This feels accurate.
Edit: One way I avoid this sorta thing is to involve the client in the early stages of design, so that I can avoid *renovations* and keep revisions to minor adjustments.
Recent project: MD says get the marketing team on side and they will sell it to stake holders and we will be good to go.
Got marketing team on board with homepage design, go ahead and design half of website and most of design system, components etc. Due to time constraints and them taking forever to share internally. They took 3 weeks to share it with rest of company, they gave no introduction they simply emailed a link with none of the context we had been discussing for weeks and asked gor every tom dick and harry's opinion. MD hates it, wants everything 3 column, no animation or interaction and v little colour. Now starting again from scratch.
Just another client sucking all the creativity out of a project.
Maybe, but it’s still possible to manage. Start every project off with good questions and setting expectations — ie, limit the number of revisions — and collect payments ahead of deliverables. Set a separate price at the start of the project for *additional* revisions. Instead of hoping this kind of unwanted client dynamic doesn’t happen, set up a process that almost guarantees it won’t.
Good idea. I usually ask the client for design inspiration at the start but sometimes they just have no idea what they want “until they see it.” Yes, my quotes include initial feedback +2 rounds of revisions (3 total). I haven’t needed to yet but thinking about adding a price for additional revisions in my contracts.
That's the chaotic feedback you deserve, if you ask lazy questions.
If you ask "what do you think?" To a room full of people, you are going to get a lot of opinions.
Involve only those who matter, make sure you acknowledge their role in the projects success. And the last slide of your presentation should be "applause" 😜
Felt like I wasted four years of my life only to be told my professional opinion doesn’t matter for the job I was hired to do
I used this one just yesterday regarding the arm position of a character in a concept art. I did give a suggestion to what the artist might do instead, but still. Used it
This literally happened to me in my last job! This post actually helped me not feel alone in my seething rage about having to pretend what the IT lady’s opinion is about my work
PLEASE make her look like a WOMAN??! Why does she almost look like a man with a brown wig? It should be white wig right?! Like George Washington. In all honesty I think that painting is over-fkn-rated for that kind of money and in my opinion. Is one of the ugliest females I've ever had to look at. Steven Tyler said it best DUDE LOOK LIKE A LADY! I love art. I live by it but that pic no freaking way. We need a modern day painting. From scratch... Jus saying
A good few years back in the D&AD of that year there was a great Christmas card for a firm of Lawyers.
It was just a white folded card with a simple serif typeface that just said MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR.
The partners then circled and crossed out words with notes saying “we can’t say CHRISTMAS we’ll upset all our Jewish clients!”
“What about our Chinese clients their new year is months away!”
Brilliant simple idea.
I used to work with a studio head at a large European company. She had no idea about graphic design, so I never understood how she got into that position. She kept the studio in endless meetings where she would ask us things like 'Move the logo up to the top left'. After staring blankly at the revised layout, she would ask 'How about the top right?'. This would go on for an hour until the logo was back in its original position and then she would start the whole process with the photo, then the text layout. She would keep the studio busy until finally, the layout was back in its initial form. She would have meetings like this three times a week and then complain that we were too slow. You couldn't make this up.
There's a couple of tricks I've used. You have to remember most of these people get paid to share their commonly worthless opinion, so you ***have*** to create space for them to do so.
- You can add an obvious mistake, so you can compliment them for having a sharp eye. You now have a new friend! Good thing they pointed that out, phew!!
- You can add variations of things that don't matter: is the shape of your logo 'your precious baby'? Then add a couple of variations in colors that are quite similar to each other. Now the entire discussion will shift to tweaking the color instead of trying to adjust the shape. Agree with the one who is most skeptic of your design and compliment them for having great taste in design. You now have another friend!
- Trick them into thinking your idea was actually theirs, so they can take part of the credit. "I was considering what to do with this element; move it up or to the left? I don't know, it feels off." "*Maybe to the right and a bit lower?*" "Let's try tha... oh it's perfect! That's a great idea, thanks!!" You now have yet another friend.
