Design Tales from the Dark Side - The Client Who Wanted Cool

SEATTLE, October 2006 - It was a dark and stormy night when the phone rang. I pulled the cigarette from my teeth and reached for the phone.

Actually, no. I don’t smoke. And besides it was a perfectly mild mid-afternoon when my email inbox said “PING!” I opened the message, read it and dollar signs appeared in both of my eyes. Someone, we’ll call him “Jake”, wanted a new logo and I was just the man for it.

And thus begun one of my toughest and most time-consuming cases ever. The job was simple: design a logo for this gentleman’s SEO company. That’s about all I knew when I accepted the project and by the end, I didn’t know much more than that.

Aloofness is a hard client to pleaseI gave the gent the ordinary rundown on how I work, then did my preliminary interview. It didn’t go well, what with him seeming secretive and uncaring throughout. It was awkward from the outset. I wasn’t feeling any love and the hairs on my neck were standing on end. But the dollar signs were still in my eyes flashing, and I can be a slave.

The interview was nearing an end. One last question and we’d call it a night afternoon. The last question is the doozy that I throw at all my clients now. But this particular time, I should have trusted my instincts and let it go. Instead, the last question went down like this:
Read more →