Clients? Who needs them.

Clients From Hell

I use to have a cartoon strip in my office that had a boss entering a guys office asking him to enlarge a 1px x 1px photograph. He tells the designer to "Just photoshop it, it shouldn't be that hard." and walks out of the office.

I have had several clients try the same stunt pulling images off the web and wanting to use them in print and just not understanding that a 100px x 100px image off the web will not blow up to a brochure background. They walk among us.

They just don't know or understand the process. Sometimes it is very hard to educate clients or bosses about these things, they know what they want and that is what is important to them.

What I have done is shown them by example. If they were so determined to have it the way they want I do it and show this is what I was trying to tell you would happen with the image you gave me, if you would like I can do some searching to find something to what you want and work that but using this one will look very bad to the companies reputation and image. I also tell them that I want to produce the best image I can for you but this doesn't have the high quality standards your company has.

Turning it around to where it is their idea again lets them save face even though it was you that educated them about it.

I hate when people ask to me redraw an image. I Can't include that in my portfolio, because its an existing image and not my original artwork.

How do you deal with these people?

I show them by example, somewhat like sharie. I submit a shoddy-looking printout with an explanation that the original image didn't have sufficient resolution for print- and then I feature a couple of suggested substitutions. When they can see the difference they almost always opt for print resolution.