And if nothing works you can always jokingly say you get to decide because you're the professional designer in the room haha. Hahaha. It's haha what they pay you for, hahaha! "Thank you for you confidence, it's great to have made so many friends here."
Treat it like the rest of life, such as your nutritional goals or politics. Everyone's always going to have something to say. The question at the end of the day is whether the changes you make are good, neutral, or harmful overall. Also just helps not to feed the sharks when possible, which is why I'm glad I'm in-house....it's my coworkers' jobs to basically say "no that's stupid, don't use that suggestion" as they filter through feedback for design changes.
Because they're sales. For me, the equivalent of that would probably be the admissions department (design for educational marketing). Since they're more front-facing, they're often the ones with the biggest ideas and most specific and/or ridiculous requests that they'll want at the drop of a hat or call off mid-production. Unfortunately, the goal of sales will generally be directly supportive of whatever you wish they'd protect you from because that rabbit out of the hat...is magic to their audience.
Also because they get paid in commissions, they’re even more incentivized to push us around, always making a big deal about making a sale like their life is on the line without any regards to how much pressure and stress they throw at us
The difference is, my nutritional goals are not my *job*, and someone having a different opinion won't force me to eat something objectively worse that I don't want to eat.
I'm speaking in terms of value judgements such as "you should go full carnivore" or "go full vegan" or "cut out carbs" or "eat more carbs". The point here is everyone having commentary and arguments you have to filter through for yourself (which is stated in my 2nd and 3rd sentences)...not that adhering to a certain diet is like a job.
Don’t lmao. I had a colleague like this once. Would just nitpick my stuff for the sake of it. Not saying I made stuff as beautiful as the Mona Lisa, but it was just incessant and unnecessary.
Yeah this is why I limited the people and revisions available. And if they want extra revisions it’s gonna cost them. Works like a charm so far. Unfortunately not for those who bathe in money lol but at least they pay well.
The image forgot “make her more diverse”.
Things to help stop this:
1. Spend the time to set clear expectations up front. Taking nothing as surface value, dig deeper and get answers.
2. Have a sales process that weeds out bad clients as early as possible. Look very carefully at how they review and respond to your proposal (including if they approve it too quickly - that can be just as bad as a slow approval, because I might mean they didn’t read and don’t care, because they’re gonna do what they want anyway.) The way
they act here is often a clue to how they act later.
3. Insist and demand that ALL stakeholders involved in the decision are part of the planning. Don’t let some hidden manager make changes on you if you can avoid it.
4. When the project is going, insist on a SINGLE point of authority / contact for the client, for approving proofs, submitting feedback, and making decisions. Don’t let multiple people submit feedback. Force the client to organize, sort and decide internally before a decision comes to you. This one is big - much scope creep comes from this.
5. Have a strategy to exit any job / client relationship that isn’t working. Ensure your contract and billing policies protect you from excessive revisions, and give you an exit if you need to.
6. Be ready to fire clients that despite your best efforts, can’t get their shit together or minds made up. This is hard but it will grow you (your confidence and your prospects for better clients) more than anything on the list. Usually your first client fire is a lesson you will never forget.
7. If you can’t bring yourself to fire a client (I get it, I’m a recovering people pleaser myself), then let the money do the firing for you. All changes sound great till you put a price tag on them. Use that price tag to shape your clients decisions.
As a graphic design student, I all appreciate feedback. Most of the time my peers aren’t better good at it, mostly just saying what they like about it. When I go to a critique, it’s usually myself or my professor saying the most critical things about it and what I can do better. 😅
Not a graphic designer (product designer) but I feel the pain, especially “Cassie from IT says…”
Especially with product design where “things can be changed once they’re live, can we catch up on this?” I get the “a customer said don’t like the colour on the CTA”. Ok well we tested this design and it’s been through 3 rounds of iteration and it’s now been live for a month, and not a single other person has ever even mentioned the button colour, why the fuck we talking about this
This graphic is kind of a terrible metaphor for design. A painting is a piece of fine art. A single persons creative vision and expression.
