The Struggle with Clients

Jack Sullivan

No matter what field your in, youre going to get a client who, that when you work
with them, you want to tear your hair out with afterwards. But yet, the reason youre
sticking around so long is because of the paychecks, or your coming straight out from
college and your experience is not at a high level yet to decide. This paper focus on the
issues with clients in the field of graphic design. This paper will feature some of the most
scholarly opinions and the most popular opinions. This paper will include some research
that I have collected on the topic as well. All of these sides are going to deal with the
same topic on the struggles with clients, but the sides will have different opinions and
facts.

This paper will have two sides on the matter of issues with clients. The first side
that will be discussed on the matter is the scholarly side. They might not have had the
most horrible experiences with bad clients, but theyve studied issues with clients and
here are some of their opinions. Barbara Krtistaponis (No Date) from the American
Writers association is legibility, and how important it is to a client. What her friend is
describing in this article is that if you dont have the great penmanship, your clients

might be mislead and it could lead to them leaving your business or worse it could to
your departure.
The next person who has had an opinion on the matter of client issues is Craig
Erpelding of the digital technology department and he describes in his article how hes
not in the field of graphic design, but in the field of motion pictures and he gets deals
with clients all the time because of the critics who come in and review the work hes
done on films. (Erpelding, No date). The next person is D.K. Holland who describes in
his article the significance of graphic design and the basic related fields and how each
of the fields have had stingy clients who pick on every bit of a project. (Holland, 2009).
This wraps up the opinions of the scholarly side, which their experience is limited
compared to the next group; The professional designers who deal with bad clients on a
daily basis.
Professional designers deal with bad clients all the time because most of the time
there dealing with clients on one-on-one projects, so they know how critical they can be.
Jill Pantozzi of the Mary Sue culture website describes in the article titled: Graphic
designers get snarky revenge by illustrating client feedback. Jill discusses in her article
how her friends projects always get snarled at by the stingiest of clients. They even
describe it as Creative Catharisis, which is the opinionated feud between the client and
the friend. (Pantozzi Jill, 2013). Candence Wu of the You-the-Designer senior blog lists

20 different bad habits of clients and some are really bad; for example the two that I felt
were the worst were canceling a project and asking for files years later or canceling a
project and not getting your money. (WU, 2007). David Airey, a graphic designer and a
writer, describes how some of the most simplest problems are blown out of proportion
by clients for example he describes that clients have issues with projects being shown
differently from computer to computer. He also describes how clients cant get the big
picture on how a computer program can cost so much money. (Airey, 2007). Eric Miller a
freelance graphic designer who describes in his article the 10 early warning signs of a
bad client the two that I found that was the most interesting were Unrealistic
Deadlines, which is basically what the title is describing that clients give unfair
deadlines that nobody can finish a project on time. The other warning sign that I found
interesting is You dont get it , how a client describes a project the way they want and
afterwards your confused because they didnt explain it well or they didnt give you
enough information to clarify what they want from you. (Miller, No date).

So Ive heard two different sides of bad client: the scholarly side(which doesnt have as
much experience) and the professional graphic designers side who has more
experience since they work more with clients. Both positions have different views of
what a bad client really is. This is what Ive come to make out of all these articles.I

believe the scholarly and the professional graphic design organizations should set up a
convention, and discuss the issues that theyve had with bad clients and discuss how
they can work out a solution for all the problems that theyve stumbled on. I also think
theyre five easy steps to solving a bad client issue.
Here is the first solution I came up with to solving a client problem. The scholarly
side and professional graphic design groups should talk about the issues in order from
the hardest problems that theyve had to face, to the easiest. I think specifically they
should choose the problems that have to deal with projects that theyve done for their
clients and the range from hardest to easiest could come from how critical they were.
The next solution that they could come up with is each person could write a client
problem on a piece of paper and split the teams up in a one-on-one group and have a
scholarly talk with a graphic designer vice versa and talk about there problems from
there piece of paper. I feel like this could work really well because you can hear from
one persons opinion and not listen to several people and not get confused by several
variety of solutions.
The third solution for coming up with solutions for issues is making a list of all the
issues that you have on a word document and then when your name is called they put it
on a projector so each person has a turn explaining their client issues and having other
designers help you come up with a solution. I think this would work well because you

could have several opinions and choose which one is the best fit for that situation and
also you could eliminate each problem until you dont have any left.
The fourth solution, that you can come up with for the bad clients is the scholarly or the
professional graphic designer could each come to your work, or job and see the
problem up close and personal so they can make a close look at what the problems are
and how your dealing with the clients for themselves. I think this is one of the best
solutions I came up with, because this is what I call an up close and personal solution
because you can examine the problem for yourself and determine yourself what can be
done and tell the person exactly how to pursue each problem you have and make a
better solution for each of the problems you have.
The final solution solution to solve a bad client issue is to come up with a website
or a blog to discuss all of your problems. So, if any new or developing ones come up,
you can always discuss it in your blog.
The next part of my paper is the research I came up from Survey Monkey, The
issues on Survey Monkey have to deal with my friends and relatives who deal with client
issues all the time and they voice theyre opinion and some short answers and survey
questions as well. Here is some of the conclusions I came up with is that not everybody
at their jobs have had to much difficult with clients which is a good thing maybe their
coming up with ideas that have worked over the years. Communication was a bit up on

my charts I asked them Describe your dealings with your first client in communication?
and I had a rating system from easy to very hard and 55% had an average time with
clients in communication. I think the solution to this problem is pretty simple, I think you
need to get the client one-on-one and asked them the specific problems that they had
with your project and go from there. The highest rating that I got was from the question
How would you describe your biggest project that you had and the response had 44%
in both hard and very hard. I dont really have a solution to this problem because Im not
sure what there biggest projects were but if I had a big project I would probably try to
finish the hardest problem of the project to work on first and than you will have the easy
part last and you wont stress out as much. I also had my peers do some short answer
questions and the best answers I got were to a question on how they dealt with
impatient clients and some were very good answers like one person responded to stay
calm, I think thats a really good solution because if you stay calm you can stay in
control and still ask reasonable questions to ask them to fix the issues with the
problems.
I had some very good responses to each problem and I hope that my peers stay calm
and keep coming up with solutions so the rest of us can learn from there success.

Sources:

Airey David (2007). Common client misconceptions in graphic

design. Retrived from http://www.davidairey.com/common-clientmisconceptions-in-graphic-design/
Candence WU (2007). 20 Horrible Habits of Clients. Retrived
from http://www.youthedesigner.com/graphic-design-tips/20horrible-habits-of-clients/
Holland D.K. (2009). Believe in Magic. Retrived from
dkholland.com
Kristaponis Barbara, (No Date). American writers association.
Retrived from www.americanwritersassociation.com

Miller Eric (No date). Freelance Graphic Designer. Retrived from

http://graphicdesign.about.com/od/workingwithclients/tp/client_red_
flags.htm
Pantozzi Jill, (2013). Editor-in-chief of Mary Sue website. Retrived
from http://www.themarysue.com/author/jill-pantozzi/
Sullivan, J. (2015, February 6). Survey Question. Retrieved March
17, 2015, from
https://www.surveymonkey.com/analyze/Sr_2FVpJ5crr8SrDBfe5PT
6cby2CYN_2BpZj1yqKaT_2FaiwY_3D