Customers who are their own designers... uggg

[gabagoo]

I am doing this signface for a regular customer of mine but now it seems I am dealing with the VP of marketing.... probably a 23 year old fresh out of College.

First off he sends me some word file with the way he wants the sign to look.... It's awful so I put the logos in and adjust the layout to fit the sign as his was not to scale and I basically improved it for him.

He sends me back an email and he tells me how he made the 3 initial logo from 2 fonts I have never heard of...great, I wasted over an hour searching for something close.
He then tells me he wants it to look exactly like the word document he sent me.
I told him to send me these fonts he so desperatley must have ( they look like garamond basically with a few minor differences )
OK he sends them and I input the letter "J" and it goes way below the baseline, but when I look at his word file it is on the same baseline as the "T" near it and I wonder, there's no way this guy has the talent to change the font and yet keep the stroke identical....

I set it up exact to his word file and send it.

he replies and says he wants it to look like the signature he now has on his email and I look at it and it is nothing like the word file and the "J" is sitting below the baseline.....
Whats happening here I wonder and I suppose possibly my computer has defaulted some type and thats why I can't get it right.

I redo it all ( easy stuff and I priced the sign high so I am not out anything).

Send it and he replies back with 4 changes and then says to look at the signature on the email as thats how it should look.
Thats what he said the last time and I duplicated it. This signature looks different again.
I now go and get the older email and sure as %$%$ this guy has definately changed it from what he asked me to do originally. Minor changes but who does he think he is kidding.

I am now waiting for his reply and I bet that signature logo changes again with some more tweaks.

 

[RadicalDesignHutch]

We do alot of work for the local Ford Dealer here in town. They like to design their own stuff too but they have gotten to the point where it's just a guide for me to show what all they would like on their signs & graphics. At first they wanted it exactly like they designed but one day I designed something totally different with the same content and they loved it so now they trust me to do my own thing on them. Hopefully you can get through to your customer that you have XXXX amount of time in the sign field and sometimes what you have visioned just won't work properly for the application you are trying to do.....Good luck!

 

[SignaramaFL]

Yes this is just the worst, I am dealing with a customer like that right now. Except what this customer wants changes with every email and they act like I should of known that on the prior revision!!

 

[Sideshow]

Thats why I charge 35 for the first 2 proofs, 10 per proof after....they stop nit picking REAL quick

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

I just got done with banners that a customer of mine (designed if that's what you want to call it) she sent me a doc. file and told me she wanted it just like that. I told her it wouldn't print as it looks on her computer on a banner, so I redesign it, and she was thrilled compared to what her's looked like. Not only that, I charged her an extra $50 for FREE artwork I got off of Google. :ROFLMAO:

 

[Sideshow]

^ hell yeah.

 

[iSign]

hmmm... begs the question "what is free artwork off google?"
you mean google got you to one of those free clip art sites?

 

[natedawg9640]

we had a job go through with a similar customer. This guy want 10 seals of this emblem he sends. It's an illustrator file so at least it's vector, right? So i go to convert the colors and create my bleeds (center had to be edge printed then manually laid on engine turned gold, then overlaid with the large black on clear overlay) So we get the file set up and send him a proof. He responds with "i made a couple alterations" and submits a "revised" file. So I now have to recreate the whole thing again. I import this new .ai into omega and lay the vectors right on top of eachother and Nothing... and i mean nothing has changed. We email him requesting info on the changes he made so we can be sure to note them. He says "oh i don't know i can't remember them all now but i know i changed a good 20 things" :/ So ok... we set the file up and an send him a visual. Approved. Print, cut, weed, cover, transfer, apply, apply overlay, laminate, cut, cover, ship. Dude gets the shipment, says they're wrong, we must have used the wrong file, he can't see any of the changes and the lines aren't even. Wellllll buddy. guess what. I fixed the lines once, then i fixed the lines again, both times you refused the art and submitted new files. Then, you approved the visual. the seals turned out looking absolutely stellar, and nuts on to what the visual represented. open your wallet. it was a very frustrating week.

Oh and then we had another guy, unfortunately he's sorta friends with the company owner. (so that tells you right there that he's gonna get the job for damn near free)... So he buys this new ford superduty. custom orders the color, and then decides he doesn't like it so he wants graphics. So for about 3 weeks I draw up design after design that he continually turns down (all this time we had planned on a digitally printed half wrap) finally he likes a design and we print a color swatch. Not sure if you all realize how much, but there is a significant color shift between indoor florescent lights and outdoor sun. He sees this and can't get over the fact that the color will look different in his garage, than in his driveway. So after about 4 hours of trying to hit acceptable colors, we decide to convert the design to cut vinyl, and use three separate 225 metallic colors to mimic the design. Let me also mention that this guy is ridiculously anal, and if there is on tiny tiny crease, or bubble or inconsistency, then off the piece comes and must be re-done. Ok, we're all familiar with the properties of unlaminated cast metallic. they are brittle, tear easy, don't pull back, etc. some of these pieces are as long as the truck. It's going to be a hard install. and to top it off, it's a design that now is converted to many pieces all separated by a .2" gap. ohhhh yes.... gotta make sure the gap stays the same between 3 colors of cut vinyl. We got it all applied in one day, he looks at it... thrilled. wonderful, out the door. I look at my coworker and we both smile cause we know he's going home to get out the ruler and check the gaps, and look for ANY problems. ANY other person besides chip foose would have no issues with the install. it was really well done. NOPE, hes back the next day because the stripe on the tailgate is literally an 1/8th inch higher on the right than on the left. Nice, and, the stripe that's off is the one the rest of the tailgate graphics line up to, so if one stripe changes, so does the rest. Off they come, and on they go. So he stays and OK's each stripe as it goes on. gone... back the next day, do it again. wasn't happy, wont pay till it's right. I don't know if he's paid to this day. We've all since refused to work on anything he brings in... it's always the same and we all knew it right when the boss mentioned the job as a possibility. There's plenty of fun details i didn't include in that little story, but you get the point.

