Client Horror Stories: Halloween Special

Ian Paget: Hey, Logo Geeks. It's Ian Paget here back after a short break with a new look and new music too, which I'm really exited about. I think it helps to give the podcast so much more character and, hopefully, helps to take the show to that next level.

I'm going to be talking about audio branding on an upcoming episode with the team who helped to create the music, but this week, as it's Halloween, this is a themed episode where I will be chatting to a handful of different people from the Logo Geek community about their client horror stories. This is going to be a little bit of fun, but after each story, we'll discuss the lessons learned from the experience, which I hope will help you avoid the same terrible situations.

I think the key thing with any nightmare situation like this is to learn from them and to adjust your process to avoid that situation happening again, be that looking out for red flags during the sales process, updating your process to prevent that from happening or, most importantly, having a well-written contract that clearly states what happens and when.

For those of you who don't yet have a contract, I do want to point you towards Michael Janda's freelancing course, module 3 of that, specifically, which includes proposal templates, including one specifically for logo design services as well as a separate service agreement template, which is the contract document that includes all of the terms and conditions, which is the most important thing. That's all part of a course, so you'll also have access to high-quality videos that talk through each of those documents in detail so that you have a proper understanding of all of the details within it, which I think is important to understand properly.

You can find that by heading to logogeek.uk/freelance. If you are a freelancer or someone interested in becoming a freelancer, I do actually recommend the whole six-part course, as it will help you to operate a successful design business. You can get just Module Three on its own too. If you do want to go and check that out, again, it's logogeek.uk/freelance. For transparency, that is an affiliate link, so if you do purchase the course via that link, you'll be helping to support the Logo Geek Podcast at no extra cost to you.

So, let's dive into these horror stories. We have five in total to share. First, I'm joined by Katie Cope for the first scary tale...

Client Horror Stories from the Logo Geek Community

Ian Paget: Katie, thanks so much for coming on. Would you mind sharing with us your client horror story?

Katie Cope: Yeah, no problem. When I was first starting out as a designer and thinking that this is what I want to do as a career, I decided to do the whole let's get going with it, and I put out a few emails saying, "I will do some graphics free of charge." Somebody came back to me, in which they worked for a theatre company, and said, "Ooh, can you do my program for me?" I was like, "This is great. This is brilliant. I've got full-on reign in terms of design work," and so I made this really, really beautiful program. It had a blue cover on it. It was lovely. It was gorgeous.

I sent it to her, and then she suddenly came back and went, "It's not reading properly. I can't see all of the fonts and things. It's not printing properly." I was like, "Well, that's a bit strange," so I lightened it up a little bit. Then it kept going back and forth. She's going, "No, I still can't see it. No, it's still not looking good." Then I suddenly realised, because she suddenly put it on an email, and she's just like, "It's just not coming out right on my desktop printer." I was like, "Oh, you're doing it on a desktop printer."

It got to the seventh or eighth revision of this thing, and then she suddenly turned around to me and said, "This is really unprofessional, but don't worry. You're still learning about it." I was just like, "Right. Okay. This has to end now." I think I literally completely changed the design and went, "You know what? It's on white. There you go." She's like, "Oh, yeah. I can see it now." I was like, "Right. Thanks." I was just like, "I'm done." Yeah, I think it took around about 10 revisions by the end of it, and I did this completely free of charge, so yeah.

Ian Paget: Oh, what a nightmare.

Katie Cope: Exactly.

Ian Paget: So after that experience, I know that was quite early on, what did you learn from that?

Katie Cope: The biggest thing that I learned was I vowed never to do anything for free without a contract in place. There was no contract in place. I don't normally do things free of charge anyway. If I do, it's with somebody that I really, really know well and I want to help them out.

It also made me realise to value my worth because this person was asking me for my experience, my creativity because it is something that they couldn't do themselves. That's why they were asking me to do it. The fact that they were asking for loads and loads of revisions was like, "You know what? You need to pay what my worth is and value my worth." Now in my contracts as well as... because now I've got a business. I have, in my contract, that I charge for revisions, so once it goes over a certain stage, I make sure that I get those revisions and I get paid to do those revisions on their behalf.

Ian Paget: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, in general, when doing free work, I don't see anything wrong with that when it's mutually beneficial for both of you, but as you pointed out, you do need a contract. I think it's worth still putting in the full price and showing a discount so at least they are aware of what it's worth.

Katie Cope: Yeah, definitely.

Ian Paget: If they, maybe, speak to some friends or whatever about the project, at least they can also see the price of that and, hopefully, they see the value.

Katie Cope: Yeah, they'll see the value of it.

Ian Paget: Yes. It's all a learning experience, isn't it?

Katie Cope: It is, definitely.

Ian Paget: Hopefully, this story will help someone else out there.

