One of my favorite clients is an advertising agency I do freelance work for.

Agency: “Our new client has a gruesome logo. Could you try to come up with some other ideas? Just spitball ideas for an hour. If the client likes any of them, we’ll spend more time on this.”

Sometimes, an hour is all you need because inspiration strikes. This was not one of those times. I had some decent ideas, but they all needed polish.

Client: “Sorry, these won’t work. Thanks for your time.”

The agency paid me for my time, and we didn’t move forward my sketches — or so I thought.

A month later:

Agency: “We need additional material for this client.”

Me: “Sure thing. Could you provide me with the client’s colors and logo?”

Agency: “Don’t you already have all that? Didn’t you design their logo?”

Me: “What?”

I visited their website. The client had gone with one of the sketches. One of the rough sketches. With outlines and no color other than grey. I started to panic. I filled in my contact at the agency, and we proceeded to question wildly how this had happened.

Me: “Oh, God. Oh, my God. Did they… They didn’t use it on their billboard, did they?”

Agency: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

A client wants a logo design that includes a drawing of one of their horses for their training service.

Client: “I want good quality work, but I don’t want to have to spend a ton of money. I’m thinking somewhere around the thirty- to forty-dollar range at the most. That said, I want someone with some experience; I don’t want to have to be someone’s first job.”

I think maybe their logo should be horses***.

My client needed some (seemingly) simple email newsletter design done, but things went wrong when they didn’t like what I created. My contract included revisions, and I offered multiple times to change things to their liking as part of the initial cost.

Instead of asking me to do revisions, they decided to hire another designer to finish it for them. 

They got their newsletter sent out, and now I’m talking with them to collect payment. 

Client: “Since I didn’t like what you created and I had to hire another designer to finish the project, I don’t feel like I need to pay you what we originally agreed upon or your offer of 75%. I run a business based on integrity, and I have to do what is fair here.”

So… I should take less payment because you decided to hire someone else when I was available to make revisions? Yeah, that makes so much sense and is totally “fair”.

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 run a printing shop that offers design work to complement our services. Prior to any prints, we carefully explain our rates and any potential extra fees the client may encounter. However…

Client: “I like them. How much do I owe you?”

Me: “Well, for the business cards, you owe [amount in the hundreds], and then for the design fee, you owe us for about fifteen minutes of work, which is [amount less than $20].”

Client: “No, I designed it, not you.”

Me: “Well, you supplied us with the logo, but we designed the card based on a color scheme similar to your corporate colors, and we arranged the contact information on the cards. We offer a copy of the Illustrator file so you can avoid any sort of design fee in the future. Prior to printing, I told you—”

Client: “Don’t tell me that you designed this card. I designed it. I’m not paying a design fee.”