I recently mocked up a website in photoshop for a client. I sent it to friends in the design business, they all loved it. The client said he loved it. He said he sent it to people and they wanted my number and loved it. Today he comes over and wanted to work together to make a “few” changes. these changes are U G L Y!!! I mean ugly. I wouldn’t put this on my portfolio it’s so ugly. What to do in case like this? Should I just make it and not put my name on it and take the money and run OR see this as a warning sign?
This guy has NO TASTE. Or should I just say I’m the professional and this looks like crap so I am overruling these god-awful changes and if he walks he walks???
Of course, I would be more tactful than what I wrote here.
You need to think about what kind of ‘professional’ you want to be. If a client is paying you, they don’t necessarily want to hear your opinion on every matter and they should be the final word on what they receive. But you are still an independent professional and you don’t have to put your name on something you aren’t proud of.
So your choices are to either do whatever the client asks for and try not to get emotionally involved OR to push back on things that you aren’t comfortable with and cease working with the client if you aren’t happy. But, there isn’t much in between - you can’t ‘overrule’ anything because you aren’t the one writing the checks.
If I have a designer (or copy writer, or coder) giving me recommendations in a tactful and constructive way I am happy to hear it. But, I only want to hear it once and I don’t have to explain myself if I decide to take or leave their advice. It’s the check writer who is in control, your option is to advise, then leave if you aren’t happy.
Get used to working somewhere in the middle, if you want to survive as a designer!
Gently tell them why you feel the design isn’t as good as it could be, then leave it at that and continue with the project. As Sagewing says, they pay the bills, so they have final say. You don’t get to overrule your clients.
Just make sure they realise it was their decision, not yours. If you hate it, leave it out of your portfolio.
It depends on the client. On more than one occasions, I have had success in ‘tackfully’ suggesting the choices that I made for the design better fit what the business is trying to accomplish for x,y,z reasons while the changes that the client brings will not achieve as much success for a,b,c reasons. Sometimes, this brings up a conversation about why they were driven to suggest these ‘ugly’ changes, which gives an opportunity to influence why your choices work better or to find better design compromises. In these discussion, I generally bring up that the reason you hired me was for my web, design, and knowledge of business application as pertains to the web and you (the client) knows your products and services best. It is my job to communicate these products and services with what will work best and my choices will work better than what you suggests based on this expertise. I can do what you suggest, and will, if you are set and want to disclude the expertise that you hired, make your changes, but would hope that you trust the reason you hired me to make the best choices for you.
You might think this is the wrong approach, but when I have needed to use this approach clients have respected my confidence in the value that I bring and have aquesousused. This also has been a building block to becoming a valued resource for the customer on things even outside of web design.
I’ve been there before. A cheesy replacement for a banner image that conveys the purpose of the business better just because it looks “cute”. In cases like this, the changes weren’t too many- just one or two image swaps- so what I did was put a screenshot of my own version of the website in my portfolio. As long as the website didn’t do a complete 180 after the client’s suggested changes, I felt that it was still appropriate to use the original.
It really just depends how well you can justify why you don’t think it should be done how they say. And how open the client is to your ideas from the outset - some have hired a professional to do what they can’t do themselves; others think they know best despite having hired a professional.
For example, I had a client who said their uniforms had their company name in Comic Sans. They’d been around for a while, and I said that “Comic Sans isn’t seen as very professional anymore as it was fashionable in the 1990s, and now unfortunately looks outdated.” Fortunately they took it well and allowed me to go on my merry way.
On the other hand, another, who was a self proclaimed “perfectionist when it comes to design” (despite not having a design background at all) picked apart my design saying “that’s not required” about several design elements and graphics. There wasn’t much justification I could give as to why they should be there other than I thought it looked better.
Yes this largely depends on objective knowledge of the subject being discussed with clients.