Katie Cope: Yes, definitely.

Ian Paget: Katie, how can the audience learn more about you?

Katie Cope: You can learn all about me. I have a website. I run a company which is all to do with brand design and brand strategy. My website is www.brandbykatie.co.uk. I do full-on brand design and brand strategy.

Ian Paget: Excellent. Thank you so much, Katie, for being part of this episode. Next, we're joined by Ephraim Schum with another printer-related nightmare.

Ian Paget: Well, I know you kindly offered to share a story with the community, a client horror story. Do you want to dive into that story for us?

Ephraim Schum: Sure, sure. Well, in 2015, I was working outside Washington, DC in a small design firm that my father had started, so it was a family business. At that time, I was tasked with a lot of different things. Though I had the title of senior art director, I was given a lot of responsibility, even doing project management and a lot of the hands-on design even down to the production of, mainly, websites and printed materials. I was doing a lot of websites at the time. I had just started, kind of new to Illustrator. I had used it for creating background shapes and things like that that I could import into InDesign or use it in conjunction with Photoshop for creating web graphics.

I didn't really have a whole lot of experience with it in terms of creating charts for an annual report that I was working on. Annual reports, if you're familiar with them, they can be pretty long. They can be pretty short. This one was a medium-sized report. It had a few pages for the editorial section. That's the part up front that has the story about the company, some of the progress that they have made throughout the year. Then the financial data, that's more about the numbers, that would take place in the back of the report. I was really tasked with the whole thing, had my hands in it getting really busy.

As most designers know, you get so down in the weeds with a project you often forget to just check things like little breadcrumbs as you go, check your progress and look at the details. I was getting into the project there. I had wrapped everything up. I had created these beautiful pie charts and tabular data on one of the pages. The pie charts really reflected what was going on in the tabular data, so you'd have percentages and numbers, and went ahead and set up the pie charts to reflect that tabular data in Illustrator. That data, the tabular data, was in InDesign, so that was there, and I was familiar with InDesign, no problem there.

With the pie charts, a little bit different working in that. Imported those, placed those next to that data in InDesign, got everything ready. I had pre-flighted the document in InDesign. I went ahead and packaged all the files, proofed everything very carefully, and sent it out to the printer through FTP at the time. Now you can upload through the web, but I was using an FTP tool to go ahead and do that.

Everything's great. About a week later, I see the soft proof, it's a PDF, and then the hard proof, which was kind like a Kodak approval proof at the time. I got that digital version. I got the hard proof. The client, actually, was dealing with the printer directly. It can be dicey if you don't know who that printer is. You're not really in that relationship as part of that relationship between the client, the printer and, of course, me being the designer, so was out of the loop there. That's the first mistake. You never want to be out of the loop entirely. You want to be involved in it in some aspect.

Didn't want to press inspection. The client felt the budget wasn't there for a press inspection. The proof looked great, and it went on from there. Not a problem, great. We're anticipating another successful project. Well, it wasn't a dark and stormy night, and I wasn't working in a lab anywhere, but... In fact, it was a beautiful early spring morning. I was sitting at my desk preparing for the day over a cup of coffee. The printer's delivery van showed up. I signed for the box. Of course, I opened the box. I'm ripping open the shrink wrap cellophane around the samples that you get. I always requested about 10 to 15 samples. You get that smell of varnish coming off the... Oh, man. You're putting it up to your nose. People are looking at you a little bit crazy. You know?

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah. I love freshly-printed brochures and stuff like that. I totally understand that.

Ephraim Schum: Oh, yeah, yeah. This was on an uncoated piece, so they hit it with a good amount of varnish just to prevent ink from transferring from one page to the next. It was just really nice.

I opened it up. I'm going through. You're looking at your design masterpiece. It's like Christmas, Christmas morning you got this thing. Well, Christmas turned into Halloween pretty quickly when I hit the financials page. My heart started pounding rapidly. I had the cold sweat beads. They began settling on my forehead. I was in immediate fear and panic. Well, what did I come across? I'm looking at these pie charts, and the white text of the pie charts is completely missing. All the percentages are gone. All the labels are gone. It's sitting over top of this nice dark background, and it's all missing.

I'm, of course, like, "Oh." Numbers are going though my head. We're going to have to reprint this thing. It's going to be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Is this going to come out of my paycheck? I'm working for my dad, so then I got to hear it on a personal level. Then I start hearing about stuff I did when I was five years old, that kind of thing. It's just family business, I guess. I did what most people would do. I kind of hid for a while. I was anticipating a phone call from the client right away. They got their delivery a little bit sooner than I had.

