15 Lies Clients tell their Designers

You would swear that most design clients have a rare medical condition which makes them forget everything after ten seconds. They’ll ask you for a design that is cool and unique and then they turn around and tell you to copy someone else’s website.

Following up on the list of 20 lies designers tell their clients, the web team at The Computer Guyz has come up with a list of white lies and half-truths that clients tell their designers.

1.

LIE – “We have a generous budget, so don’t worry about your hours.”

TRUTH – “We will definitely freak out when you send us the invoice.”

2.

LIE – “We need a better CTA that helps us move toward our KPIs.”

TRUTH – “I just want to show off my fancy marketing buzzword vocab.”

3.

LIE – “We have an exciting new project that you’re just going to love.”

TRUTH – “We need you to design some PowerPoint slides.”

4.

LIE – “Our startup is taking off. We’ll pay you in equity and you’ll be rich!”

TRUTH – “We have no money at all. None.”

5.

LIE – “We want a design that’s really fresh and unique.”

TRUTH – “Please make it look exactly like this other website.”

6.

LIE – “Can you jump on a call real quick? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

TRUTH – “Two, maybe three hours max.”

7.

LIE – “We have some great photos we want featured on the new website.”

TRUTH – “I found some terrible low-res photos on Google.”

8.

LIE – “Our last designer wasn’t really a good fit with our culture.”

TRUTH – “After one project, she refused to ever work with us again.”

9.

LIE – “The deadline for this project is two weeks out.”

TRUTH – “I’ll call you to tomorrow morning to see if you’re finished yet.”

10.

LIE – “We really don’t feel like this will work with our target market.”

TRUTH – “I showed it to my mom and she doesn’t like it.”

11.

LIE – “We’re going to take the project in a different direction.”

TRUTH – “We hate you and you’re fired.”

12.

LIE – “We’d like a brand new website, redesigned from the ground up.”

TRUTH – “We can pay for two hours of your time.”

13.

LIE – “We want a logo that is simple and timeless, like Apple or Nike.”

TRUTH – “We want you to use Papyrus.”

14.

LIE – “Be creative, I know we’ll love whatever you come up with.”

TRUTH – “After 27 rounds of revisions.”

15.

LIE – “I won’t need anything from you this weekend.”

TRUTH – “I’m totally going to call you at 12:00am on Saturday night.”

Do you find any of these relatable? Probably! Which of these do you get most often? If you’re a designer these lies and many more are what you have to deal with on a daily basis.