Family member:
Could you make me something? It will be real quick and easy
Something tells me it will be neither.
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People who think their headlights are on cuz their dash lights are on… Or who think their backend running lights are on cuz their front end ones are. Stupid new cars. People need to get out and look at what’s on before they get in a new car. I saw more cars without taillights in the snow storm we had yesterday, and more than too many without any lights on (one I saw just in the nick of time, on my back right quarter.) It was after dusk too.
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Now I hate Apple.
I want to buy a new Mac and I want it shipped to the store that’s right on my way home, not my house in the middle of winter, where I’m not there to sign for it. Because it’s an upgrade config, they won’t ship it to the store “because we are limiting the number of people in the store. We have to ship it to your house. And someone has to be there to sign for it.” That’s the reason they gave me.
But I also want a keyboard and a backup drive. “Oh, you can pick those up today at the store. You just have to make an appointment…”
Seriously? I can’t order the $$$$ thing from your store and pick it up at your store but you’ll open the door for a $100 thing?
Home Depot can ship a special order $2 toilet plunger to my local store for pickup. But swanky Apple can’t send a $$$$ unit someplace warm and safe?
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If a pen gets up and moves by itself, I can’t help but feel irked.
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Having a moment right now, I hate when a client is very specific about what they want, but what they want is the worst possible option. They sent a slew of photos for use on a flyer, and of course it’s the worst of the bunch that they want to lead the whole thing off. Half a dozen bright, clear photos, and they want the one that’s in the foggy gray…Now I gotta figure out if I want to try to convince them they’re wrong, or just do what I’m told. Ugh.
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… when I’m driving and ask my passenger, “Turn left here?” and the passenger replies, “Right.”
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This isn’t exactly the same thing, but what you wrote is similar enough to remind of a recent client.
They approached me about redesigning a long-running series of atrociously designed fishing books. In our initial conversation, they said, “We hate the look of our books, and now that Dad has passed away and we’ve taken over the company, we want a new look.” Their books, they said, were amateurish, ugly and in desperate need of a long-overdue, top-to-bottom revamp.
When I asked them to show me examples of work they liked, they referred me to my own online portfolio, which is why, they said, they reached out to me. They wanted something new and contemporary but with an outdoorsy fishing vibe — something that matched the general style of other similar books that I had designed.
Well, okay, that made it easy, I thought.
Anyway, they rejected my first three ideas saying they looked too different from their existing books — the very ones they said they hated.
I designed another round of three books that referenced the general look of their existing books but with an updated and more organized appearance. They rejected those too as also being too different from their existing books.
They finally decided they didn’t really want much of anything changed. They wanted to keep the exact same look as the “amateurish and ugly” books that their recently deceased father had put together for 30 years. All they wanted me to do was change the color of the books from blue to a greenish-blue.
They paid me, which is the important part. Sometimes I think clients are their own worst enemies. It seems they sometimes go out of their way to ensure the worst possible results.
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Wow. That’s amusing and sad all at once. I’m glad you got paid for it, but how odd. I think you hinted at one of the biggest issues with clients. In some cases they aren’t sure how to articulate what they expect or want.
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Encounters like this fascinate me, in a “wow, I’m so glad I wasn’t involved, but please tell me more 
” sort of way. People/clients often [think they] know what they want. Many think they have an amazing and easily executable idea, which they then have to ask/hire someone else to execute for them. When their idea can’t be realized the way they’d imagined it in their head, well, that’s not on them—they know what they’re looking for, and what you’ve given them ain’t it. Language can be a barrier even when it isn’t.
I used to work at a print and frame shop, and customers would often come in asking for a photo to be printed at a specific size for a frame they already bought or owned. Naturally, their photo wouldn’t crop to that size without losing some all-important element. I’m sure I’m not the first person here to complain about how difficult it can be to explain proportions and aspect ratios to the lay-people, but that has to be one of my biggest annoyances.
