clueless clients (was RE: [thelist] Dangerous Colors)

Bob Davis bobd at lists.evolt.org
Wed Jan 24 13:16:31 CST 2001


on 01/24/2001 12:32 PM, Erika Meyer at meyer at up.edu wrote:

> Collecting these stories might help me also think about how I can better
> inform potential and current clients about how the web differs from other
> media.
> 
> If you have a story to rival aardvark's (about color, layout, IA, links,
> images, content, etc), mail me offlist (meyer at up.edu).  PLEASE take
> [thelist] out of the header so your mail doesn't get lost in my evolt box.

Dreamless.org had a thread called "best client quote yet", but I can't find
it now.  I searched through the whole thing and it's not showing up.

Hmmm...

It was really long.  Maybe it just got too big?

Anyway, if anyone knows where it has gotten to, it'd be a great one to look
through.  There were a lot of stories I could relate too.

One from my past:

I was given a site to mark up from a quark file.  No big deal - the ad
agency did all of the graphics and I just had to make it all work (very
basic static site with no real bells or whistles.)

Anyway, I do the site in a nice liquid table that more or less matches what
they did in quark with *their* images and used fonts that were generally
available (SOP, right?).
I get a fax from them the next morning with print outs of the site with
lines and rules drawn everywhere with comments like "these must line up
exactly, these must have more leading, the kerning on this is wrong, etc.
etc." and a lot of "this color is wrong" kind of stuff about *their*
graphics.

We're talking about pre-css days here, so precise typography just wasn't
going to happen.  That was a fun conversation.  Additionally, I got to
explain the difference between print (where you know the output size) and
web (where you don't).  Then I got to talk about monitors and color
correction and such...joy.

I spent more time talking to them about why there are differences in media
than it took to mark up the site.  What a waste.  They never let go of these
things either - it just kept going and going.  Eventually we "fired" them.
Who needs clients like that?

The real bonus, of course, is that they stiffed us.

-- 

bob davis
bobd at members.evolt.org





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