Clients

My father and I recently were offered a freelance position.  A great one, where we can photograph on our schedule and get paid a decent amount for the time we would put in.  There is no need for post-production work on my images.  Its hassle-free for me and the client.  Seems al good right?  Well sort of.  Our client is one company who is using our skills as a services for their many clients.  Thats all well and dandy, but it took a lot to please this one client and comparing my high level of creative and artistic professionalism to their logical business practices there was a huge difference.

The situation was this: My father and I were taking over for another photographer who had to back out of this position unexpectedly.  He had set up everything with out client; prices, services, flyers, certificates etc.  We were to come up with our own flyers and certificates.  We thought that we were doing so much better than the first photographer because his materials were created in word and were very wordy, where ours were created artistically and to the point.  They were really well done and thought out, but our client liked the wordy-ness and clutter of the first guys idea!  What??  This was so mind-boggling to me that our client would choose a sheet of paper that was just photocopied over and over.  Yes, it has the ease of reproduction, but it definitely was not eye-catching or well done.

So, we had to re-think and re-work our design and our process to please our client.  In the end we did come up with a flyer and an ad that would work for both our client and us.  In my opinion, if someone created something that looks professional and is eye-catching and will bring you more business overall, go with that design.  But not everyone has the same understanding of what works and what doesn't in the design world.  And I realized again that it is up to us to guide others in what will succeed and what wont in the creative world today.