I'm sitting there, and I'm sweating it. I just don't know what to do. I'm expecting a phone call. I pick up, and it says, "I know what you did last winter," or something like that, heavy breathing or maybe, "I know what you didn't do last winter," which was you didn't uncheck the overprint fill box in Adobe Illustrator's attributes panel. That's what I learned, a little bit later after some research I did, what you're supposed to do, which is get on Google before you do these things.

I thought of calling the client because I want to be responsible with this. I want to point out that there was an error, but then again, do you want to even mention it? The only heavy breathing that would be done would be from my side from the anxiety in talking to the client, so I just said, "No. I'm going to research this a little bit." I went into Adobe Illustrator after reading through Google, and I found out, yeah, the overprint fill box was checked for all of the white-

Ian Paget: Oh.

Ephraim Schum: Yeah, all the white text, so instead of knocking out... If you're familiar with print, you want to knock the white text out to the white of the page, the paper. That's what's producing the white ink colour or the white colour because it's not really a white ink. You can print white inks with engraving and things like that, but no, not here. I wanted it to knock out. The overprint fill caused it to disappear. I soon learned that, if you just check overprint preview for things like this, which is under the view menu in Adobe Illustrator, you can get around these things pretty quickly.

Ian Paget: Isn't that also the type of thing that a proof would have picked up, as well, if you had one done?

Ephraim Schum: Well, yes. That's the crazy part because the PDF proof, it showed it just fine. Adobe InDesign allowed it to come through, so there were some things that were going on in the InDesign too. Then I'm wondering, well, maybe the rip on the printer's side, maybe it did something funky. I don't know their process, but that's another thing that I'll talk about when-

Ian Paget: How did you resolve this situation? Because I can imagine that the client wasn't happy and...

Ephraim Schum: No. Here's the great part about it, Ian. You tend to panic, and you create this fear, and you paint pictures. I think it's just being creative. You start to have this visual story of what's going to happen. Like I said, I wanted to be responsible and mention this to the client. I probably should have, but I waited on it a little bit, and nothing happened, and nothing happened. In fact, I got a email a couple days later, because I was sitting on this just panicking, that said, "Great job. We love it. This is one of the best."

Ian Paget: No way.

Ephraim Schum: Yeah, yeah. "This is one of the best reports you've done," that kind of thing. It makes you feel so good. I still have my fingers crossed, "Please don't ever see that."

Ian Paget: Oh, you had a real close shave there.

Ephraim Schum: Oh, yeah.

Ian Paget: Tell us what lessons did you learn from that, and what would you do differently after that particular situation happened?

Ephraim Schum: Sure. Well, on the technical side, I would say always check things that you don't know. Obviously, I didn't know. I had never had this happen before, so I'm learning through experience. Of course, it's a very expensive experience if you have to pay for it. Always check those technical things. Check the overprint preview. Now that I know that, if you're going forward, especially on logos, sometimes logos that are set to reverse out, they'll... someone, the designer, will inadvertently check the box overprint fill for the graphic because it works with graphics too. Now that logo that's sent out, for example, will now disappear, possibly, in the layout or wherever it's placed. You have to be very careful with that. Check those things.

Also, I was working solo. I know there are a lot of freelancers in the community and people that are working by themselves. You really have to have someone check things for you from spelling and grammar, that's a given, but learning to look at all of the details as you go and have other people do that, even reading things backwards and upside-down and looking on screen and just trying a lot of different things, asking questions, really does help.

Another thing is having a close relationship with the printer. You mentioned maybe the printer should have caught this or maybe the proof should have caught this. Sometimes printers have a little way that they do things that's kind of to them. If you can go ahead and work with that printer, have a closer relationship, even if you're not handling the printing, if you're not brokering that printing, just stay in contact. Knowing how they work, that's really going to help.

Then the other thing I would say is, at least in InDesign, don't trust your pre-flight panel because the pre-flight panel will often have... by default, it will have the checking for overprint not... it's not installed or it's not in place.

Then, probably, the last and most important thing is you don't need to mention the problem to everyone. The problem exists to you, but it really becomes a problem when you start sharing it with other people that may not even notice it. I know it sounds like I'm saying try to hide things from your client. Not at all, but I think that, if you wait a little while on things... I think we just set ourselves up sometimes. We unintentionally scare ourselves, kind of like putting the jacket on the back of your bedroom door, and then you wake up in the middle of the night. You're half asleep, and you see this ominous figure standing by your door.

Ian Paget: Now it's actually turning into a proper Halloween horror story now.

Ephraim Schum: You got it. Oh, yeah, you got it. Don't let that haunt you too much. Don't set yourself up for scary things like that. This isn't really a story about a client posing this issue or this happening, but this is more about how you can actually create your own horror stories if you're not very careful.

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I know things can always, potentially, go wrong. In this case, I personally point some blame at the printer. I've had that before. I've ordered stuff up, had proofs sent over, and then the actual things arrived and... I ordered up some business cards, and they actually spelled the name wrong.

