The Curious Case Of The Ever Changing Brochure

In the course of every designer's career we'll encounter a least a few clients with the perchant for changing and changing and changing.......you get the idea. With me its no exception. I remember when I just started out as a misty eyed youngling designer ready to change the world of shitty color mis management and horrible typography when I landed myself my first slave driver agency job. And guess what folks? This agency came with Account Executives (AE)s and a boss who doesn't know how to say NO to clients, but like any junior designer with 0 to none experience I had no other choice but to accept whatever client projects they threw at me.

One particular project was cast onto my desktop (Mac no less) because the last 2 art directors and designers gave up on it and seeing I am the new guy they thought ok, lets throw it to her. I took it with gratitude, hook, line and sinker, it was a BIG ASS hotel chain after all. The job was 'simple' enough, follow their corporate identity which was about half the thickness of the yellow pages and keep the layout minimalist. So off I went and designed 3 visuals for presentation. AND THEN I found out the last 2 designers had already designed at least FIFTY versions of that 'simple and minimalist brochure'. Ok something's wrong here right. Who the hell presents 50 versions of a brochure to a picky client? At some point the AE should've said the magical NOOOOO, but NOOO they hadn't the balls and they were glazed by the immensity of the client's spending power. Assholes...

Presentation day came, Picky Anal Client was like 'Oh um could you combine design 12 with 24 with maybe some of the new graphic elements from design 52 (the one i did)??. Also we're not very sure but we like the color and shape of design 15 but there something about the cover art could you use the one from design 42?'. No balls AE was like 'Oh sure anything you want! Would you like gold trimmings and diamonte with that as well?? Oh we'll say yes to everything you ask for cos we have no balls to stand up to your spending might!!'

Months passed..i shit you not MONTHS DID PASS for a simple brochure design it was only 8 pages with saddle stitch by the way. If you add the time taken to complete this project from the other 2 designers and me, it would have come up to 8 months. When the client finally decided to OK the design I was on the brink of sending in my resignation letter, I have spent almost the entire year in the agency working almost exclusively on this brochure. However as fate would have it after printing all 30,000 copies of the brochure, we realize on the backpage the logo was missing. Picky Anal Client refused to pay a single cent for the printed brochures and bullied us into printing another 30,000 for FREE and of course No Balls AEs said Yes we are soo sooooo sorry.

Now everybody point your fingers at the designer its all HER fault even after she pulled 24hr shifts (no joke) on a regular basis and having to fight blind spot syndrome when checking the FA. Oh and yeah since Picky Anal Client refuses to pay a cent my boss took the payment out of my salary. When I think of it. it's still a miracle i manage to survive another 3 more months in that no balls agency. :)

And so it begins.......

Oh hell hath no fury like a graphic designer scourned!! I've been contemplating about creating a blog solely for raging at the clients that make my life unbearable. Fortunately for the internet and the invention of blogging, within the next few weeks if anyone should be reading this blog, I will chronicling some of the most ridiculous experiences I've had working in the advertising industry and also any stories I have heard from my professional peers.