can anyone help please with layout for van?

[Marekdlux]

You know, that I know that you know you were right…right? 😀
Don’t think twice about him, he’ll go home and ask his wife the same question you are and she will tell him to go right back to you and pay you some more money. Well in a perfect world anyways.
-Marek

[Bryan Cabrera]

You are in a tough spot.

Did the customer give you any input on what they wanted in the first place? Did they tell you what they didn’t like about it?

It may be better to charge more for the initial design and include a few different versions for the customer to choose from. I like to keep the design charges separate from the installation. I think if you can sell your designs as an identity they can use on there stationery and advertising as well they are willing to pay more.

It is a tough call, sometimes when a job begins with a problem it only gets worse. So you may have done yourself a favor.

[Iain Gordon]

I like that design..nice and clean

Tell him to come down to me and i’ll tell him exactly why he should have that on his van

Iain

[Lynn Normington]

I think that is very nice perhaps it was too nice for him 🙄 may he was a bodgit and scarper sort of guy, or just maybe his work wouldn’t live up to expectations when customers saw the smart van I think you did the right thing Phil as I expect it didn’t take 2 mins. to design.

Lynn

[Dave Bruce]

I always do a couple of designs, as I feel the customer is not always going to like what you like. If it had been me, I would have extracted what part of it he liked and altered the rest to suit.

I like the design too but you can’t expect everyone to.

Cheers

Dave

[Marcella Ross]

I like it too, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time!
I do the same as Dave, I usually have a couple of options, inevitably the want a mix of the two. It’s rare they love the first design and want nothing changed.

But I think conjurer may have a point, it could have been more trouble than it was worth, you sometimes get a feel from a customer that they’re never going to be happy.

Marcella

[John Simpson]

I have been down this road with customers before so i usually make an appointment for them to come to me & we design it together on the computer, along with my guidance we usually have it designed & ok’ed in approx 30 mins.
The customer generally thinks he has had a personal service but really it is designed to save me time & effort.

I think. right signs it might pay you to give this a try & see if it helps you save time.

L J

[Phill Fenton]

I’ve had a chance to reflect on this this evening and I have reached the following conclusion:

I had done more or less what was asked. We had gone over various examples of work I had done in the past and he had indicated his preferences. I had also put in the information exactly as he had asked. When he came in today he had completely moved the goalposts and was asking me for design suggestions that had much much more information than was on the van at present (he never asked me for this amount to go on the van in the first place).

He was also quite insulting about the suggestion I had produced (I had probably spent about an hour trying out various options before arriving at this final design) saying it would only have taken me about 10 minutes to “knock Out”. That was untrue – I had put a lot of thought and effort into this.

As some have already said – I think I have saved myself a lot of heartache by not progressing this any further. I have come across people like this before that are never satisfied and are quite happy to waste my time churning out ideas for them.

LJ – I have designed in front of a customer before and have reached the conclusion that this just does not work. They want to try all manner of permutations providing they are not paying for your time on an hourly rate – they will happily spend all morning wasting your time. Sorry LJ but that’s an option I will never try again 😀

[John Simpson]

ah well, just a suggestion it works for me, so far, but i suppose an awkward customer like that one wouldn’t be happy if you spent all day designing for him.

L J

[Jayne Marsh]

LJ it works for me too, I usually design in front of the customer, but I had one customer who spent a very long time with me and said ok go ahead with the design. Fine I said, please sign this drawing saying you are happy with the design. Well he hummed and haaad and said he would take it away and check it with his wife. About 5 times he rang me and said go ahead with the job and 5 times I asked him to sign the drawing. He never signed the drawing and I never did the job. A few weeks later I saw his van broken down at the side of the road, it had been badly signed by someone else in a similar design to the one I had done. Was I bothered? No, the whole time he had spent designing the job with me, he had told me how he hadnt paid so & so because he wasnt happy with this and that or how he had beaten up so & so for something else. I decided that if I didnt get a signed proof of the design he’d agreed to then I wouldnt get paid or something worse. I think I had a lucky escape. Some customers can never be satisfied.

[Marcella Ross]

That wasn’t half a lucky escape Jem, he obviously didn’t intend to pay or he would have signed it off.
I’ve designed a couple of times in front of a customer, one knew what he wanted and it was quick and painless (ooh, that didn’t sound quite right did it!) the other spent forever changing the smallest details and eventually went with my origianl design after 3 hours!!! 🙁 So I usually avoid doing anything in front of customers as they sometimes think you’ve got all day to do their design.

Marcella

[Vitor Brito]

In grafix industry this is a comon problem.

I agree with L.J., and i prefer to draw it in front of the customer, but before they seat next to me, i’ll show them the price list copy that is located near my monitor, i can assure you that they agree much faster with your sugestions. 😉 That can make a customer (that 1 minute ago was clueless about the design he wanted) have clear ideias about what he want reaaaally fast!!!