Ephraim Schum: Wow.

Ian Paget: But it was fine on the proof. That's what I would have done if it did come back to me, because you could be like, "Oh, we checked the proofs and everything like that, and it all looked great." Yeah.

Ephraim Schum: Yeah. You're keeping those things in your back pocket. I will say that. I did have things in my back pocket. I didn't want to cast any blame, but you're also-

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah, yeah. I understand.

Ephraim Schum: You're thinking, "Somebody should have caught this on that side-"

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely.

Ephraim Schum: ... and, "Is this entirely my fault?" Yeah.

Ian Paget: Definitely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your horror story. Very much appreciate it. So that people can find you online and follow, do you want to share where they can go and check out your work and more information about you?

Ephraim Schum: Sure. I have since started my own spin-off. My father retired, but I'm now at Schum Creative. That's schumcreative.com. I have my portfolio there. I'm still working on it. I know a lot of people say that, but I'm in the revision stage, right now, using more of a drag-and-drop interface to redo that site. That's where you'll find me right now.

Ian Paget: Thank you, Ephraim. I shall link to that in the show notes for this episode along with everyone else's that's been a part of this. Next, we're joined by John Bermudes who's sharing a client ghost story.

Ian Paget: John, thank you for being part of this Halloween special. Can you share your Halloween horror story with us?

John Bermudes: Hello, hello. Hello, everyone. I come from a small island in the Pacific. It's like a small town where everybody knows everybody. It's always strange to me, or it was in the beginning, to ask people for deposits before starting projects.

Normally, how it goes is, once I've built a little bit of trust with the client, then it's like I can just continue to do projects for them because the trust is established, and I know where they live, and everybody knows everybody here. For my local projects, I generally just do a deposit for the initial project. Then, for ongoing projects, a lot of times, I don't collect because things have gone well. This is a story about why I never do that anymore.

Okay, so I was approached by a travel organisation to work on some collateral projects that they had. It went really swimmingly and everything went well. They were happy and I was happy. After this went well, the client actually owns a lot of businesses here and so, for the next project, it was a commercial project. They were on a timeline to get it done, and so they asked me if I could start working on it. I said, "Okay, sure," without collecting that initial deposit. Of course, this is where things go wrong.

I had met the client over the weekend because there's some kind of rush to get the packaging design to China. It was maybe a Saturday, and he asked if we could crank it out by Sunday night because he needed it. I said, "Oh, sure. That's fine. That's fine." I met him on a Saturday at a bank. It was kind of strange. His family was there, and so I met all of them. We sat down at the bank for like five minutes, and he just went over everything he needed. He said, "Can I get this by Sunday?" and that. Of course, with packaging, it's hard, but it was relatively simple, not a complex project, so I said, "Okay." Got everything done on the Sunday night, emailed it off. I remember sending him in the email, "Hopefully, you get this, and we are ready to go by Monday morning."

Then, Monday comes and I text him, "I had sent you the designs last night," and emailed him because I am concerned because they need to get this in by Monday. I call him. He doesn't answer. I follow up the following week, because he still hasn't said anything about it, and sent him a reminder that, "If we are delayed on the project, that's fine. I just need a deposit for it at the very least." This is maybe in October.

I generally don't like to bug clients too much for small projects because the amount isn't that much and it's not the end of the world if things get pushed, but I noticed that he wasn't responding to any of my calls, emails, or texts. Every month, I would just send him a reminder like, "Hey. How is it going? Are we delayed on this? As a reminder, I need my deposit." I send this email maybe once a month from... November goes by, December, January, all the way up until the following summer next year.

It's June or something, and he texts me out of the blue, "Hey, on that first project, I can't find the files anywhere. Do you mind uploading it to Dropbox?" I said, "Oh." Then he also sends me a text, "Oh, will there be any charge for this?" I sent a text back, "Oh, I'm happy to provide the files for you. You paid for it, and it's fine. I will do it at no cost, but I do need you to pay at least a deposit for this project that's been on hold for eight months." Then he sends me three or four question marks via text, "Really???" He says, "Let me call you."

The call starts off polite enough, but then it went very sour very quickly. Before I know it, I am in the middle of my office, and he is just screaming at me saying, "We paid for this stuff. It's ours. Why are you holding it hostage?" He continued to yell at me for a good 5, 10 minutes.

Once he was done, I politely said... Oh, that's a lie. I was actually pretty pissed, so I was also yelling back, "We're really two grown men arguing over such a small amount." I told him, "It's not the amount that matters. It's the principle of it. You want me to re-provide something I've provided, and I'm happy to do that for you, but you've been ducking me for the last nine months on this, on money you do owe me. You owe me at least 50%, and that's non-negotiable. I just did not seek to get that fee initially because we were in a rush and I didn't want that to push back the project because..." It was over a weekend, so you'd think that it would be, come Monday, I'd get paid. It's a rush, but here I am on a rush project in limbo over a small amount.

