There are many things that you don’t want to hear from a client - especially a new client.  If one heeds warning signs of a potential client, you the design, developer or marketing may save yourself a lot of trouble.  One comment that can definitely send up a red flag and it is ”the site design looks great, but why is it written in Italian?”

This comment came from a brand new client of mine after viewing the first design directions for a new website.  The same would also apply for a print design project but this one happened to be a simple website design. Not only did they not understand the concept of getting a design comp, but they couldn’t figure out why we wrote the text in Italian ( “Lorem Ipsum Dolor...").  Yikes! Yes, this is not a good sign when you hear this.  Does this mean that they bad people?  Of course not, but clients that tend to be completely clueless about some of our most basic processes, can be very difficult to deal with over the long run.  In addition to not knowing that they would receive a design direction (yes, I know it’s our job to educate them to some extent) but they also wondered why they couldn’t click the buttons on the ‘website’ (jpg file).

This may not be the worst thing you can hear from a new client.  I can think of others (and will include those in other posts) that are much worse, but I thought this one was kind of amusing. 

SP