 

[SebastienL]

Gabagoo, I know exactly what you mean. Dealing with wannabe "designers", HHHHHAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Wait 'till he gets his hand on a hacked copy of Photoshop....

I got 6 psd files for 6 bus interiors. 2gb each. That's for 35" x 11" styrenes printed at 120dpi. Of course it was at 300dpi, still layered. 3 dvd!!
I didn't even bother trying to open any of them. I called this "designer" asked him to flatten and lower to 120dpi and upload to our ftp. He understood and asked for ftp info. I guess he was somewhat competent 'cause he actually did what I asked him to.

I'm not sure your customer would understand..."Resolution!?... Rasterize text!?"

...

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

hmmm... begs the question "what is free artwork off google?"
you mean google got you to one of those free clip art sites?

Google images

 

[Gino]

Had a guy come in about a week ago checking out our security cameras. He was a local detective and wanted to see about some kids breaking in the computer store across the street. Before leaving he said he had another business and wanted to know if we could do this and that for his side business.

Sure, I said. He told me he'd bring some stuff by in a few days.

He stops in this morning with a printout and CD of his proposed logo his partner made up. It was simply horrible and totally unusable as is, plus……………

I looked at it and stated to point to a section that had 'Shutterstock' written across it, when he suddenly blurted out…… I just noticed a word in there.

I said.... uh-huh.

He asked if that was anything important and I said to some people yes, but to many others no. That just happens to mean, unless you paid for this design, I'll be committing copyright infringement fraud. He said, well we can’t have any of that. I said, being a cop, I guess not. He then asked if I could find something and I offered, but told him it will cost him. He’s gonna find a picture without any watermarks on it. YEP !!

 

[TyrantDesigner]

Had a customer a few years back that we called "micrometer man" ... his entire job was making sure all the fleet vehicles looked same so about every other truck (3-5 per week) he would come into the shop to measure all the graphics make sure they would be the same .... with a micrometer. Not hard considering I had a printout I made of where they go with the measurements on all the graphics for the 3 different types of vehicles. Started turning those trucks into my weed out work for new hires ... anyone who came in would get 3 days of "this is how you weed, this is how you prep, this is how you apply" after that ... i set the dogs on them (or micrometer man in this case) ... only had 3 in a year that stayed longer than a week ... ticked the boss man off but he approved of the method of clearing out the weak or those that didn't know how to use a ruler. even had one guy throw his squeegee on the ground and literally run away from the shop ... left his lunch in the fridge. Should also note that when that truck came in ... it could be done in 45 minutes ... i told the new hires to take their time and do what they have to do ... almost all of them failed. made me sad ... most of them were "designers" and were college educated.

I haven't had many 'designers' or the such in the past year cross my threshold, but I did get one guy about 2 or so years back that said he was a graphic designer for 20 years and he kept sending me a 100 x 300 pixel jpg at 10dpi with 50% compression on it for all his "final artwork" ... did not understand a damn thing about actual pixel size, kept telling him that If he wants a 10"x30" logo I need more than 10 pixels per inch or it will look like $&*%. gave him all the steps and info on printable sizes and color formats (hell, if he could have sent me a cleaner image I was probably just going to re-create the art just to save myself some time dealing with that idiot) ... eventually he sent me the logo that was 400x1200 at 40dpi ... all he did was just resize the tiny image. made me want to stab him, ended up sending him to another sign shop since he didn't want to pay the art fee ... because again ... he was a "graphic designer for 20 years" ... and as he told me "I can do my own artwork"

 

[natedawg9640]

We do decals for a guy who sells them online. Mass amounts of the things. Every new one we make a visual of, send it over to him at 5x5 at 200dpi. his "web guy" them creates a thumbnail and puts it on the site. unfortunately, when you click on the thumbnail it bigs up a larger image, but it seems that the web guy has been downsizing the high res images we sent to make the thumbnails, and them blowing the thumbnails up for the real previews. UGH. and for like 4 weeks straight i had to keep telling our customer that the problem was happening on his end, not ours. just did not compute to him. i think he finally figured it out cause we haven't heard anything about it for a few weeks.

 

[brdesign]

Seems like the last few years all I do is clean up other peoples crappy designs. I have so many stories of PITA customers from over the last 10 years. My favorite one was a woman who wanted her sign layout faxed to her for approval (this was before everyone and their grandmother had email) she later called back, yelled and screamed at me over the phone, called me stupid and incompetent all because I faxed her layout in black and white instead of color. Once I explained to her that fax machines only work in black and white she finally shut up. I think this was the same woman who got extremely offended when I asked for her PMS colors, so I had the explain the Pantone Matching System.