Overcoming clients with bad taste…
I learned early on in my freelance days that it is always good to get a feel for what the client likes when it comes to web design. So whenever I get a new client I always ask them to send me some example sites that they find “cool” or “beautiful”. Over the years I have found that this is a good way to get a feel for their style. Conservative or artsy? Bright and bold or cool and subdued? You get the idea.
So what do you do when the client sends you to some sites that are just painfully ugly? Something with some 1998 animated gifs, or (God forbid) a site with some of those sparkly letters you see on myspace so much.
Do you swallow hard and build them a site that suits their taste even if it offends your own sense of style? Go go gadget sparkle!
Do you throw out all of their ideas and substitute them for your own?
Or do you try to somehow blend the two? Glassy effects and sparkles!!
Here is an extreme case. I built a site several years ago; it was basically a company that provided services for the elderly. The original design was meant to be cheerful, bright, and colorful. The first time I showed it to the owner he absolutely hated it. He demanded that I rework the site so the primary colors were black and violet. What is even worse, is he wanted his company’s logo to be a picture of an elderly couple floating in the clouds. Fortunately he understood that old people + clouds = dead people…not exactly the image you want to portray to your customers. In the end, the site was black, violet, and was (in my opinion) completely inappropriate for its target audience. Now that isn’t to say black and violet can’t work in some sites, just not this one.
With a client like that you don’t have a whole lotta choice except never to show the final result in your portfolio (that one never did make the cut by the way). In the end, the client always wins…
But lets take the scenario that you have a client who has…ahem…difficulties with their choices of style, but who has an open mind. In this case, I typically show them progress much more often than I would normally. This way you can build what you think looks good (you are the professional after all), but they can give their input before you wander too far down the rabbit hole. The end result is usually a nice, happy medium that looks good.
Another option is to try to get into their head and find out why he/she likes the sparkling animated American flag so much. You might find that what they really like is the concept behind the ugly pic rather than the pic itself. In this case the client may just want to show patriotism as a major theme. Work with them…talk with them…and find out the “whys”.
As with all of the issues around dealing with a client, in the end it all comes down to the relationship. With new clients it is important to show that you know what you are doing and are not some fly-by-night. Once that relationship is built, then you will be able to direct them in terms of style much easier than before.
So have any of you ever run into this problem? How did you deal with it? What advice would you give new designers/freelancers when it comes to clients with strong design opinions?
FrankC said,
Wrote on September 8, 2007 @ 10:23 am
If the user insists on an obviously bad design you should try to find the best way you can to change their mind. It’s part of knowing the customer. In one case I did this by ‘accidentally’ showing the kind of customer you mentioned an alternate screen with better, classier, graphics. We ended up with a better screen although some elements of the old remained.
There is also a flipside where a designer has their own strong design opinions and these hurt the client. A friend of mine wanted a cool website for his new retail store. The guy he hired did a beautiful 100% Flash website. Unfortunately, his site doesn’t get indexed well on Google, his local competitors come up well before he does, and he can’t update it himself. He would have been better served with a nice CSS template and graphics on top of an easy to use CMS.
David Baxter said,
Wrote on September 8, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
I completely agree Frank.
It definitely goes both ways. If a designer insists upon building a site that doesn’t take into account the client’s preferences, then you might end up with a beautiful site, but you very well could end up with a ticked off client.
This scenario is obviously not a good way to stay in business.
You have to keep it balanced…take the clients idea and put your designer’s touch on them. In the end you should have a site that is the best of both worlds.
Penguin Pete said,
Wrote on September 10, 2007 @ 10:11 am
It has been my experience that the problem with bad-taste clients is that they are conservative to the point of xenophobia. They saw a dancing smurf and a rainbow background on the first web page that they clicked on in 1995, and thereafter every web page must have a dancing smurf and a rainbow background or it just doesn’t look right.
