It’s interesting to see what web designers are facing sometimes.
10. “I have an idea for a website which could by the next eBay and I need a web design partner…”
I got this email when I was young and naive, so I agreed to meet this guy to discuss his plan over coffee in Central London after work one evening. It turns out his idea of “the next eBay” was to clone eBay itself! Indeed, he had acquired a rip-off domain name and wanted an identically functioning website, to be delivered within 6 weeks, and to be within his budget which was £900. I made my excuses and walked out.
Designers, you know what I’m talking about. Ten anecdotes about web design clients or enquirers who were stupid, silly or downright weird. Maybe all three. Feel free to add your own stories.
7. “Use these photos, I got them from Google Images”
A big problem I encountered recently was with a client who provided a number of images for me to use on his site. I didn’t realise this, but he’d lifted them all from other websites, having done searches on Google Images. A few weeks after launching the site I received an angry email from a professional photographer who was accusing me of stealing his images. Clearly he was in the right (the image in question was part of a series he was presenting via his website) so I forwarded to the client his request to remove them. Soon the truth came out: every single one of the client’s images had been lifted from other sites, and he refused to remove them. Thankfully I include a liability disclaimer in my web design contracts which indemnifies me from claims that supplied images are copyright protected. In other words: if he gets caught, he’s got to deal with it. Last I heard, the photographer has initiated a copyright infringement claim against him, all because the client is stubborn.
It’s particularly hard to make people understand copyright, internet ethics, color theory, the reason why they’re paying so much and the fact that Comic Sans MS is a horrible horrible horrible font for web pages.
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