If you’re working in the creative area you will have most likely stumbeled about one of »these« customers.

Most of the times I enjoy my job a lot. I love to design stuff, I love to do illustrations, typography, develop cd-covers or web pages. I really am into design and the arts and I’m in the field for well over 20 years now, so trust me, I know a lot about design and the like. No comes in one of »these« customers. It really does not matter what the job will be, may it be a web-page or a typesetting/layout job or whatnot. »These« customers usually don’t have a clue. By that I mean they don’t have any clue whatsoever. They know nothing about design, nothing about technical issues, nothing about what my job is, and yet they now everything better!

There is that photographer that needed a homepage. I liked his work and I appreciated that he trusted me enough to give me the job of designing the page. I did and I did well – I thought. Woah, was I wrong! Never let a photographer design a logo! His design didn’t work. It doesn’t work for print products and it doesn’t work for the page. The letter width of the typography did crush everything, as soon as the logo was included. So I sat down to do a little redesing. I didn’t change much, mind you. I didn’t even change the font and anybody who has ever tried to do a webdesign wih the »Copperplate« most likely knows about what I am talking here: the font just does not work for web pages. Big mistake though. The hours spent on the redesign just went down the drain, when the photographer saw my changes. He said he’s going to change the logo himself according to his likeing. Hey, fine with me, less work and less need to, later on, convince my customer about the logo.

Weeks later I finally got his redesigned logo. Well the logo now was more like a banner and it was way to big. Hey, guys, I know how to use the photoshop, so resizing wasn’t the problem, the width/hight/typography relation din not work out for a penny. The typography was much, much to big. I resized the banner, but now it was not wide enoght to fit the page. *sigh*

OK, I put the banner in and presented the page again. Now – of course – the banner was to small. Turnes out the photographer wanted the banner the size he sent the banner to me. I was flabbergasted! C’mon, he wanted a banner with a higth of close to 400px! I mean, we creatives usually have really large displays, sure. But the average person that is most likely the customer for a provincial german photographer, probably uses a 1024 x 768 px resolution.

Now, to get this clear, lets do a little math:

The display resolution I had to work for was 1024 x 768 px. The banner was 400 px.

768-

400=

____

368

Well, using up half of the screen hight might be closest to »enetrating« a customer, but I recon the term »market penetration« wasn’t meant that way.

I had already decided not to put my name on that page, but still I just couldn’t let this happen. So I talked and talked and talked to the photographer for almost an hour to convince him that a banner of such size does not only cause the contrary to what a web page is meant to – it will draw away potential customers, not draw them to the shop – but it will also be the most ugly banner thinkable. Anyone surfing that page will most likely be beaten down by the banner. Sincerity looks different.

In the end I did convince the customer to follow me, but was all that worth the efford? I’m not sure...

So now, I’m waiting for the next of »these« customers.