I’m probably wrong to do so, but I’ve given up trying to save clients from themselves. I’m in business to make money, not start a mission for the taste-impaired. The amount of time I spend arguing with a client is time I could be earning money from another job, so if they order crap… I give them crap. On purpose. And they love it!
The fact I’ve come to face is that the global market has devalued art. Clients don’t *want* a timeless masterpiece; they want the same Web 2.0 glossy mirrored logo or Web 1.0 cheesy flashing gif they see everybody else having. I save the timeless masterpieces for my own site or portfolio.
Yes, burned out and cynical, that’s me!
David Baxter said,
Wrote on September 10, 2007 @ 10:18 am
Heheh…I feel for ya Pete. I agree with you up to a point. If a customer wants the dancing smurf on the rainbow background I will politely try to talk them out of it for the sake of their business.
However, if they insist, then by george, they get their smurf. Like you said, in the end we are just trying to get paid. The smurftastic site just never appears on our portfolios.
That would be an interesting question…what sites have you built that you refuse to put on your portfolio because your client is “aesthetically challenged”?
Its kind of a catch-22 because who wants to admit to creating a site with a sparkling, animated American flag? Still be funny to see that Zeldman had built something like that because a client insisted.
Penguin Pete said,
Wrote on September 11, 2007 @ 4:53 am
@David Baxter
Heh heh, what sites have I made that weren’t my proudest moments? I’ve forgotten all of them, and the Internet has, too.
This spreads out beyond graphic design: Clients want you to use nonstandard proprietary HTML that only works in IE no matter how bad an idea you tell them that is. They insist on Meta-tag abuse because it fooled the search engines in 1998. They want the program in Visual Something, security be damned. And then there’s web startups that are an obviously bad business idea to begin with, but they just got a round of investor funding and if you don’t collect the money they’re shoveling around, they’ll just throw it away anyway…
I make the main bulk of my living from writing for the web, and clients there want Top Ten lists and SEO keyword soup no matter what. Even when I’ve convinced the client to see it my way, and as a result, they get to the front page of Digg or get a million search hits because they’re the only ones tapping a niche market, the next time we do business they want to go back to their old bad habits anyway.
In a nutshell, we have the same challenges you get in ANY branch of IT work, as I remember from my years as a cubicle gnome. The only difference is you now work for a million pointy-haired bosses instead of one. But you can quit easier.
kyle said,
Wrote on November 7, 2007 @ 12:21 am
I just had this happen to me today, so I typed “save clients from themselves” into google for some commiseration material. Why does the client insist on destroying their own website, brochure, logo, etc. with their own bad taste? Don’t they realize I’m trying to make them successful. But people don’t want success as much as they want control. Which is what this is all about. When I get a project I am under the illusion that I have some control over it, and I sure as hell don’t want to be reduced to a monkey pushing buttons at the whims of an armchair quarterback who thinks he/she has discovered a flare for design.
I too have pretty much given up on trying to convince them otherwise. A client will almost always take something that they thought of over something given to them. Maybe its pride, maybe it stupidity, I really don’t care anymore.
At one time I thought I could talk them out of bad design by making business cases for good design. But then the client will inevitably twist their customer base to have the exact same preferences they have and if you persist they get upset that you think you know their client base better than they do.
At the end of the day I need to find my own widget to sell and create the best marketing material possible to sell the hell out of it because that’s the only way to create the designs you want to create. The I can afford my own designers and tell them how I want something to look and they can talk about how they’re trying to save me from myself.
And so it goes.
David Baxter said,
Wrote on November 7, 2007 @ 10:12 am
Don’t give up Kyle!!! I find that you can usually spot a client with “distructive tendencies” pretty early on. If you find you can’t work with those clients, then maybe that should be a criteria for taking on jobs.
Of course, work is work so it is hard to turn down anything, but if a job is burning out the love you have for design, then in the long run it is best to sidestep them.
I feel for ya man. Good luck out there! Let me know if you need your own designer to boss around
David