Doing design work for someone as a "favour"

[rdobbie]

I want to have a rant and wonder if any of the other designers on here can relate to any of the following.

The scenario: you get speaking to a friend, or a friend of a friend, who owns a business or is in the process of setting one up. They talk excitedly about wanting a really cool design, and foolishly you offer to do them a logo, a website or a brochure, or a combination thereof as a freebie, thinking to yourself: "it'll be a bit of fun, I enjoy letting my creative juices flow, and it should only take a few hours."

I've fallen into this trap at least a dozen times over the years (I'm obviously too soft), and keep seeing the same outcomes:

• They don't appreciate the calibre of the original concepts you supply to them ("It's great, we love it BUT... can you just totally change everything"), and try to steer things in the direction of their utterly crap idea ("I want the logo to be a map of Cheshire with a picture of a fleet of taxis superimposed on it, with a little cartoon man standing next to it waving a flag, with a picture of a leopard on the flag").

• When they ask for a website, they haven't got the faintest idea of what they want to put on it. They haven't got any photos or content to go on there.

• They don't appreciate that graphic design is a separate discipline to copywriting, and expect you to also write all the copy for their brochure/website, even when their business is a specialised product/service that you know absolutely nothing about. I was once asked to write several paragraphs about why these pneumatic actuation valves are ideal for applications where high levels of resistance to corrosion are required.

• They say "I tried to change the design on the file you sent me but I can't" - no, that's because you haven't got the right software and I didn't intend for you to edit the file. I'm the designer, not you.

• They appear surprised when you tell them that actually getting stuff printed will cost them money - they originally thought, when you said you were a graphic designer, that you also had a printing press, a guillotine and a perforator in your garage and that you would print everything for little or no cost.

• They don't appreciate that the PDFs you e-mailed them were 72 dpi files for their on-screen perusal, and try to print them out on their £39.99 Hewlett Packard inkjet printer and use them as actual brochures.

• Finally realising that they don't want to spend money on printing, and that they haven't actually got a clue what they want, they end up saying "we love what you've done but we're putting everything on hold for the time being."

I don't know of any other industry besides graphic design where the tradesman's role and talent is so under-appreciated and misunderstood.

[Jamesypoo]

Make them sign a contract stating any possibility under the sun. Make them agree that they will supply ALL content, including photographs. Oh and try your hardest not to do things for free. There's only so long you can "build up your portfolio".

You can get rather good graphic design contract examples freely on the internet, just tweak it each time to suit the project.

[WillPS]

I don't do work for nothing - but I'm always happy to help.

My definition of helping rather than doing work is simple - they have to be with me while I'm doing it. If there's a large chunk of text or whatever to go in it's then no problem to simply slide my laptop over and make them do it.

If they get bored with it or whatever, that's cool, but I wont reopen the files until they're with me again.

[martindtanderson]

Make them sign a contract stating any possibility under the sun. Make them agree that they will supply ALL content, including photographs. Oh and try your hardest not to do things for free. There's only so long you can "build up your portfolio".

You can get rather good graphic design contract examples freely on the internet, just tweak it each time to suit the project.

Just quoting the truth...

[Pete]

Oh and try your hardest not to do things for free. There's only so long you can "build up your portfolio".

this is aimed at me isn't it?

*sobs uncontrollably*

and it was sput who complained the stars weren't starry enough.

[Sput]

No, they were TOO starry. There weren't PAPERY enough.

[nidave]

No, they were TOO starry. There weren't PAPERY enough.

And they were exactly the wrong shade of red.

[Sput]

No, they were TOO starry. There weren't PAPERY enough.

And they were exactly the wrong shade of red.

I thought no-one would notice