At this point, I'm just in disbelief about this because the guy comes from a charitable organisation. He's well-respected, and so I was just shocked, especially because I had met his whole family, and they're all super nice. Whenever I have a client like that where everything seems to be thumbs-up and it's going really well, there's always a voice in the back of my head to not be too trusting. In this instance, I probably let my guard down. Because it was over the weekend, I had met his family and his kids and stuff. It was a very unique situation to go from a really happy place to a really angry we'll never work together again. Yeah, that's the last time I heard from him. He was a ghost, and then he resurrected and murdered me with words. Now he's been cast back into the shadow realm.

Ian Paget: Did he pay you in the end?

John Bermudes: Yeah. He sent me out a really nice email about... Apologies were sent back and forth and everything.

Ian Paget: Good.

John Bermudes: We never spoke again. You know?

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What lessons did you learn from that? Was there anything that you've done differently after that experience?

John Bermudes: Yes, of course. I had broken probably my only real rule for doing this, which is get paid up front. Whatever it is, always get paid up front. That's the lesson here because you never know when a client's going to ghost you.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually had a similar experience recently. In my case, I did take that 50% up front, but I think there's... Where it can become a problem is when you can become quite trusting of someone. That's exactly what I did. I had a client where I worked with them already, so we'd already started one project. He wanted to book in a second project. What happened was that the first project wasn't quite finished and then started on the second project. Because he was such a great guy and such a fast payment, what I did is, once the project was finished, I sent over the files, sent over the invoice, and then just cracked on with the next project.

What happened, similar to you, kept needing to chase for payments month after month after month. I'd do the same thing as you. It didn't feel like there was any sign of the final payments ever being made. When you're running a business, personally, I found that you can't really trust anyone, so what I do now is, prior to sending over any files, I always send over the invoice prior to releasing any file just because you never know who's going to cause a problem.

That guy ended up having to go through a small claims court to get most of the money from him. I didn't really want to go through that, but that's what it came to. Eventually, I did get the bulk of the payment from him, but obviously, it was a stress. It was a nightmare. I can imagine this type of thing happens quite a lot, so yeah, definitely payment up front no matter who it is or what the deadlines are. It's like are they really serious about the project if they're not happy to pay 50% up front or whatever percentage up front you want to do?

John Bermudes: Yeah. Like you said, whoever it is. If your mom wants to book you for a project, make sure she pays half up front. I mean I'm sort of joking about this, but the point is, whatever the payment is, if she's going to make you a sandwich, get half the sandwich up front.

It's also a psychological thing because, once they've put money down on it, then they are invested in it. It's also part of smoothing the process because your time is worth money. If you are even talking to them, then you've initially already invested something into it, and so their investment needs to be monitored. It makes the relationship equal. Of course, when we get a client that we like and we want to continue working with them and the money's good, then we want to just keep things flowing. You want to remove obstacles to the project, but what we don't realise, to our horror, is that, when that investment isn't made, then how they treat you is completely different.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think when there's no money on the table, a project isn't always taken seriously. Getting a down payment ensures there's a commitment to the project on both sides of the table.

John Bermudes: Yeah.

Ian Paget: John, where can people find out more about you?

John Bermudes: Sure. For my logo design work, I'm on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and on the web at Ladron Creative.

Ian Paget: Thank you, John. That was a fantastic ghost story with lots of lessons learned.

Just before I jump onto these last two horror stories, one of them involving the police, which you won't want to miss, as this is a Halloween special, I've asked people in the Logo Geek community to share their pumpkin creations. I want to give a quick shout-out to three people, firstly to Jeff Bauer who created an incredible werewolf pumpkin, which is amazing.

Also, Jason Caudill who, this year, used carving tools to create a relief face in his pumpkin, which is really cool. I've yet to try anything quite like that. I can see it took a while, but I might try something like that myself, next year, just to do something a little bit different.

Lastly, Alyssa Kyranakis, hopefully I pronounced that correctly, who created an incredible tabletop display which looks a little bit like one of those teacup brides with five pumpkins all painted up. It has lights and everything. Apparently, it rotates too. I personally have never seen anything quite like that, so thank you, Alyssa, for sharing that.

It is hard to describe exactly what this looks like, so if you want to see an image, make sure you go and check out the show notes for this episode where I share images of that as well as the two others. You can find it just by heading to logogeek.uk/101.

Let's get back to these horror stories. Next, I'm joined by Carol Lopes who shares a monstrous client tale.