When in situations where the customer wants to take control of the design process or believes they are expert then the tact I’ve used has been things like:
[LIST]
[]“Oh so you’ve read the most up-to-date eye-tracking research as it pertains to web-designs, I really am interested (not inferred as sarcastic) how you see your design fitting this research and does it maximize its’ potential”. If the customer does know about it they generally have a hard time relating their choices to the research; but I do not have any problem relating how my designs relate.
[]If we get focused on pure design then I discuss the “Golden Grid”, Colour Schemes (mono, complement, triad,tetrad,…), lines of transition, vanishing points, page balance … I’ll ask how their design fits these design ideas and illustrate how mine does.
[*]If after that it is a ‘just do it my way discussion’ I have them sign a document that clears my liability; something to the effect that they agree they have 'waived the designers expertise in terms of driving more traffic, more customers through their website. When they ask why I want them to sign it I say “If your site does not achieve the success you want then I don’t want our discussion about this to include the ‘design is the problem’”. I have done this twice, both times customers agreed to do it ‘my way’. “My way” includes the customer’s ideas too so it is not just a yours against mine discussion, I try to illustrate where I have put their ideas into the design and they were ‘good ideas’.
[/LIST]Very rarely do I run into this but these are strategies that I have used with difficult customers.
Seems a little over-aggressive to have a client sign something like that. Unless there is true material liability (which there rarely is on the part of the developer) a document like that doesn’t serve much purpose, and would really annoy a more experienced client.
These sort of issues are simpler than they see. Try and educate your client in a professional and productive way. Encourage them to make good choices, but honor the choices they make and support them as they learn/grow. If you just can’t stand it, walk away.
And don’t forget, the web designer isn’t always right. I have had so many developers give me lectures about web standards and how they will affect my business without realizing they were building a prototype for one-time internal. I listened to tables vs. css speeches for years during the long period where it didn’t much matter. So, if you are 10000% sure you are right about everything, sometimes it’s ok to take a step back - there is always more to learn, even from clients.
You are right it is a little aggressive, however in my cases they were warranted. Also true about the material liability however at first the idea is to get the customer to understand that you care and are serious that they may not be making the best choice. Later it is about having a thread that you can later defend when customers don’t remember choices that were made. This can technique can be toned down as asking them to agree to an email with the intend that the ‘decisions’ are documented can achieve much the same idea.
You are right that the web designer can not ever claim to be 100% right; however we are hired to provide value to the customer. This value comes in terms of knowledge, experience, risk-avoidance, and limitations of the web technology, many but not all of these areas, our customers don’t have this same knowledge. So learning from experience when a customer pushed for something that in the past I let happen and it was bad for my clients and bad ultimately for me, I will not let this happen again.
I like what you say
Try and educate your client in a professional and productive way. Encourage them to make good choices, but honor the choices they make and support them as they learn/grow. If you just can’t stand it, walk away.
This, 95% of the time is what happens; this is a rare scenario so I was sharing the way that I have successfully navigated through these issues. By the way, the two customers that signed these have now been with me 7 and 12 years so I don’t think, in their case this caused irreparable damage.
It sounds like you might be taking our profession a bit too seriously. Clients can make whatever decisions they want to, and there is little to be gained by documenting each decision point or making plans for when a customer forgets what choices were made. Just be sure to make all of your recommendations in a clear, documented (email) manner and don’t worry about it.
Doctors work under severe liability all the time, and the only time they actually ask a patient to sign a form indicated that the are refusing medical advice/treatment is if they are in the OR and it’s life or death. Web development is almost never life or death!
You are right, clients do make the decision the want to. I did not say that I document every decision and many things the client forgets I don’t care about, nor document. I was speaking about the client that got a bad taste in their mouth, and trying to iterate how I have successfully managed in somewhat similar circumstances.
Clearly you don’t like what I have said - that ok as it is your prerogative to do so, and I think that your advice will appeal to many people which is also good, however that does not change my position on 'some times client/web developer understanding/conversations need to be documented for future reference.
