Hey friends,
Lately I've had a question in my mind, and I'm really hoping that some of you anonymous, anti-comment, page viewers (i know you're there, my stats say so!) can give me some feedback and opinions on the matter.
You probably know that I am in the design field of work, and more and more recently I've started doing work for my friends who are all approaching the beginning of their own professional lives. For the most part this work is unpaid, because 1. they're my friends 2. they're just as poor as I am 3. I'm bad at telling people who I've only spoken with on a casual, friend level, that the work I'm doing for them should cost money. I'm getting better with the last one, and to be completely honest, I enjoy design, so when they are a for real friend, I really don't mind doing the small jobs for free, but here is the "but".
When you're doing work for free (or even not for free for the sake of discussion and conversation) how much creative license do you give yourself? In a lot of situations these pals of mine give me all I want, they so do what you do, and I do exactly that, but what about if one of them gives you a clear plan? And what if that plan doesn't really seem like the best one to you?
I keep finding myself tempted to ditch the friend-clients initial vision to do my own rendition. When I start to wander off from their ideas and create plenty of justifications. I tell myself it's ok, because I'm the expert on this, and since they're my friends, they should/will respect my professional opinion, go with me on it. I sometimes even try to justify my changes with the fact that this is work I am not being paid for, so I am sort of allowed to do it my way.
I know all of this is probably bad practice for when I work with paying clients, but I can't help it. Does this happen to anyone else?
Today a similar topic came up with a friend, in regards to hair cuts, and how we don't let friends or family cut our hair, since they usually ignore requests, and decide what they think is best. It made me think more about myself and how I handle the situation. I guess maybe this is just the status quo for creative service fields.
Thoughts? I would really appreciate to hear what others have to say, and how they handle these sort of things.
Lu
P.S. I really hope this doesn't sound like I don't want to help out friends, because that's just not the case, I just find myself in this same creative dilemma most of the time.
1 comment:
I think this is a very astute observation for a web designer (or artist) to have. It really is a good question to consider when working with a client: How much should I follow in a said design, and how much should I improve for personal aesthetic since I am my own boss in the matter? As a web designer, I believe you have the permission to alter and improve it the way you think it works best - both for your client and for your portfolio - but I also think there's a certain forging of your own blood that limits yourself to take a complete control over a client's initial design. If someone wants you to paint their barn Red, and you paint it Mauve with yellow stripes, there's going to be a personal dispute about the decision without a constructive explanation... unless your client is a yellow bellied schmuck! Money is a different matter obviously. If someone was paying you in the hundreds to have you do some very restrictive design directions, your definitely going to be in hot water if you expand the farm too much. It's unfortunate, but I think since the business of web design is it's own hybrid of commercialism, I guess the important thing to consider is to at least find a middle ground or collaborative focus towards the goal. What do you like and/or dislike about the client's directive? What are the client's obligations towards the designer's decisions? I guess it's more or less of a trial and error process on what makes both sides happy in order to form a conjunction. Just make sure you fight for an image you think works better in a design and give a strong explanation towards it. No artist wants to work at Hallmark and be forced without a say to make shitty floral motifs for someone's Grandma! That's the beauty of web design, since your hired by someone that trusts and respects your work to a degree, so you have some amounted space to thrash the paint around a little.
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