On a good day, it was almost entertaining trying to find different and creative ways to explain why a photo couldn’t be printed at [size] without so-and-so’s head getting cropped. On other days—most days—these scenarios were less than thrilling. I’ve told more than a few people, “I want you to picture what you’re asking for in your head. Imagine what it is you think this should look like. Now explain to me what you see.” Invariably, I’d follow up their response with, “I’m sorry, that’s not possible if you also want…”
These situations compelled me to create a very cumbersome 24"x36" guide depicting every standard and common non-standard print size, overlapped and aligned to one corner. It made it a lot easier to show people visually what they were going to lose if they went with this size over that, or which sizes could still accommodate their entire photo.
So, in conclusion, I hate…that proportions and aspect:rations are not a [more prominent] part of the HS curriculums in most districts. It should be taught in the same class that teaches you how to file your tax returns, start a lawn mower, and cook foods that don’t come in thin plastic pouches or frozen trays.
rant over
I decided long ago that good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good ideas are easy — it’s the ability to judge how difficult they will be to pull them off that matters.
Sometimes new potential clients approach me, then say something along the lines of, “I’ve already got a great idea, but I just need a good designer to polish it up and make it look professional.” That’s a strong signal for me to walk away. I’ll hear them out just in case, but when the conversation starts out like that, it hardly ever works out unless they’re open to abandoning their “great idea.”
I’ve designed quite a few booklets, magazines, brochures and publications of various sorts where a very similar thing occurs. Someone’s late getting a photo to me, so I lay out the page with a spot for a photo, and I tell them the photo needs be horizontal. They say great, then send me a photo that’s an extreme vertical with instructions to just crop it. Like you said, slice the heads in half, cut them off at the hips and leave a mile of empty space on either side side of them.
I can understand people not being familiar with things like color spaces, resolution and various printing requirements, but I’d sort of think that plain old common sense wold tell people that a vertical photo of a tall tree can’t magically be cropped to be a wide-open, horizontal landscape.
I suppose it shouldn’t have after eight years, but it surprised me every time I met someone who couldn’t understand that they were asking for more from their photo than it had to offer, in more ways than one. I’m very patient, but even I have limits. 
The general public not knowing that stuff is one thing. Take that one step further.
Imagine designers that don’t know that stuff.
And having to explain it to them.
On a Zoom call.
That includes their client.
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Just got this bit of feedback on an internal flyer I created, “There seems to be a lot of white space on the flyer. Can we add a second picture and increase font size to help with real estate?”
I hate that. Ha. Luckily I’m going to politely tell them “nope”.
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Dammit Craig, stop wasting paper.
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– but saving ink.
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The funny thing is that it’s actually a pretty full page, there is literally a small part in the bottom right that’s about 3.5" wide by 1.5" wide that is blank. The rest is “full”. I did the math. That’s about 5% of the real estate being unused and they still are concerned that it has a “lot of white space”.
Sigh.
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It depends on the project of course, but most clients fail to realize that engaging potential customers or readers is best accomplished by piquing their interests in the most easy-to-digest and approachable way possible. Cramming in too much stuff can easily be counterproductive by diluting the focus of the message in a way that causes people to just tune it out.
When designing a guide book or instruction manual or something along those lines, lots of information is good because that’s what the audience wants. For a promotional piece though, too much information can be a deal killer. And in almost any situation, a good balance of white space helps make the message less intense and more inviting.
Then again, I’m preaching to the choir.
It’s old, of course, but the following is likely one of the most effective ads ever created.
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One of my least favorite conversations to have with people/clients is the copyright chat. They bought the thing — they “own” it — so why can’t they make copies of it? It’s hard to explain, and there’s never a happy ending. Happened again the other day, and the guy admitted to understanding why we can’t help him, but then kept insisting that “no one would know…”
…when the boss asks me to do 20 things in 5 minutes, and to be focused on all of them, and do them perfectly.
I’ll have a bad time in this field, won’t I?
Hmm, it depends on the company/job/boss.
In general I will say that handling multiple jobs and juggling ever changing deadlines is part of the job, however if your job/boss is continually and unrealistically making demands such as truly asking you to do 20 separate things in 5 minutes, that is unhealthy. If there is that much work on a continual basis, then your company/boss would be better off hiring more people to do the work so that it is done well. Only you can gauge how healthy your work environment is, and whether or not there is any benefit to continue in that role.