If after he see’s the price list, he doesn’t want to sit next to you, and says well, i’ll be back later to see what you’ve done; STOP designing go next door to have a cup of coffee because that’s all you gonna loose with him, if you continue designing then maybe you can use that layout to a similar customer. 😉

My 2c anyway.

[Hugh Potter]

i’m lucky in some respects that i’ve not really had many problems with customers. to date, i’ve only quoted 3 jobs (out of about 30) that i didnt get, the majority of my work is lettering where people phone / email and tell me what they want so i do little design on that except for font !

normally if the customer has no idea at all, i’ll do my interpretaion of what they want, and then if they’re not totally sold on it, i’ll pull the laptop out there and then and get them to tell me what they want different and how they want it, i always use a photo of thier shop / vehicle / window as they’ll see exactly what it’ll look like,

i think i’ll start getting them to sign the work off tho in future !

when i went mobile the other day i was surprised how little time i wasted, i made four catalogues of clip art stuff (80% auto related) and left them out on a table, made a coupld of large 5x3ft sign boards covered with samples with a big sign in the midle saying ‘signs and graphics cut to order, any size, any colour, you chose”. that was a little too much for some to grasp, customers kept asking “how much for a sign”, forget how many times i said “depends how big you want it” !!.

i think i only had two or three length jobs, one chav who didnt know what colour or size to make his escort rear screen sticker, and most memorably the bumper car ride owner who gave me several last minute jobs, including 16 sets of numbers, 16 ‘insert tokens here’ stickers (red on white), and a pair 4 colour signs with contour shadow etc, almost got locked in for the night for the sake of £90 !!

back to the original point tho, i think you were right to explain why you wouldnt do any more, once you’ve got their input then they have to be slightly flexible if they’ve not ‘specified’ anything other than content, perhaps like others have said, charge more up front to cover the design fee !

[Lynn Normington]

quote Lynn:

I think that is very nice perhaps it was too nice for him 🙄 may he was a bodgit and scarper sort of guy, or just maybe his work wouldn’t live up to expectations when customers saw the smart van I think you did the right thing Phil as I expect it didn’t take 2 mins. to design.

Lynn

Phil ,
I am so sorry I have just re-read this and I now know it can read two ways, I really didn’t mean to suggest it took you less than 2 mins to design it, I know from seeing your work you take a lot of time on it. If I have caused any offence it wasn’t meant and I apologise unreservedly 😳
Lynn

[Phill Fenton]

Please don’t apologise Lynn, I never for one moment thought that you were suggesting this.

Your original reply was very supportive. Thank you 😀

[Shane Drew]

Must confess that I have tried designing in front of customers too, and it does not work for me either. They don’t see your time as valuable, and will try and be creative at your expense.

If a customer asks me to do as they have with you Phil, I get them to draw a rough impression on paper to what they are looking for. I will supply them with the outline so they can picture it better.

Then I will produce their design as close as I can, and one of my own.

Usually their design will not take long at all. And I limit my own time to perhaps 1.2 hour to an hour. I’ll stop there and ask the client to come back to give me some views on what I have done so far. This gives us both the opportunity to save a lot of time. If they don’t like it, I find what they do like about the design and go from there, but it also gives them the op to go with their idea, saving us all a lot of grief.

If we can not come to some arrangement, I offer to pass the job over to a commercial graphic designer, and it will cost the a few more hundred for the design, before we proceed with any signs.

That will usually convince them to compromise on their design ideas. If they still will not budge, I shake their hand, apologise I can’t help them any more, and move on.

It is a hard call tho. And it never ends up a pleasant situation.

Hope it works out mate.

Shane

[J_J_O]

I think you did right! You cannot sattisfy every customer and you should not want to deliver every customer. If I only have the idea that a customer will be asking to much from me (for to little) I quote extra high.

(I personally would not get to much into a discussion with him and would probably have given him back his money asking him to promise me one thing: please do never come back again! (I am known as taking things a bit extreme) )

I believe that it is possible to filter new customers, when you do in the beginning it will save you a lot of pain and frustration. Ofcourse you can never filter them all, but a customer like for example JEM had is giving clear signals and she made the wise choice and finally kept out of troubles.

[Jill Marie Welsh]

I do try to show a client a few fonts and my portfolio and get a feel for what they want.
Usually I do two rough designs on a $75 deposit.
I no longer design in front of a client unless it’s a one-off coro sign or something.
I will be kind and blend a few elements of both designs into a third design if need be, based on their input.
The first design is more or less what they want but esthetically correct.
The second is what I’d like.
9 times out of then they choose mine.
If it needs to go beyond this, I will charge more.
In this case, however, your client sounds like a real weenie.
Keep your 25 pounds (dunno the sign) and say good riddance.
Love……Jill