Ian Paget: Carol, thanks so much for joining us on this Halloween special. Can you share with us your horror story?

Carol Lopes: Well, it started a long, long time ago. I was presenting an idea for a client. I thought I made a really concise presentation. I made several slides explaining the concept and what I was thinking. She was silent the whole presentation, didn't say a word. I kept talking, and I explained to her. I showed her my design. In the end, she just looked at me and said, "That's not quite what I wanted. I did not think that this is why you was presenting. I really don't know what I want, but if you have a catalog, a logo catalog or something along those lines, I could just flip through it and see if I like something. I could choose a logo from this catalog, and then you only have to change something a bit there and we will be fine. Do you have any logo catalog for me to see?"

Ian Paget: Oh, my God. I can't believe that someone actually asked that question because I would understand it if you were doing something from stock images, but when you're creating something bespoke that's going to eventually become a trademark, no designer is going to have a catalog. They might have a portfolio that they can share, but that's... It's a funny thing to ask.

Carol Lopes: That's the point for hiring a designer, right?

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Carol Lopes: So you don't have a pre-made something.

Ian Paget: Well, I know that was quite an unusual situation, although I do know that designers are frequently faced with the challenge where a client might not potentially like what you had done, but how would you potentially avoid that in the future? Was there any lessons that you learned from that experience?

Carol Lopes: I understood that the client needs to be 100% checking what you're doing. They need to know what you're thinking. They need to know where you're going from, where you're going, where you're starting your thinking. From this experience, I started to share more with the client before presenting. I started sharing mood boards. I start to sharing more of my understanding of the briefing they pass me. I started to give more deliverables for them to approve. You know?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol Lopes: For them to know what I'm thinking, to know what direction I'm taking. I think it has been working so far and never heard this question again.

Ian Paget: Well, I think it's challenging with logo design, specifically, because it's very easy to look at something like a logo in a subjective way, so to review it almost like a piece of art, so I think this is a problem that can come up quite frequently for designers. Do you want me to talk through how I do it? I think it might be useful for the audience as well.

Carol Lopes: Yeah, sure.

Ian Paget: This is a challenge that I had quite frequently when I first started out. I'm getting a lot better now, and that type of thing is quite rare, but to try and encourage the client to review everything and look at everything in a very objective way, I work with goals in mind. I don't know if this is how you work, so you can speak about that afterwards if you want to. How is work is, at the beginning of the project, I basically ask lots of questions about their business, their competition, their target audience. I create a list of goals. Then, when I'm designing stuff, I reference back to those goals. When I present, I reference back to those goals.

I forgot to mention that I get those goals signed off by the client. I actually, from the sales process to when we kick off, I do explain to them that logo design is the type of thing that's easy to look at in a very subjective way almost as a piece of art, but we need to make sure that we look at it more as a strategic tool and review everything in a very objective way. I find working with goals and presenting back to the goals and keep referring back to the goals, it helps most clients, like 99 out of 100 clients, focus on quite objective goals.

I know things like Stylescapes work for some people, mood boards and so on to clarify a direction because things like goals, things like words, they can be communicated differently by different people. Doing what you did, adding in mood boards or stylescapes or anything like that, can help provide a little bit of initial clarity at the beginning to iron out potential issues like in that particular case you had.

Carol Lopes: Yeah, yeah. You're right. I think this back-and-forth is something that most designers avoid, but it's a important part of the process, right?

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Carol Lopes: It's what keep you from redrawing further along the process. When you start gathering information, as you said, brand information, a brief well-made will do that for you.

Ian Paget: Yeah, absolutely.

Carol Lopes: When you start gathering that, it is easier for you to go back and forth than when I did. When I presented a logo, it is more difficult for me to go back and forth and refine the briefing or trying to get what I didn't in the first interview with the client. I think you're right. That's important.

Ian Paget: Yeah, absolutely.

Carol Lopes: We don't have to be afraid to go back in the process a few steps and rethink some things.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Carol, where can people find out more about you?

Carol Lopes: Well, I'm putting a portfolio on Behance. You can find me there at behance.net/mamaboss.

Ian Paget: Thank you, Carol, for being part of this episode. Now, for the final story of the hour, this time I'm joined by Arun Sharma who wraps up this episode with a nightmare tale of doom involving the police.

Ian Paget: Arun, thanks so much for coming on. Would you mind sharing with us your horror story?

Arun Sharma: Okay, so this is back in, I think, 2016. Yeah, 2016. I was still new to freelancing. I had only been doing this for one, one and a half years. They were not very big projects. I was trying to get everything I can from branding to graphic design to UI, UX, anything that I can get my hands on. You know?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Arun Sharma: There was this client. They got referred to me by a friend of mine. Since I had been living with that friend, I was like, "You know what? Let's just talk to them and figure out what do they want so we have everything."

