lament of a freelancer

Hello, Loves.
I almost blogged about the forthcoming experience on my personal blog, but then I realized you were the only people who would fully understand. Enjoy.

My stellar boss at the University recommended me as a logo designer for his step-daughter as she is opening a boutique in the Cache Valley Mall. I met with her and we discussed the look she wanted. She told me she wanted black, white, and pink...we even specified a pink. She also told me she wanted floral and we looked at which kinds of flowers she liked. We also discussed what fonts she liked...handwritten girly fonts and maybe a cleaner one for the subtext. We chose specific fonts. I told her I charged by the hour at $15.00 and she sent me to work. These are the options I gave her, based on her input:







That last one is my fave. She then told me she didn't like any of the fonts anymore and I gave her a list of free font sites to look at. She didn't like ANY fonts on ANY of them and wanted to write it in her own handwriting. I had her do so, then I scanned it and vectorized it. She also told me she didn't want pink or floral, and sent me a graphic she wanted to use off of some one's myspace page. I told her it was illegal to use someone else's graphic without their permission and she didn't know where she got it. So, I told her I'd recreate it. The finished product looked like this, in business card form:


Note the suckiness. EW!!!!!! I was disgusted by her handwritten logo and didn't want my name to be connected with it. Obviously, I didn't tell her this, but, hoping she'd change her mind, I gave her a few more options:




Once again, she told me she didn't like any of them; even the one's with her own handwriting. Then she told me that she didn't want black and white, she wanted the whole thing to be white, but embossed. She wanted her signage to be this way too. I discouraged her from doing so with the signage...since the whole point is for people to read it...but I was very tactful. I told her I couldn't emboss it myself, that the place that printed it would do the embossing and they usually charge a lot for custom embossing, but have a set of standard embossing plates with their available fonts on them. I told her I could make it look embossed, though. She didn't like that either.

At this point I decided to give her an invoice for my 20 plus hours of work. I knocked about 10% off cause she was my boss's daughter. The total came to $285. She was livid and exclaimed, "But I don't like anything you've done! How can you charge me for things I'm not purchasing?" I explained that as stated in the contract she signed, I charge for my time, not just the finished product. I told her that I held up my end of the bargain and provided the best designs I could, based on her wants and needs, also stated in my contract. She told me she would no longer be needing my services and would send me a check.

Two months passed without a check, or any returned phone calls or e-mails. I finally had to give her step-dad, my boss, another invoice demanding payment. She sent me a check for $280 a month later...five dollars short. I hate her.

Spencer and I went to the mall to check out how her sign had turned out..it was supposed to be on an awning. I wanted to take a picture, but it would've been waaay too obvious. It looked exactly like this:

Yep. Bradley Hand, everyone. That's right. How original! It was printed on a vinyl banner, in black and white. It was a little too small for viewing. She also cropped out my tiny copy write...which is a violation of my contract. Too bad it's not a real copy write...but she doesn't know that! Ew. Ew. Ew.

Next time I will fully review my contract with my client instead of assuming they read the entire PARAGRAPH!