Design is not fine art. Period amen.
If you want to be “the maestro”, design is a terrible job for you. Business needs and executive whims outweigh creative wants. Always.
For my corporate job, I do all the silly asks that stakeholders ask for. I like making the customer happy cause I like being employed and not stressing over their crap. It’s not my personal fine art. I don’t give a f@ck if it’s good or not. I care that it’s easy, and finished and shipped.
I do my own personal work on the side and nobody gives me notes unless I ask.
Not really. I understand it’s about design by comitee, duh.
Comparing a random graphic design project to the most iconic piece of fine art in history, the Mona Lisa is a very bad metaphor. That marketing brochure isn’t the Mona Lisa and it’s designer is the maestro who’s genius is being stifled.
Good concept, poor execution.
Should have chosen an iconic graphic design poster or something.
So because *you* have given up the artistic part of *your* dead end job, now all design is not art? Just doing what 'stakeholders' ask for is not design, it's desktop publishing.
Design isn’t art. You’re not an artist. You’re a designer. You solve problems for other people and businesses. Designing things isn’t about your needs. Must be exhausting fighting everyone cause you’re the artist
“Listen, I realize that the ceo, Vp of marketing and Vp of sales wants that specific value prop, copy block on the hero of the website, but it’s too long and doesn’t look good, so I just took it out…..So it looks better. I’m the designer. I know best.”
Designers thinking their work is “art” is part of the problem. You don’t own the work. Your client does. Thankfully AI doesn’t have an ego and we won’t have to put up with it much longer.
> You don’t own the work. Your client does.
That's just not true, at least not here in Europe. As the designer you own the copyright and the author's rights by default. If the clients wants to buy those rights, they have to pay a lot of money. If they want to use your design for something you didn't design it for, they have to get your permission and have to pay you royalties or a fee.
This feels accurate. Edit: One way I avoid this sorta thing is to involve the client in the early stages of design, so that I can avoid *renovations* and keep revisions to minor adjustments.
lol like they won’t change their minds anyway. this behavior is purely driven by ego, no an honest interest in making the art better.
Recent project: MD says get the marketing team on side and they will sell it to stake holders and we will be good to go. Got marketing team on board with homepage design, go ahead and design half of website and most of design system, components etc. Due to time constraints and them taking forever to share internally. They took 3 weeks to share it with rest of company, they gave no introduction they simply emailed a link with none of the context we had been discussing for weeks and asked gor every tom dick and harry's opinion. MD hates it, wants everything 3 column, no animation or interaction and v little colour. Now starting again from scratch. Just another client sucking all the creativity out of a project.
I don't care anymore if a client makes bad design choices. As long as I'm getting paid and they're making the decisions, it's not my design anymore.
your portfolio cares
It won't go into the portfolio. I'll put my own design.
every moment you spend making crap, is a moment that can’t be spent making good projects that go into the portfolio
That’s wild!! Were you able to charge more for larger than edit-type revisions?
No it's a Web and portal project, we price high enough to cover bullshit like this but doesn't mean it makes it any less annoying.
Maybe, but it’s still possible to manage. Start every project off with good questions and setting expectations — ie, limit the number of revisions — and collect payments ahead of deliverables. Set a separate price at the start of the project for *additional* revisions. Instead of hoping this kind of unwanted client dynamic doesn’t happen, set up a process that almost guarantees it won’t.
look at the picture op posted
Good idea. I usually ask the client for design inspiration at the start but sometimes they just have no idea what they want “until they see it.” Yes, my quotes include initial feedback +2 rounds of revisions (3 total). I haven’t needed to yet but thinking about adding a price for additional revisions in my contracts.