I went there and we talked. Right out of bat, there was a couple of red flags, but I was like, "Let's just give it a go ahead and see, figure it out." We had a discussion about what the project would look like and how the stages will be and all of that. I explained to them that, "There's going to be a contract that I'll be sending you. Once you sign that, you'll have to submit a..." I used, yeah, 40% deposit, which will be non-refundable. I explained it audibly and presented it in the contract and, "It was really non-refundable if, at any point in time, we try to decide it's not going to work out and you want to move away from the project."

Anyway, so it goes by, and then I move on to the wire-framing stage. For people who are not familiar with UI or UX, wire-framing is basically you figure out the basic structure of the app or the website, or whatever it is, and you don't try to put in much details. It's just vague, whatever boxes you use, just do... lock in the flow of the app. I made wireframes, and I send it to them, and they were like... Suddenly, there was a big blow-back. They were like, "Wait. Why is it all greys? Where are the colours? Where are the pictures?" I'm like, "Hey, this is just the wireframe stage so we know how the app will flow, how the user will go through all of it. Once that is done, then we can focus on regular design because regular design is the... It's not that important, at this point, because we need to figure out how the app will work."

They didn't understand that, and they were like, "No, no, no. This is not going to work. We need to see these colours and those images," and all of that. He kept on saying all of that. I was like, "Okay." I tried to explain to them in a best possible way, but they weren't listening. Literally and seriously, they were not listening at all. They kept on going, whatever they were saying. Then I was like, "Okay. You know what? I'll come back to you with something."

Then I sat, after the call, and kind of talked to myself, "Is it even worth it? Because the project isn't that big. It's just 10,000 rupees, which is less than $200." I talked to myself, and I was like, "You know what? Maybe I should just tell them, 'Hey, I'm not going to be able to do it, and I'm going to refund the amount, that 40%, as a professional courtesy because you came through my friend.'"

I called them up, and I told them that, "Hey, there's a certain process that we follow, and I don't think I'm the right person to do it if you want to skip that thing." Suddenly, the guy, he's real angry, weirdly angry. Seriously, it's like I offended him somehow. He started telling me that the company he works for, they pay him around 5,000 rupees per day, "and you wasted 10 days of my time, so give me my 50,000," and something like that. Yeah, that was very weird.

Ian Paget: Wait, wait. You gave him the money back for the project, and he's demanding more money from you for his time?

Arun Sharma: Yeah, so I offered that, "Hey, you know what? You have come through as a friend and, as a professional courtesy, since it is not working out, I'm going to give you the 4,000 rupees back. Just send me the account number, and I'll make a transition." Instead of giving me his account number or walking away, he's like, "You wasted my time. You're going to have to pay 50,000 now. I don't want 4,000," and all of that, "because my time is this valuable," and all of that. He were angry, really angry.

Then I was like, "Hey, I don't even have to pay you back. It's just that, as a professional courtesy, I'm doing it because I feel like maybe we got off on the wrong foot and it's not working. It's in the contract that I can keep that money." He's like, "Yeah, but the contract was in your favour all along." I'm like, "If it felt like that, then why didn't you ask me to edit those clause? You shouldn't have signed it." Then he's like, "You know what? I'll see you in court. I'll send a notice from my lawyer and all of that, and we'll see how it comes out."

I was shit scared. Yeah, I was really scared. This is what, 2016, so four years ago. I was 21 years old. I was like, "Man, what the hell?" This is the first time it's happening. Seriously, I'm still feeling that anxiety.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, no, I totally understand. I know any time I've had any kind of confrontation with any client, it's unpleasant. No one likes to do that, so you have every right to be scared when you was 21 and when you... even now. It's a scary thing. What happened next?

Arun Sharma: I'm literally walking around because, after the call, I'm really scared. I'm like, "I have this contract, but what if it comes to real lawyer stuff and what I'm going to do?" In a panic, I actually went online and looked for a lawyer who deals in this kind of a thing, and I hired him, basically paid him his consultation fee and asked him, "Hey, can you look at this contract and see if I'm at risk, if they can do something about it or something like that?"

He looked at it and he said, "No, it's completely fine. Whatever you told me, it checks out, but for next time, I would suggest if when you are backing out..." It was basically the same kill fee. That is, if any party decide... because I had downloaded it as a template from somewhere from online, so it was like, if any party decides to walk away from the project, the kill fee is non-refundable. The 40% is non-refundable. He was like, "Maybe, next time, try to get that conveniency as well. What if you want to go out?" and all that. He assured me that there's nothing going to happen. "If they send you a notice from their lawyer, let me know. I will handle it."

