How A Web Design Goes Straight to Hell

This is for all the web designers out there who have suffered as I have suffered.

Everything is cool in the beginning

The client communicates their need. You set the expectations. Enthusiasm and excitement all around!

The client shows you their current website

You both laugh at how terrible it is. You call the earlier design an idiot.

You redesign the website

It looks nice and works well. You are happy with the work you have done. This is the high point of the design.

Just a few "minor" changes

Clients have actually said all these things to me. To this day I still do not know what "pop" or "edgy" mean with regards to web design. I also still don't know how to design websites based on someone else's feelings.

Minor changes start to add

Soon they become not-so-minor changes.

A client actually actually said this to me. The design had no horizontal rules or lines of any kind, they were referring to the rectangular shape created by such things as div or p tags!

The client gets others involved

"This looks GREAT, but I want to get feedback from my friend, my dad, my mom, my brother, my sister, my wife, my co-workers, my uncle, my dog, etc... etc...

I have actually had clients include nearly their entire family in the design process so they could provide feedback and criticism

All hope is lost

You begin to fantasize about other careers and businesses, like someone who digs ditches for a living or drives a cart carrying dirt in a remote part of the country!

I did not make this up. This is a modified version of what a client actually requested from me. I've never come closer to braining someone with a car battery as I did that day.

You are no longer a web designer

You are now reduced to a mouse cursor inside a graphics design program which the client can control by speaking, emailing and instant messaging.

I have had a lot of clients take my design comps and start revising it themselves in Photoshop or even Paint. They would then send me the updated versions of how they felt it should look. After the 13th revision I fired a client.

An abomination is born

The client has completely forgotten that they have hired you, the web designer, to build them a great website.

If you were an engineer designing the turbine of a commercial airplane, or an architect designing their office building, would they interfere then, I wonder?

And then when someone comments on what a s***ty piece of design their website is, who gets blamed...