I revisited an article that was written in May of this year by Staphanie Orma on the Smashing Magazine website. The article entitled Do You Want Fries With That Logo? was about the inevitable (and all too common) request from clients for logos, websites and other types of design work in an unreasonable amount of time.
I’ve had my fair share of these requests and I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve taken some of them on. At the time it does seem like it might be a quick and easy project with a fast buck to be made but that’s hardly ever the case. With the lack of a clear brief, detailed specification and little chance to ask the client detailed questions before actually starting it will usually lead to problems.
Perhaps the client thinks a quicker turnaround will result in a cheaper bill? Well we as designers charge by the hour or day right? Perhaps the client’s business opportunity simply cannot wait and that logo must be done within the hour? There are lots of reasons for wanting a project done yesterday but how do we approach the issue with tact and without causing offence to the client.
I once had a client that wanted a logo for a business that wasn’t even properly defined i.e. they hadn’t really decided what the business was… but they did have a name for the undefined business. Where do you go with that? Apart from actually defining your business, the logo is pretty much a visual representation so skirting over both should send alarm bells ringing for all concerned.
In my experience, almost all speedy jobs will come back to haunt you in some form, whether that be in the form of a badly built website or a logo that you try and deny you ever worked on. You reluctantly reduce the bill for a job that should have only taken you a fraction of the time only to find that you spend longer (than you should have in the first place) actually fixing things that were over looked.
I’m much better (although still learning) to spot the pattern of these jobs and I’m much more confident in insisting on a proper plan and time-scale and explaining what the steps are in this plan. In some cases just saying no and turning the job down.
Next time a client asks for a logo in an hour say “sure” but only on the agreement that they “go get it tattooed on their back at 1 hour 15″.