Side of Sauce

On the eve of my 30th birthday I find myself learning lessons I should have learned a long time ago.

I have a new rule. My new rule is that I do not work for friends. Working for friends is like lending your brother money or discussing politics with your extremely conservative best friend; you just don’t want to do it. Avoid the friend sand-trap snafu and you will be glad you did.

I guess this sounds pretty cynical and in truth I am really not a cynical person, it is just that I have been burned more times than I can count (or want to count for the sake of pride) on two hands.

Working for demanding clients can be difficult and frustrating at times, but by far some of the most frustrating experiences I have had as a designer is when I have agreed to do work for friends. This is a lesson I should have learned a long time ago because it has always yielded disastrous results, yet I continue to make the mistake over and over again simply because it is hard to say no. Saying “no” to a friend feels as icky as eating a steak dinner in front of a starving puppy. Never-the-less I am changing my ways (keep reading to find out why, or don’t and wonder…)

The first problem with working for friends is that they want you to do stuff for free. Stuff for free = bad. It often times leaves you feeling undervalued and unappreciated. When a friend doesn’t pay you for your work or underpays you it creates unequal expectations. You feel like you are doing a favor for your friend and therefore expect the friend to accept what you give them and be happy. The unfortunate part of this equation is that this goes against the basic tenets of human nature in even the wisest and most understanding of friends. It is human nature to get as much as you can get and then still want more. If your friend doesn’t like the design you create for him or her, he or she might ask for revisions which is sure to leave you grumbling.

Paying a fair price for services rendered, although it might feel weird among friends, actually balances expectations. The friend or client expects work to be created and the designer feels beholden to create it. In most client /designer relationships there is a contract that states how many comps will be delivered, how long it will take to deliver them and how many revisions the work will go through free of charge. The fees are agreed upon up front and clients who are unable to make up their mind and who oscillate from pillar to post, often times pay dearly for their indecision.

I do not blame the friends who ask for free design work. In their estimation, they aren’t asking for a big sacrifice. This is because design is a misunderstood profession. Think about it, if you had a friend who was a surgeon, you would never ask him or her to give you a free kidney transplant. This is because most people acknowledge that a kidney transplant is something that is time consuming and requires a certain amount of skill to do. We have a certain amount of respect for our friends who are doctors and we also respect that asking them to give us a free facelift or kidney transplant is asking far too much.

The problem lies in the fact that very few people outside of the design industry seem to understand how much work goes into design. Creating a logo is a lot easier than performing a kidney transplant, but it is not an insignificant amount of work. An effective logo is simple, graphically bold and easily recognized. A logo must be reproduced in both color and black and white and often in a variety of different sizes ranging from business card size to billboard, for this reason the most effective logos are often times the most simple (think the Nike Swoosh, IBM, America West, UPS, FEDEX). It is a common mistake to think that because a logo is simple, that it can be done quickly. A designer often puts weeks/months of work into sketching, researching and refining a mark that will create brand recognition and make an impact. The logo often goes through a backbreaking series of revisions with multiple members of a company each adding his or her .02 into the mix.

Design isn’t brain surgery, but it takes a decent amount of skill and practice to get it right. While we all love our friends and want them to have beautiful logos for their new business or a zoomy website to promote their new idea, working for free is not a good habit to get into, even if you adore the person you are doing it for.