Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Anirban Ghosh

Bhola designer & vanishing clients

Bhola means naïve in Hindi.

“It is a battle that I should fight for you. I asked you to work for this client! Anyway, I’ll send them a strong email right-away asking them to clear your dues”.

These were the words of a well-established designer from Calcutta to me, after the client refused to answer my phone calls once I had mailed them full resolution files of five artworks. This senior designer with a way with words was the middleman and all communication to the main client had happened through him.

I waited for the money and his email to the client marking me in CC. Months rolled, Arnab’s sideburns grew longer since then but nothing (that mattered) showed up. While I languished in one corner like Meena Kumari in Main Chup Rahungi (English: I Shall Remain Silent), taking the film’s title very seriously, something else grabbed my attention. This gentleman had been doing multiple other projects with the same client, promoting their ads, job vacancies on his walls, partying, pouting and taking selfies.

Without the ceremony of a lecture, I was taught the first lesson on design vampires and vanishing clients. I had no written approvals, deal signings, as most of the agreements had happened over calls. Little did I know that these signed documents are your cloves of garlic, your stakes, your crucifixes that can keep these strange creatures from stealing your work, then vanishing into thin air.

Files received. Ok bye! Poof

Every year design graduates venture into freelancing, seeking opportunities to do interesting work. They bring in passion and fresh ideas to the table, are eager to collaborate and learn from the veterans the nuances of the industry and most importantly professionalism. Soon enough they feel disillusioned when their payments are delayed or outright denied. Especially, when they’re away from home, in expensive cities, the mantra to ‘work for passion, not money’ never really works.

This unorganized sector is infested with professional vampires: old timers, at times senior designers who feed on young, creative minds and get away with fraud. They are seldom taken to task because the new-bies working for or with them are often unaware of the nitty gritty of contract documents, production sprints and communication etiquettes.

Years ago, when I encountered my first dishonest client, I understood what my peers were talking about. ‘Now you’re officially baptized into our world of freelancing’, said an illustrator friend of mine. ‘That’s quite a hyperbole’, I said to myself and moved on. Thereafter, I dealt with numerous clients: some muddle-headed, some benevolent and some dangerously cunning and manipulative. With each bizarre experience, I added another tiny clause into the contract that acted as a safety net.

If you’re a fresh graduate setting out into the world of freelancing as an individual designer, here are some key pointers that could save you from getting duped:

1. Set delivery & payment deadlines

It is usually a good idea to do a thorough effort estimation for the assignment in hand and break it down in phases. This is the age of agile and lean practices — so why not apply them for freelance as well? For instance, for a logo design project, divide your deliveries into multiple billable stages:

Stage 1: Ideation and rough sketches
Typically includes your research about the domain and closely working with the clients to understand the brief, their visions, possible inclinations towards a style or a metaphor and most importantly what’s likely to go afoul. This ideation phase involves you investing your time and lessons that you imbibed from your design education (institutional or otherwise) over the years. Naturally, the client should pay you an advance for the inception round.

Stage 2: Providing three design directions
Zero down from your sea of sketches to the three most compelling design directions and put it together in a presentation that clearly states your thought process. No self-respecting designer would agree to provide endless directions.

Stage 3: Finalizing the design & asset handover
Post fine tuning of one/two of the selected ideas, it is time to collate all the vectors, usage guideline documents. Hand over the editable assets, raw files only when you’ve got your dues cleared. Some designers share either watermarked low resolution files or present the final design from their own laptops/ipads till the final payment is cleared.

You can further expand the process into more stages, each involving sharing updates with the clients to avoid bad surprises. Have room for iterations: fix how many rounds you’re signing up for and be prepared for disagreements that might send you back to the drawing board. Estimate it well by including sufficient buffer in terms of time and money. Ensure each stage has a closure before you move on to the next. Else you’re bound to feel burdened with all the backlog.

2. Cancellation fees: Did not use my design? So what?

Design outputs may not always be tangible but it still involves hours of brainstorming, conceptualization, drawing inferences from a variety of methodologies, before finalizing on an iteration. Some clients feel it is alright to deny payment, especially, in the case of visual communication design because the designer did not really invest in physical raw materials for the outcome. Make sure you notify what percentage of the total amount you’d charge if the project is cancelled midway or towards the end.