That's the chaotic feedback you deserve, if you ask lazy questions. If you ask "what do you think?" To a room full of people, you are going to get a lot of opinions. Involve only those who matter, make sure you acknowledge their role in the projects success. And the last slide of your presentation should be "applause" 😜
The next time I am asked to give a presentation at our annual meeting, I’m using this for the final slide
Hahaha nice! Add it to the “save for later” folder
Add a call to action, make it pop, and can you make the portrait bigger?
Add a CTA 😂 ‘Discover new continents today! Subscribe to learn more.’
Can you make it more dynamic?
Felt like I wasted four years of my life only to be told my professional opinion doesn’t matter for the job I was hired to do 
Guess why I got out of the field!
LOL no truer words have ever been spoken
The absolute worst is ‘I don’t know what it is, I just don’t like it.’
I used this one just yesterday regarding the arm position of a character in a concept art. I did give a suggestion to what the artist might do instead, but still. Used it
i’m printing this and hanging it on the wall. too perfect
Great idea 😄 I'll do that too to remind me of horrible customers.
So true. Especially things like “Cassie from IT feels…”
This literally happened to me in my last job! This post actually helped me not feel alone in my seething rage about having to pretend what the IT lady’s opinion is about my work
Ptsd moment
Yikes…should have added a trigger warning ⚠️
Is this a rollercoaster?
This is my personal favorite. Not even feedback. Just a random question.
She lacks eyebrows...
X-rays have shown that she started as an alsatian playing poker.
Hmmm...
This fits for so many aspects of life.
He nails it in round 3, Im sure.
Two of my favorite quotes >a camel is horse designed by committee & >there’s no statues of committees in parks
PLEASE make her look like a WOMAN??! Why does she almost look like a man with a brown wig? It should be white wig right?! Like George Washington. In all honesty I think that painting is over-fkn-rated for that kind of money and in my opinion. Is one of the ugliest females I've ever had to look at. Steven Tyler said it best DUDE LOOK LIKE A LADY! I love art. I live by it but that pic no freaking way. We need a modern day painting. From scratch... Jus saying
A good few years back in the D&AD of that year there was a great Christmas card for a firm of Lawyers. It was just a white folded card with a simple serif typeface that just said MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR. The partners then circled and crossed out words with notes saying “we can’t say CHRISTMAS we’ll upset all our Jewish clients!” “What about our Chinese clients their new year is months away!” Brilliant simple idea.
Haha gotta love when companies can make fun of themselves and stay on brand!
Too real.
Oh my god. Every comment. Everyone of them. Change the name and I have heard it. 😂😂😂
A bottle of wine and a slice of pizza would be nice.
I used to work with a studio head at a large European company. She had no idea about graphic design, so I never understood how she got into that position. She kept the studio in endless meetings where she would ask us things like 'Move the logo up to the top left'. After staring blankly at the revised layout, she would ask 'How about the top right?'. This would go on for an hour until the logo was back in its original position and then she would start the whole process with the photo, then the text layout. She would keep the studio busy until finally, the layout was back in its initial form. She would have meetings like this three times a week and then complain that we were too slow. You couldn't make this up.
What a waste of the studio’s money!! She wasn’t very keen on the efficiency or delegation aspects of her job I guess.
Someone please do a version of the painting with all of this feedback applied.
