clients?
    It all depends on the client, but flakiness and procrastination are frequent problems, as are less-than-great ideas they sometimes have.

  5. When was the last time you met with a client? What was it for? Was it face-to-face or online?
    Last week, I met with a freelance client over the phone. It was a magazine publisher wanting to talk to me about a new magazine. Meetings occur nearly every day at my day job.

  6. How many times do you meet with clients on longer projects?
    It depends on the project and what you mean by a meeting. There are always lots of emails exchanged, which often take the place of meetings. Phone calls are common. Skype, GoToMeeting and Google Hangouts are less frequent, but still common. In-person meetings, um, maybe two or three times per longer project if it’s local.

  7. What are the challenges?
    Didn’t you already ask this in question #4?

  8. What are the challenges of working digitally?
    I’m unsure what you’re asking. Almost everything is digital — even print. I stopped using wax, amberlith, Chromecoat, Letraset and technical pens many years ago.

  9. Do you consider yourself a professional or an amateur?
    It’s how I earn my living, so by definition, I’m a professional._

  10. What are your biggest client problems?
    Once again, head back to question #4.

#8

1.What is your job title ?
graphic designer

2.Are you a freelancer or company or agency ?
freelance. I started out in-house

3.Do you meet with your client face to face, online or sometimes face to face sometimes online?

I meet with them at their request. I have one client that I meet in person, quarterly, always coinciding with a photo shoot. There is another that I have worked with on a monthly basis for the last 15 years. I met them when I started, and we’ve talked on the phone maybe 6 times. But it’s been all email ever since. Most communications these days are by email.

  1. What is the challenges that you are facing when you are working with a client ?

I have a primary contact at each client, and there tends to be a high turnover rate. And the people they bring in are always new to marketing. I spend a lot of time educating them. I’d rather spend my time designing, than say, explaining rgb vs cmyk, or teaching someone how to annotate a pdf, again.

  1. When was the last time you meet with a client ? What was it for ? was it face to face or online ?

Last week. In person. Supervised their photo shoot.

  1. How many times do you meet with the client in a long project ?

It’s not the length of a project that motivates them to request a meeting. It’s the novelty or complexity, and they are looking for guidance and reassurance. Usually one meeting is enough. A designer friend of mine insists on meeting the clients constantly. He delivers proofs in person, and they are mounted on boards, and he unveils them, puts on a show and guides people through the work. He does that on every round of proofing. I just send dropbox links and tell them to call me if they want to talk. Everybody has their own system. I think it depends on the client and what they want though.

  1. What is the challenges ?

Trying to be original with clients who don’t really value that. They want everything to look like some other thing they’ve seen.

  1. What is the challenges of working digital ?

Democratization. Everyone has easy access to the digital tools to make ads, flyers and posters. I have clients who devalue their brands because they’ve got an employee with some time on their hands, and they don’t want them doing nothing, so they tell them to design some stuff. And it never matches the existing branding but they’ll send it out anyway. I don’t think that happened as much in the olden days.

  1. Are you considering your self proffessional or amateur ?
    This is my 30th year as a professional working in graphic design/photography.

  2. What is your biggest problem with your client ?

Members of a committee waiting until the last minute to do a thorough proof… and then bombarding me with change after change that have to be done rush because we have a press date. The day projects go to print usually go like this… change, proof, change, proof, change, proof, change, proof, change, proof, etc.

#9

1.What is your job title ? Graphic designer

2.Are you a freelancer or company or agency ? I am a freelancer who owns a registered company/agency with no employees. 2 company directors. Business owner for 7 years.

3.Do you meet with your client face to face, online or sometimes face to face sometimes online ? Face to face and online. Never face to face online.

5.What is the challenges that you are facing when you are working with a client? I find that meetings are good for initial project start but sometimes meetings are unnecessary. I would say that 50% of meetings could have been a well written email instead. Projects move faster without meetings as I find meetings are usually booked in a week’s time, but if I can start work without a meeting, I may have a proof ready by then.

  1. When was the last time you meet with a client ? What was it for ? was it face to face or online ? Tuesday. The client came to my house to discuss a current project.

  2. How many times do you meet with the client in a long project? Between 1 and 2 times if they live in my city.

  3. What is the challenges? My meetings are not presentations, they are instructional. Often they could have been emailed instructions.

  4. What is the challenges of working digital? Colour issues due to non-standardised screen calibration.

  5. Are you considering your self proffessional or amateur ? Pro. 13 years.

  6. What is your biggest problem with your client? Handling deadlines, creating realistic time frames and pushing to get content from clients on time so that I can complete work.

#10

1.What is your job title ?
In my office: Principal Consultant
At my primary client’s facility: Senior Technical Publisher

2.Are you a freelancer or company or agency ?
I’m an independent contractor, and yes, yes, yes.

3.Do you meet with your client face to face, online or sometimes face to face sometimes online ?
Face/phone/cam

5. What is the challenges that you are facing when you are working with a client ?
Mostly a limited understanding on their part of how my function is performed. Also, supporting multiple projects in a busy product engineering department means there are many competing priorities, continually shifting focus, and a work environment that is almost always far removed from the quiet, immersive setting in which we’d all picture our design work happening.

5. When was the last time you meet with a client ? What was it for ? was it face to face or online ?
I meet with my primary client’s personnel face-to-face any time they walk up and/or invite me to a scheduled meeting to discuss one or more of the projects I’m supporting.

6. How many times do you meet with the client in a long project ?
6 to 39 times. (Not a joke.)

7. What is the challenges ?
Asked and answered.

8. What is the challenges of working digital ?
I’m not sure I understand the question. “Digital” has become a pretty nebulous term that originally meant one thing and now means almost nothing. Digital as opposed to what?

9. Are you considering your self proffessional or amateur ?
Clients consider me a professional. I trick them into it with contracts, invoices, results, etc.

10. What is your biggest problem with your client ?
Most of my problems are relatively small, but there are a lot of them. It’s my job to solve them or at least render them inconsequential.

The classic problems between clients and graphic designers almost always stem from particular deficiencies on one side or the other. On the client’s part, it’s most often a shortage of longer-range marketing vision in the form of misplaced objectives, weak or non-existent strategy. This leaves it incumbent upon the good designer to steer the initiative, often in directions the client resists.

#11

Title: Semi-retired subcontracting freelancer/aspiring author.

Company type: pseudo agency.

Meetings: Online

Challenges working with client: Getting the primary contractor to stop leaving money on the table while underestimating the work.

Last meeting: Last week online.

On Long projects: Average of 8 times, specs and revisions.

Challenges with digital: Poor quality images to work with.

Skill level: Professional

Biggest problem with client: Not enough work. But that’s not the client’s fault. It’s really my own fault for not branching out and seeking more clients.

#12

I think its commutation gap.

#13