Graphics, the Love/Hate relationship.

For me, graphics is a love/hate relationship. First off, I love doing graphics - trying to be creative and seeing the final project come out a success (most of the time) is what I live for. What I Hate are the clients. Early on when I didn't have the luxury of picking and choosing projects, I would agree to people sitting behind me while I worked and nit-picking over the tiniest pixel, or took on work that I knew was going to suck.

I'll kick off with the country singer that needed a CD package designed. They wanted it Right Now and were going to sit with me while I did the work. He, the singer, was very timid and didn't say very much. The wife, on the other hand, was Wicked Queen Dominatrix of the Harry Eyeball. They handed me a photo of the singer standing next to a big horse which was next to a campfire ring out of rocks. Fine. WQDotHE wanted the campfire bigger, much bigger, wanted the sky bluer, wanted the grass greener and more of it, wanted me to tip her husbands hat a little to the left, add trees, wanted the horse to be more muscular, and the horse being a Stallion of course, needed much bigger balls. I sarcastically asked (I guess my patience was running thin) if I should do the same to her husband - she stared blankly and he turned 5 shades of red (with a smile on his face). When people watch you work they have no idea what you're doing and the WQDotHE had a panic attack every time I clicked the mouse - not understanding in the least that to do anything she wanted took more than a simple click of the mouse. When she finally went to the bathroom, I finished the whole damn thing - and the singer husband smiled and said with a heavy southern twang, "I knew you'd get it done once she left".

How about The Psychedelic Mushroom Dude that only wanted to talk about how great it was to have sex with his (soon to be Ex) wife while he was stoned.

Or the classical guitar playing hospital surgeon (with a bad case of "dropsy") that called 8 times a day to "just check in" and change his mind over and over and over about the CD cover.

Or the California girl that had over 600 photos of herself and wanted to cram as many as inhumanly possible into her CD package. I think by the end their were about 30.

Or the young country singer wannabe girl with the demon child. My daughter graciously gave up one of her toys to this monster because of the exceptional raging fit it threw when it was time to leave. Oh, I know that only fed the fire, but my daughter wanted that creature out of the house just as much as I did.

Every now and then I had a client that was easy going and a pleasure to work with - but they were few and far far far between.

Now that I can pretty much pick and choose clients, I listen very carefully, read between the lines and use that sixth sense to weed out the nutjobs.

Moral of the story:
If you're going to hire someone to do your graphics project, remember that you're hiring them because of their talent/style/work ethic and you have to trust them to do the right thing and do it well. Be realistic with your requests. Understand that price quotes for a job don't include endless revisions or multiple designs because "you'll know it when you see it". Do your homework! Have everything ready ahead of time! I can not stress that one enough.
And remember, your designer is Human.