I was designing some vinyl decals for a client’s van. He phoned four times in four hours to make sure the decals would be “big enough”. Finally, I sent him some mockups so that he could decide for himself.
Client: “I got your email with the mockups.”
Me: “Great! Which of those work for you?”
Client: “I don’t know! That’s your job. I don’t want to be responsible if I say yes to something and then they’re not big enough.”
Today, I get a phone call regarding Wi-Fi not working in a lady’s room but working everywhere else in the house.
Me: “Thanks for calling IT. May I have your name, please?”
User: “It’s [User].”
I input her name into the thing, and it pops up red indicating a VIP who expects to be given whatever she wants. She usually gets it, too.
Me: “How may I help you today?”
User: “This will sound really weird and crazy, but I swear my Wi-Fi does not work right. Everywhere else, I can work just fine, but as soon as I bring it home, it just stops working.”
Oh, fun — one of THESE calls. Probably an all-metal house or an old-as-dirt house.
Me: “So, is it everywhere in your house?”
User: “Yes… No! Actually, last night, I worked while watching Netflix on the TV in the living room and had zero issues.”
Me: “Well, that’s a good place to start. Let’s go into your living room and test the Wi-Fi.”
User: “Sure thing.”
We test the Wi-Fi in every room in her house and find that the signal degrades significantly the instant she steps into her bedroom.
Me: “Okay, this is going to sound like some James Bond sci-fi stuff, but I bet something in your room is causing electromagnetic interference. Have you moved anything new into the room? I mean anything — a lamp, a microwave, coffeemaker, mini-fridge, or even non-electronic stuff like metal?”
User: “Who has a mini-fridge in their room?” *Laughs*
Me: “I actually keep drinks in mine by my desk while I work.”
User: “Oh. Well, there is nothing like that. Plus the router is in the other room. The only things over there are my art projects.”
Me: “Okay. I am reaching way out there now. Is there a lot of metal content in that wall?”
User: “No, but there is a lot of metal on it.”
Me: “How so? You do metal work for your art?”
User: “No, I use it to hang my art.”
Me: “That’s probably not it, but go ahead and send me a picture of it.”
She takes the picture and sends it to me. On a roughly six-by-eight-foot section of her wall is a mounted chain link fence with these little cut up soda cans as art hanging off of it. It takes me a full minute looking at the absurdity of the picture in front me before the light comes on.
Me: “Ma’am, that’s a faraday cage. Well… sort of.”
User: “What is a faraday cage?”
I hear from the background, “I TOLD YOU!”
User: “Ignore that; that’s my son. We keep yelling at him to move the modem and router into our room, but he says the fence is the problem.”
Me: “Well, to be honest, it kinda is. No, it’s not kinda. It definitely is.”
User: “Huh?”
Me: “So, a faraday cage is used to block signals. Basically, any linked metal cage can create a field where signals have trouble passing through.”
User: “This is that James Bond crap you were talking about?”
Me: “I mean, kinda? It’s not a full faraday cage because it’s just one side. It’s why your Wi-Fi works but constantly cuts out and stays at half strength. A faraday cage has to actually enclose something to properly shield it from radio and electromagnetic waves. But that chain link fence is in direct line of sight with the router.”
User: “I… don’t see how that is possible. It makes no sense. But you, my husband, and my sixteen-year-old son all say the same thing. They all say that moving my art to the garage will solve my problems.”
Me: “I agree with your assessment.”
User: “Are you willing to put your job on it?”
She has me stay on hold for thirty minutes as she gets her husband and son to move the art and fence to the garage.
User: “Okay, I am back. Pulling the ethernet cable… Huh, that was fast. It instantly connected to the Wi-Fi.”
Me: “Okay, let’s test it again.”
She has zero dropped pings on the ping test; before, it was every third one. A speed test gives her the full speed for her area.
User: “That was strange. Well, it is working now. How often you think this happens?”
Me: “I can legitimately state that I have never once run into this issue in my entire career.”
User: “Seriously?”
Me: “Yup. Now, I have run into weird things before.”
User: “Like what?”
Me: “In my parent’s house, if you stand in the laundry room on Wi-Fi, and I open both the fridge and freezer door in the kitchen, your phone will lose Wi-Fi connection. I had a friend who had to move his router five feet because a new lamp his mom loved was causing line-of-sight interference with his laptop. And my uncle decided to build an all-metal house: metal beams, metal roofing, and metal doors. He gets zero reception inside his house and has to run ethernet cables all over his home.”
User: “So, would running this ethernet cable through the wall be a better solution?”
Me: “Infinitely better.”
I thanked her and immediately shared the picture with everyone on my team. Only three had to be told what a faraday cage was. I am so proud of my team.
I was working with a new client on a design for their email newsletter. They weren’t super happy with my design, but I couldn’t possibly have guessed it would be for this reason.
Me: “What revisions would you like? I’m happy to help!”
Client: “I don’t like the text.”
Me: “What don’t you like about the text? I’m using the same fonts as your site. I can certainly change them if you’d like!”
Client: “No, the font is fine. I hate the italics, though. Remove any place where you used italics. I’m a very creative person, and I know these things. Italics are my enemy.”
Me: *Holding back laughter* “Sure, no problem.”
I’ll give them this: it’s the easiest amendment I’ve ever made.
The publication where I worked (around 2010 to 2015) put out an advertising-heavy special edition. Since we had to do our normal publication on top of this, and since the boss kept trying to cut hours and avoid overtime, he chose to hire an outside production freelancer to lay out the special section.
We sent the freelancer placeholder copy (lorem ipsum) and ads so he could mock up the layout. As approved ads and final copy came in, we’d send him the finished replacements to flow into the designated spaces.
The freelancer worked at home, but our boss kept in contact with him and assured us that everything was going fine in the special section.
Print day rolled around, and suddenly, nobody could contact the freelancer. He wasn’t responding to emails or answering his phone. The boss said everything was fine — that he’d seen the section, and it was perfect.
Two hours past our print deadline, my boss came in, tossed us a DVD with a wink, and said, “See? I told you everything would work out just fine.” The freelancer had dropped by and delivered our section, picked up his check, and left.
Well, we’d be a little late to the printer, but at least we had our section. We’d do some rapid corrections in InDesign and send it out ASAP. Let’s see what’s on the DVD…
Flattened, uneditable PDFs — essentially pictures of each page of the special section. And each page was a disaster.
The boss had sent the freelancer uncorrected copy to use as placeholder text, and that’s what was in the PDFs, complete with typos and notes to the editor, like “Daniel Defresne !!CHECK SPELLING!!”. One article was still completely in lorem ipsum.
Large sections of each page were left blank. The paper was full of outdated and expired placeholder ads.
Full-page color ads for serious advertisers (like, you know, Microsoft) consisted of a blank white page with “ad: microsoft” written in the middle.
We turned to the boss in amazement. This was a disaster. We couldn’t run this. We’d need to somehow create an entire new special section in the next thirty minutes, or else we’d—
That’s when my boss said he’d told the freelancer to send the files directly to the printer.
It was now 4:00 am, it was too late to stop printing, and pulling the special section meant we’d have to pull the normal publication, as well.
So, the special edition hit the streets in shamefully amateur disaster nightmare form, and we had to void $15,000 worth of advertising contracts.
I’m working on a graphic design for a publisher. The boss is micromanaging over my shoulder as I work on a computer. He wants a smooth, colorful gradient of blue going to yellow for the body of a logo.
I do that, and the boss looks at it and frowns for a moment.
Boss: “Can you make it so that blue mixing with yellow doesn’t make green?”
