The Living Hell of Dealing with Clients

This is a hilarious video that overly-exaggerates the never-ending torture that comes from dealing with many of the clients when freelancing. Regardless of whether you’re a graphic designer, web designer/developer or multimedia designer, the start of the road to independent freelancing starts off very tough indeed.

Excuse the foul language, although it does make it even funnier!

When you decide to take on freelancing, even part time, with a vision of doing it exclusively and professionally down the road, you have to go through a test where only the fittest survive. The typical clients that you might start up with will always have the following characteristics:

• Stingy: They’ll splash $500 on the latest cologne, but design should be free
• Ignorant: No clue as to what the freelancer goes through, and how the process works
• Demanding: Want EVERYTHING, ASAP
• Underestimating: It’s easy, it’s just that they chose to take on real jobs, otherwise they would’ve been the best designers ever
• Unappreciative: Your job is to design, and be thankful that I’m paying you for such an easy and meaningless job
• Completely lost: No clue what they want, and cannot accept that vague idea cannot magically combine to create the perfect tangible product

As you become more and more professional, and your hourly rate rises as you gain experience, the majority of these characteristics begin to diminish. However, no matter how professional and experienced you are, you will always be dealing with client who are completely lost and have no clue as to what they want or how it could possibly be achieved.

But it’s our job, and we love it.

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Graphic Design in Political Propaganda

An interesting article by the Designer Daily revealed some of the artwork that was produced at the time of the Cold War to aid the propaganda of the US as well as the Soviet Union. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and at times of war, it is extremely important for governments to have strong visual campaigns to ensure the support of the public. The following is one of the most intruiging ones:

Jo Jo The Dove

This was a post created by Paix et Liberte (Peace and Liberty), which was a French anti-communist group from the times of the Cold War when the two schools of thought were battling it out. The idea is to depict Stalin as a fake who pretends like he is interested in peace, while he is actually looking to butcher the enemy and force his evil ways. It is safe to assume that today’s public are not as naive, and that it would be necessary to be a little more subtle about how “bad” the “baddies” are. But generally speaking, reading a pamphlet explaining the group’s manifesto would not have been anywhere as effective as a poster like this one.

On a design level, I personally think it would still compete with some of today’s products. With history repeating itself, there has been strong movements to go retro in the different areas of digital and print art. Add that to the relatively modern color scheme illustrated in the poster, and you can see how by changing the message, you can fit it right into today’s publications. It’s a true beauty and an inspiration to graphic designers, but hopefully not politicians!

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Vintage Egyptian Inspiration

I came across vintage Egyptian film posters dating back half a century and thought to share the inspiration. If you take into consideration the resources available at the time, I would personally say that the Egyptian artists back then were much more creative than the ones around nowadays. Not to take anything away from contemporary Egyptian artists, in the different fields, but no one can deny that modern film posters lack the necessary charm.

The Dreams of Spring

The People Inside

The Last of the Bunch

Looking for future trends and techniques is not always the answer. sometimes we can look back at our own history for new ideas. You can view a large collection of vintage Egyptian film posters at Kodak Agfa’s Flickr page.

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