Doing Design for a Friend of a Friend

It always seems simple enough, someone you know has a friend who needs an invitation, or business card or ad or what ever. The are willing to pay a little bit of money. Enough that you can justify taking the time out of sitting on the couch channel surfing, but not enough that you would miss your favorite show. You know what I mean?

Now these sorts of jobs are most always for someone who would it not be for me designing their thing, would go into Microsoft word and throw together some clip art monstrosity. But hey they are lucking out, they are getting a real designer, so won't their friends be impressed when they see the finished piece. So it always seems like it should be pretty simple, spend a bit of time and deliver something that is nice and cool and professional.

Thee things should never go more than one round, but they always do. Most of the time you end up with so many tweaks and changes that in the end your hourly rate is lower than minimum wage. And you end up with something that you'd be ashamed to have anyone know that you were the one who did it.

I most recently had one of these opportunities. It was to do an invitation, for a groups 6th annual event. Years previous they used bad clip art and it was never a nice looking piece. So I put some thought into one concept, and sent it too my friend. I figured it was pushing things too much, and it was, so I did some more thinking and came up with a safer but still, what I thought was a cool solution. The feedback was basically a complete re-do was wanted. So I did some more thinking, and once again came up with a decent concept. I have sent it off, so we'll see if round 3 can make it. If not I think this group can once again make their clip art invite. It's just not worth the headache.

I guess people who aren't in advertising don't really see the true difference between themselves throwing something together in PowerPoint with images they found online and skewed and stretched, and actual good design work. But I really don't know. When it comes to critiquing design everyone feels as if they have an expert opinion. Well you don't. When you have your car worked on do you hover over the mechanic and tell him which wrench you think would be best? No. You drop it off, and pick it up when it's done.

Sure if you are paying for it, you should be happy, but make sure that you need something good to make you happy. If crap makes you happy, do it yourself.

I know part of this makes me sound like some annoying primo Donna, but take whatever it is that you do for a living and have someone who couldn't do what you do on their best day, tell you how you are doing things is completely wrong.