In our weekly installment of Clients from Hell, a hilarious collection of anonymously contributed client horror stories from designers, we present “The one that didn't understand design.” For previous posts, click here .
I do graphic work. One client often asks me to help create presentations.
Client: I need you to pretty this up for me. I’m not sold on the layout, so if you want to tweak it, that’s fine.
He sends me a practically incomprehensible diagram. I came up with a new design that makes more sense, and I send a couple sketches of it back to him for approval.
Client: I like it, but it needs some tweaks. Can you finish both the one I sent you and this, but make yours look more like this? I need these ASAP.
He sends me my second sketch, recreated in PowerPoint smart art.
Me: Yes, but I have other urgent priorities too, and if I do both of these right now, it’s going to eat up my entire day. Which one would you like to see first?
Client: I don’t understand, why will it take you a couple of hours each? It only took me 20 minutes to make this in PowerPoint.
Me: Because PowerPoint is not graphics software, and I take some amount of pride in my work?