Days go by, like one week around. Then I suddenly get a message from him that, "You are returning me my money or else or else or else." I'm like, "I am ready to return your 4,000 rupees. Just tell me the account number." I wrote it in a email. I had recorded it. I had written because I knew, one slip up, and it's going to be... because this guy was really, really, oh, I don't know, scary.

Anyway, so what happened was, a few days later, once there was... It was silent from their side. A few days later, I was mailing them or replying to the same thread every week, every two, three days that, "Hey, I was asking you give me your account number." Anyway, after a few days, I get a call. I was walking somewhere or something, and I get a call from... I get a call, and I pick it up. This guy, he's like, "Yes, I am a police inspector of this in this police station here in Bangalore. I have this person with me, and he's saying that you have taken his money and have not done his work," and all of that. I'm like, "Sir, let me explain. I have asked him to give me his account number so I can return his money, but he's not giving me his account number. What can I do?"

I think he talked to him like, "Well, why don't..." or he was like, "Give him your account number, and he'll transfer it. If he doesn't, then let me know." Yeah, and then, a few hours later, I have a mail that this is the account number. I send it back to him and never heard from him. That was it.

Ian Paget: Unbelievable, unbelievable. I mean that is a horrible horror story. I think it's important to talk about this type of thing because I know this type of thing happens.

In the agency where I used to work, there was a project that we started, and something similar happened. We actually started working on the project, and the guy... It was slightly different to your situation because we got quite far into the project, but the guy was planning to send around the boys with baseball bats to the office. Yeah, we just called the police, and they sorted it. I think it's quite rare that it gets that far, but it's unbelievable that that happened.

I think the key thing is, if you agree in this particular case, you had a contract. I think there's a lot of people that start projects without any form of contract in place. That just makes it clear what happens and when, and it protects you should anything like that happen.

Was there any other lessons that you learned from this particular horror story?

Arun Sharma: Oh, yeah. Do not take on projects if you have a gut feeling that it's not going to work out. Even if you need the money, do not take it on. Seriously, for past two, three years, I'll seriously go to a person where I instantly say no if I get a slightest bit of feeling that this is not going to work out or this is not something I want to do. Even if I want the money, even if I don't have any money, it doesn't matter. Do not take it on. It's not worth it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, absolutely because, I mean, when people talk about clients, at the end of the day, it can actually be anyone. People, in general, there are, obviously, nice, amazing people, but then there are unpleasant people like this individual. When you offer him a full refund and he demands payment of his time, that is totally unreasonable, totally unacceptable. You're right. I mean I think one of the key things is is that, any time you see any kind of red flag and you have a gut feel that it's not going to be right for you, then turn it down. Run away from those situations.

I just had to do that myself. I had a potential client who asked 1,000... well, not 1,000 questions, but on the initial call, he asked maybe 10 questions, really detailed questions. Then, after I sent over the contract, he had another long list of questions. I thought, if he's doing that at every single point for a basic logo design project, what is he going to do when I send over the initial presentation, when I send over the files? He's going to do the same thing again and again because how someone is in that sales process, they're going to be exactly the same way during the actual project. If there's any red flags, which you did see, but it's one of the first kind of... probably the first time that you had that gut feeling, you need to turn these away because you never know where that situation could end up. A few lessons learned.

Arun, thank you so much for sharing that story. Where can people find out a little bit more about you?

Arun Sharma: Okay, so you can find me on Instagram @scientistxdesigns, and I have my website, scientistx.design.

Ian Paget: Thank you, Arun, for sharing that insane story with us. Thank you, again, to Katie, Ephraim, John, and Carol for being part of this Halloween special, which I hope everybody has enjoyed. I shall link to your websites in the show notes, which can be found at logogeek.uk/101.

All of these individuals are all members of the Logo Geek community on Facebook. If you're not already part of that incredible community, just head to logogeek.uk/community, making sure to answer all the questions or you won't get in.

I mentioned this at the start of the podcast, but any time you experience a horror story like this, it's important that you take responsibility and learn from the experience no matter whose fault it was. Although this episode was a bit of fun, you can see that each story could maybe have been avoided with a bit of preparation, be that having a contract, a better process, or being able to spot the red flags and run as soon as you can.

If you do need any support with any of that, I do recommend checking out Michael Janda's freelancing training course, which will help you to build a profitable freelance design business of your own. As I mentioned at the start of the podcast, that does include loads of proposal and contract template documents as well. You can find it by heading to logogeek.uk/freelance. It's an affiliate link, so if you do purchase the course via that link, you will be helping to support the Logo Geek Podcast at no extra cost to you.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this experimental new format bringing in guests from the community, so ping me a message to let me know what you think. I always like to hear from listeners. Hopefully, you like this new music too.

That is it for this week, but you'll be happy to know I'll be back the same time next week for another exciting episode of the Logo Geek Podcast.