Client: “So, you’re a ‘concept artist’. What is that exactly?”  

Me: “I do stuff like character designs.”

Client: “What does that mean?”

Me: “I design characters and environments. Like backgrounds and characters you see in animations? I design those.”

Client: “So, like what [Friend] does?”

Me: “No, he’s a graphics designer; he does logos and websites and branding. I don’t do that. If you want a logo, go to [Friend].”

Client: “So, what do you do, then?”

Me: “I’m a concept artist; I design characters and environments. Basically, if you are working on an animation or video game, I can help you.”

There’s a moment of silence.

Client: “So, explain to me what you do again?”

At this point, I’m pretty sure he’s waiting for me to say that I do logo design so he can hire me to do work for him and his dad’s business. 

Me: “If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say ‘character design’, then you’re not the kind of client I’m looking for.”

Client: “See, people like you are the reason why your industry is small.”

He’s a radiologist and has no business knowing anything about the animation industry that I work in. 

Client: “You just lost yourself a good client.”

Me: “Well, you were never my client to begin with.”

When I was fresh out of college, I landed an amazing international internship in France. I should have noticed the red flags that my boss was going to be a nightmare when he lost my paperwork for getting my visa, but I was too excited and left anyway.

When I got there, I wasn’t doing design work like I’d been told; I was managing their Facebook page. About a month in, I noticed that my boss would forget things — like when I had meetings with the French government about my visa or what he’d initially wanted posted — and blame me for his bad memory.

Once, he even threw pens and books all over the office, saying he was going to “call the government and give them a piece of his mind”.

I began to think that maybe this was going to be harder than I thought. It was only August, and I wasn’t sure I could make it to Christmas.

The final strike was after he tried to get me and another intern to sleep with him. He started massaging my shoulders at work, claiming I “looked tense.” I knew he was kind of a creep, but this was too much.

I called my school and family and tried to figure out the best way to leave — since he had a history of having a temper. I told my boss that my dad was sick and left two days later, but not before he called me and my school to try and tell them what a “s***ty girl” I was.

Needless to say, I learned my lesson about following my instincts. It hasn’t failed me since!

Client: “What software do you use to make your designs for us?”

Me: “It’s a combination of Photoshop and [other software].”

Client: “So I just got a free trial of Photoshop and I wanted you to tell me how do I do [common adjustment to graphics we have done many times before].”

Me: “We’re not a Photoshop training company. We use it to complete design requests, not teach you how to do it.”

Client: “Yeah, but I’ve seen you do it and it seems so easy. Teach me how to do it.”

Me: “It seems easy because I’ve had years of usage and training on the software so I know how to get it done quickly. It actually requires quite a bit of artistic knowledge to get it done as quickly as I can. It’s that expertise that you pay for.”

Client: *Not listening.* “So, I’ve got like an hour spare. Tell me how to do it.”

Me: “You want me to teach you how do to something in an hour, that took me months to learn, so you don’t have to pay us to do it for you?”

The client is silent because they know that is EXACTLY what they have asked for and they’re trying to worm their way out of making their request sound totally unreasonable.

Client: “I’ll pay you $20 for the hour.”

Me: “No thank you.”

Client: “Ugh! It’s like you’re only here for the money!” *Click.*

A client for a municipal website asked me to clean up a photo of the city hall, and he sent me two photos. One of them was a blurry photo that looked like it was taken on a smartphone by a running drunk, and the other was the same city hall photo but in a full rainstorm.

Me: “I can’t use either of these photos.”

Client: “Why not? Didn’t you say you were good at Photoshop?”

Me: “I am, but I can’t fix a horribly blurred low-resolution photo or clean up heavy rain where you can barely even see the building behind it.”

Client: “That’s a shame. You came highly regarded to us, and I thought you were capable of more.”

Me: “Why don’t you just take another photo? Or, I can even do it myself since I don’t live far from the city hall.”

Client: “No, that’s okay. I no longer have any faith in your abilities.”

I had a client insist that I use their file naming system. Instead of using v1, v2, etc., at the end of the file name, they use an A at the front of the file name for each revision, so a file on version 15, for example, would be named aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_filename.

Client: “This method makes more sense because the newest version would be listed first.”

To me, it just seemed like their files were screaming.