3. Credits & Visibility

Discuss with the client well in advance about the visibility aspect of the project. Can you share the work on your personal website post release? Will the client credit you as the creator? It is an exclusive project where all the assets will be copyright protected by the client? An assignment that does not pay very well but gives you excellent visibility as a designer is a good deal. So try and gauge the impact of your work in advance.

4. Document briefs and feedback, get a sign-off in writing

Ensure that discussions are happening over emails or in some other form of written communication. Some clients prefer discussing design briefs or feedback informally over phone calls or meetups. However, it is important to summarize the discussion in writing, as ‘minutes of a meeting’ and get a go-ahead from them. This not only protects you when the client decides to make a remarkable volte-face but also documents the design process and creates a checklist of sorts.

5. Exposure & Learning

Your alarm bells should go off if the client insists you do the design for nothing or next to nothing because it would give you exposure. The other commonly used excuse is that the current project is on a shoe-string budget but the next one will more than compensate for everything. Trust me, there is never going to be the next mother-of-all gigs coming your way!

6. Don’t be star-struck by celebrity clients

I have had clients from the development sector (NGOs, human rights organizations) who work on small grants and have a meagre budget for design work. These are the people who always respected the hard work that went behind the assignment and paid up on time.

Ironically, sometimes it is the affluent senior celebrity fashion designers, photographers, scenographers who I have found to be shamelessly dishonest. You may feel that it’s alright to go easy on the famous ones as they would never stoop so low. But you’d be surprised.

Get this clear in your head: You have been approached because they feel you have potential or they love your work already. Your work will create a difference in their revenues or enhance their brand value. Stop being gullible, look them in the eye and be treated as an equal.

7. Be professional, do a good job!

You should learn to be confident with articulating both design ideas and contractual clauses (unless for the latter you can afford a manager who does the work for you). At the same time, stick to the deadlines, do not overcommit and underperform, do stellar work, be relevant and realistic to the expectations of the client.

Once you have signed up for a project and its cost, give it your 110% whether it is for an NGO or a celebrity client. It is guaranteed to come back to you in a good way!

8. Understand tax computations:

It could seem like a nightmare to a creative individual to calculate taxes, verify TDS submissions by clients, write legit invoices. But the truth is, the sooner you understand how it works, the better it is for you. A freelancer with a registered company or as an individual professional is expected to keep a clean record of all the income tax related documents. This also saves you from cribbing later as it gives you a clearer picture of how much money you’d receive after tax deductions. Having an accountant around or using one of those free web-apps can also help take away some of the burden.

9. Time, money and people management:

Learn how to manage your time and create rapport with people. These relationships you create go beyond written contracts and safety nets.

Make sure you take care of your health as well. Get enough sleep. Finally, as you set out to find work, have savings for around 2 months to sustain yourself while you battle payment delays.

10. Go with your gut

Having listed down these precautions, I would suggest that it is best to go with your gut. This is an arena where you also get to observe/study human nature. You’ll observe how attitudes of stakeholders change during the project lifecycle and how power dynamics play out at various levels: there is the real boss with the money and then there could be mediators trying to squeeze out some commission. All is fair as long as you have a holistic overview of things from the beginning.

At times, it’s a great idea to work for peanuts or free if the project is about to teach you something very valuable. There are wonderful clients who teach you rare insights and push you to take your skills to the next level. At the end of the day, just be sure of what is going to be the trade-off: a new challenging experience for you, helping a promising initiative, gaining visibility.

It is alright to burn your fingers a few times. Don’t let these vampires and vanishing clients dampen your spirits. You’d meet them again as the design fraternity is a closely-knit one. Wear a smile, let go, but do remember their names. Set out to work on the next set of exciting assignments.

Wish you all the very best! Don’t forget to have fun.

Do you have similar stories to share? I’d love to hear your story on Twitter: @ghosh_an

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Hi! I’m Anirban. I work as a user experience designer by the day and an artist/illustrator the rest of the time. Textured paper, hand-bound notebooks, Pedro Almodóvar and lazy afternoons fascinate me. I am a closet graphic novel collector and travel plans turn me on.

Connect with me on: Linkedin | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Bhola designer and vanishing clients was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bhola designer and vanishing clients

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