Design outtakes: 5 memorable clients
Lesson #10: bad clients, good lessons
Welcome to Change, Logged, a weekly newsletter offering 5-minutes of honest thoughts about life, design, and everything in between.
This post is probably the most honest one yet. Inspired by This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay, I’ve put together the design outtakes from 5 of the most memorable clients I’ve worked with so far.
Unlike what most people think, being a designer isn’t all that glamorous.
The client we all know too well
“Cassandra has not reached out.”
That was the first Slack message I saw when I returned from my one week off work. The customer sounded frustrated and things seemed urgent, so I scheduled a call with her within the week right away. But the call was postponed twice without any communication, and it only finally happened a few weeks later. When we met on Google Meets, she was the complete opposite to her messages and even mentioned it was not a big deal. Neither was it urgent.
You know that slight eye roll and cringe face you do inside your head?
People tend to overreact, most things are usually not as ‘urgent’ as they sound.
As many of us may have realised since working remotely became popular in the last few years, Slack ≠ reality.
The client who read Lorem Ipsum
“Is it possible for you to edit the Spanish text in the cosmetic section on the mockups to English?”
I spent the morning squinting at 3 tiny 100ml bottle labels on my screen, trying to locate the Spanish text. Turns out, the client was referring to the placeholder Lorem Ipsum text because the content had not been sent over. Since then, I’ve just stuck to using English instead of Lorem Ipsum. Who says people don’t read descriptions?
The call to no action client
I had a client who needed a new landing page to test product market fit and engagement. To be honest, I can’t even remember what the product was, but I remember them specifically asking for no CTA buttons anywhere on the page. Sometimes, I wonder what data was collected in the absence of clicks.
The ‘make it pop’ client
“Sometimes, you just got to let things fail”, wise words from my manager that has since stuck with me. Looking back to one of the lowest points of my design career, I had to design an interface for a touchscreen at a refill machine. No matter how good your intentions are, or how much valid rationale you give, you could do everything right and still end up with something so wrong.
From one client refusing any buttons, to this client, who may still be holding onto the title of ‘biggest button’. It was green (#53AA4D), and at least 600px wide (on a tablet sized screen). But customers still missed it.
So they added massive red arrows pointing at it. We joke about big arrows, but they do really happen.
The buy 1, get 3 free client
Let’s go back to my first design job, creating packaging for coconut water and healthy snacks. I know designers are meant to wear many hats but in this case, I may have worn all the hats except for the part time accountant, but that was probably due to legal reasons.
I was the graphic designer, occasional dog walker and unofficial IT support whenever the Wi-Fi or printer broke down. And amongst that, I ended up misprinting 10,000 labels. As my philosophy teacher once told me over 12 years ago, “multitasking is just doing multiple things badly”.
You do what you got to do to pay your bills, but I’m relieved to say that these days, ‘going beyond the role’ mostly means doing what needs done to get stuff shipped at a tech company. I still have to walk the dog and fix the printer, but at least now, they’re both mine.
For the curious reader
Books that inspired the thoughts on this page — and are worth a read: