The Pitfalls of Web Design: The Client

Harsh sounding title, right? Unfortunately, sometimes this is all too true. As a web designer, when a client approaches you about a project, you get that confident feeling well up: hey – I can make this look awesome! Under the impression that you’ll have free reign of the project, you draft a site mock-up, submit it to the client, and get the go ahead. Create the website, throw it up, and boom – an honest to gosh work of art is online, with your name proudly displayed in the footer.

Sounds great, right?

But then… the client wants some ‘minor tweaks’. Lets change this color to something bright instead. Can you swap this image out on the sidebar? Can you change the wording on this? I need it to be more ‘artsy’ – can we add more photos? LOTS MORE PHOTOS? As the requests grow more and more outlandish, the site gets less and less… aesthetically pleasing, shall we say? Pretty soon, you quietly sneak in and remove your tagline from the footer, because you really don’t want anyone to know that you were the one that built that.

At one point in time, every designer will suffer this agonizing scenario. It’s true – ask me about the time I was freelancing for someone that ended up changing an elegant black and white design to fuschia and bright pink. (literally. That site should come with a seizure warning). It’s one of those scenarios that even though the customer is always right… it doesn’t make you feel any better about the fact that the website you produced more or less looks like a unicorn barfed on the screen.

I recently purchased this awesome poster from The Oatmeal that shows the downfall of a web design project, as we’ve all experienced. Want a laugh? Read the comic.