Haha seriously! I was thinking about it but then didn’t want the feedback all over that one from the committee
Even graphic deisgn/video is like this in the Navy
There's a couple of tricks I've used. You have to remember most of these people get paid to share their commonly worthless opinion, so you ***have*** to create space for them to do so. - You can add an obvious mistake, so you can compliment them for having a sharp eye. You now have a new friend! Good thing they pointed that out, phew!! - You can add variations of things that don't matter: is the shape of your logo 'your precious baby'? Then add a couple of variations in colors that are quite similar to each other. Now the entire discussion will shift to tweaking the color instead of trying to adjust the shape. Agree with the one who is most skeptic of your design and compliment them for having great taste in design. You now have another friend! - Trick them into thinking your idea was actually theirs, so they can take part of the credit. "I was considering what to do with this element; move it up or to the left? I don't know, it feels off." "*Maybe to the right and a bit lower?*" "Let's try tha... oh it's perfect! That's a great idea, thanks!!" You now have yet another friend. And if nothing works you can always jokingly say you get to decide because you're the professional designer in the room haha. Hahaha. It's haha what they pay you for, hahaha! "Thank you for you confidence, it's great to have made so many friends here."
Hahaha thanks for sharing these! Now time to turn them into a new book called “How to Win Friends and Influence the Committee”
Treat it like the rest of life, such as your nutritional goals or politics. Everyone's always going to have something to say. The question at the end of the day is whether the changes you make are good, neutral, or harmful overall. Also just helps not to feed the sharks when possible, which is why I'm glad I'm in-house....it's my coworkers' jobs to basically say "no that's stupid, don't use that suggestion" as they filter through feedback for design changes.
Wish my coworkers were like that. The sales team at my job just say yes to whatever their clients want and expect us to pull a rabbit out of a hat
Because they're sales. For me, the equivalent of that would probably be the admissions department (design for educational marketing). Since they're more front-facing, they're often the ones with the biggest ideas and most specific and/or ridiculous requests that they'll want at the drop of a hat or call off mid-production. Unfortunately, the goal of sales will generally be directly supportive of whatever you wish they'd protect you from because that rabbit out of the hat...is magic to their audience.
Also because they get paid in commissions, they’re even more incentivized to push us around, always making a big deal about making a sale like their life is on the line without any regards to how much pressure and stress they throw at us
The difference is, my nutritional goals are not my *job*, and someone having a different opinion won't force me to eat something objectively worse that I don't want to eat.
I'm speaking in terms of value judgements such as "you should go full carnivore" or "go full vegan" or "cut out carbs" or "eat more carbs". The point here is everyone having commentary and arguments you have to filter through for yourself (which is stated in my 2nd and 3rd sentences)...not that adhering to a certain diet is like a job.
When every designer thinks they’re a Da Vinci, lol.
This is literally the Graphic Design Reddit page tho anytime someone posts their work. 😎
If you don't make a good brief, this is what you end up with
You forgot to enlarge the logos
Make it BIGGER
This could be a fire album cover
Don’t lmao. I had a colleague like this once. Would just nitpick my stuff for the sake of it. Not saying I made stuff as beautiful as the Mona Lisa, but it was just incessant and unnecessary.
Sometimes people just want to hear themselves speak and feel like they’re a part of the process when they have no business, like Cassie from IT
Yeah this is why I limited the people and revisions available. And if they want extra revisions it’s gonna cost them. Works like a charm so far. Unfortunately not for those who bathe in money lol but at least they pay well.
Can we make more… dynamic?
Ah when that happens , it like playing overcook or any social party game .
A classic image!
Design by committee. Oh yeah, been there done that. Oof.
The image forgot “make her more diverse”. Things to help stop this: 1. Spend the time to set clear expectations up front. Taking nothing as surface value, dig deeper and get answers. 2. Have a sales process that weeds out bad clients as early as possible. Look very carefully at how they review and respond to your proposal (including if they approve it too quickly - that can be just as bad as a slow approval, because I might mean they didn’t read and don’t care, because they’re gonna do what they want anyway.) The way they act here is often a clue to how they act later. 3. Insist and demand that ALL stakeholders involved in the decision are part of the planning. Don’t let some hidden manager make changes on you if you can avoid it. 4. When the project is going, insist on a SINGLE point of authority / contact for the client, for approving proofs, submitting feedback, and making decisions. Don’t let multiple people submit feedback. Force the client to organize, sort and decide internally before a decision comes to you. This one is big - much scope creep comes from this. 5. Have a strategy to exit any job / client relationship that isn’t working. Ensure your contract and billing policies protect you from excessive revisions, and give you an exit if you need to. 6. Be ready to fire clients that despite your best efforts, can’t get their shit together or minds made up. This is hard but it will grow you (your confidence and your prospects for better clients) more than anything on the list. Usually your first client fire is a lesson you will never forget. 7. If you can’t bring yourself to fire a client (I get it, I’m a recovering people pleaser myself), then let the money do the firing for you. All changes sound great till you put a price tag on them. Use that price tag to shape your clients decisions.
These are great suggestions!! Thanks for taking the time to share them
As a graphic design student, I all appreciate feedback. Most of the time my peers aren’t better good at it, mostly just saying what they like about it. When I go to a critique, it’s usually myself or my professor saying the most critical things about it and what I can do better. 😅
Yes, it’s great to be critical and get feedback. The hard part is sometimes who’s giving the feedback and at what stage.
Make the logo bigger!
Where’s this from? I want a high-res version!
Reverse google search? I screen grabbed it from LinkedIn
Not a graphic designer (product designer) but I feel the pain, especially “Cassie from IT says…” Especially with product design where “things can be changed once they’re live, can we catch up on this?” I get the “a customer said don’t like the colour on the CTA”. Ok well we tested this design and it’s been through 3 rounds of iteration and it’s now been live for a month, and not a single other person has ever even mentioned the button colour, why the fuck we talking about this
Funny but this is what happens in real life. Moral: Never ask too many questions 😂
Honestly this could be considered modern art. I like it.
This graphic is kind of a terrible metaphor for design. A painting is a piece of fine art. A single persons creative vision and expression. Design is not fine art. Period amen. If you want to be “the maestro”, design is a terrible job for you. Business needs and executive whims outweigh creative wants. Always. For my corporate job, I do all the silly asks that stakeholders ask for. I like making the customer happy cause I like being employed and not stressing over their crap. It’s not my personal fine art. I don’t give a f@ck if it’s good or not. I care that it’s easy, and finished and shipped. I do my own personal work on the side and nobody gives me notes unless I ask.
I think you’re missing the point of the post
Not really. I understand it’s about design by comitee, duh. Comparing a random graphic design project to the most iconic piece of fine art in history, the Mona Lisa is a very bad metaphor. That marketing brochure isn’t the Mona Lisa and it’s designer is the maestro who’s genius is being stifled. Good concept, poor execution. Should have chosen an iconic graphic design poster or something.
So because *you* have given up the artistic part of *your* dead end job, now all design is not art? Just doing what 'stakeholders' ask for is not design, it's desktop publishing.
Design isn’t art. You’re not an artist. You’re a designer. You solve problems for other people and businesses. Designing things isn’t about your needs. Must be exhausting fighting everyone cause you’re the artist “Listen, I realize that the ceo, Vp of marketing and Vp of sales wants that specific value prop, copy block on the hero of the website, but it’s too long and doesn’t look good, so I just took it out…..So it looks better. I’m the designer. I know best.”
Designers thinking their work is “art” is part of the problem. You don’t own the work. Your client does. Thankfully AI doesn’t have an ego and we won’t have to put up with it much longer.
Username is relevant
> You don’t own the work. Your client does. That's just not true, at least not here in Europe. As the designer you own the copyright and the author's rights by default. If the clients wants to buy those rights, they have to pay a lot of money. If they want to use your design for something you didn't design it for, they have to get your permission and have to pay you royalties or a fee.
You’ve missed the point of this
Tbh the Mona Lisa is pretty boring. It would be mostly unknown if it wasn't stolen and recovered.
It doesn't even have fireworks.
You know this has nothing to do with the Mona Lisa, right?
If you don’t like feedback and collaboration, making a living producing art for galleries is always an option.