i’ve worked at small and big agencies, and it depends. at my agency, we pride ourselves on being good at what we do - that’s why the client hired us. if they want to dictate type choices, they should hire a production artist and skip the agency fees.

whenever clients dictate things like this for no reason, reason it out of them. Justify your typefaces and why theirs are wrong for the brand for whatever reason. If you let them run all over you, they won’t respect you and you’ll be stuck doing production work instead of designing.

Yeah, the client is always right.
But Comic Sans? That’s harsh.
What did you propose, that drove the client to consider CS?

The client, with all vendors, businesses and services, has an influence. I think the skill set in some organizations can manage the client, and in many ways you have to, since ultimately, we won’t produce anything unless the client signs off first.

If your creative and marketing presentations on a campaign contain “researched detail” on the effectiveness of your proposed imagery, copy, graphics, type choices upon the target audience, you just might get away from facing the clients “personal preferences” for color or photos, etc.

I have had comments from very big clients on very large interactive projects asking us to change the shape of a “button” on the global navigation. “Yes sir, we will look into that with our Information Architect and Creative Director. But you see, sir, they specifically selected this particular shape since the click-through rate just happens to be 12% higher than your suggested shape, sir.”

Business is business, and art isn’t.

If a client insists on making you do poor work, the client will reap the rewards of their own heavy hand in the end. In turn, you will not look good or prosper if your clients don’t.

It is a fine balance between paying the bills and maintaining some reputation for yourself or your group. I don’t think you can be too careful and choosing the work you do. Be ready to travel light and be picky.

Not that I’m anybody, but you can tell your client that there’s a taco shop located really conveniently near me I that refuse to go to solely because they use Comic Sans for their logo...

I figure if they make poor choices like that about their appearance, what poor choices do they also make about their food?

I suppose the obvious answer is that if you don’t want to flip burgers you shouldn’t work at “Mc Happy Fries”, likewise if you can’t sell a client on one of the hundreds of alternative comic book or calligraphic fonts out there are you in the right line of work?

While the account team can make a difference I think it mostly depends on what type of person the client is.

And nonplussed, that’s really elitist of you to say. That taco shop obviously isn’t a chain and probably can’t afford to pay some uppity designer $5000 to make them a logo.

Damn elitists!

Kiddie shirt spotted today in Seattle. And yes I know it’s not CS.

I am a freelancer on top of working in-house for a marketing company, and this is no strange thing.

Sometimes I want to send my clients to art school, just for a day. The hard part about this, is that good creatives (and I mean really good creatives) make it look easy. Once it looks easy, the client wants to play too.

Hopefully, we can all get to the point where we get to be a little more picky about our clientèle. One day maybe.

evan
www.evanmade.com

There’s nothing wrong with making fun of comic sans, but refusing to visit a restaurant because they use it is a little lame. Anyway with the way trends are recycled I bet comic sans will be cool again soon.

Nonplussed,

Dude, you have violated Aquatoad’s First Law of Taqueria:
Quality is inversely proportional to design.

As for the original topic, it’s sometimes tricky to remember the client is not the enemy, and that designers should offer clients more than style. This is an opportunity to communicate, and if need be educate, and as a last resort to evacuate. Catchy! Must be something I ate (at SuperTaqueria#5).

You teach people how to treat you. If this is a pattern you’re seeing at your firm then I’m guessing that your account people and/or directors are not setting up the firm as design experts — either that or your pitch skills are lacking on the strategy/research side. You don’t hire an expert and then tell them how to do their job.

You can fix this... Sii is right. Put together rationale for your recommendations. If the cost of fonts is an issue at least be more creative with free options than Comic Sans!

This issue has less to do with the size of the firm and everything to do with how the project is managed.

Clients should absolutely contribute to the process, but likely shouldn’t be art directing.

The best lesson I ever learned is that the client *is* always right. Your job as the design firm, is to make sure the client picks the best solution. If the client ends up dictating the project where the solution is compromised, it’s less the client’s fault and more the firm’s fault for not selling them the right solution.

A big part of good design is SELLING good design. ;o)

Aluminum said it better than me.

And Haley, disliking Comic Sans is not lame or elitist, it’s just having an educated opinion. Designers have to have opinions; usually strong ones. And its not about being jerks, its about being discriminating for the right reasons — correct design principles, informed aesthetic judgement, experience in the market.

Chefs don’t use margarine. Designers don’t use crap fonts. &c.

Finally, I have to support Randy’s axiom about Mexican joints. At least the ones in Southern California.

“There’s nothing wrong with making fun of comic sans, but refusing to visit a restaurant because they use it is a little lame.”

There are several businesses I won’t patronize due to their poor design choices. I’d have a hard time doing that to a taco place, though. They could have menus festooned with Comic Sans, Hobo, Broadway, and Choo-Choo, and I’d still go there.

“Anyway with the way trends are recycled I bet comic sans will be cool again soon.”

That would imply that comic sans _was_ cool at some point.

>That would imply that comic sans _was_ cool at some point.

I would be interested if anyone can point to articles critical of the font that came out around the time of its release. As I recall the reviews (which would have mainly come from the web design and tech community) commented on how well hinted the font was at small sizes on screen.

Refuse. How much are they paying you anyway? No matter who you are, at whatever level, I think it’s perfectly okay to stand up for what’s right and refuse to use Comic Sans. Straight faced. They say, “I want to see that in Comic Sans,” and you reply, matter-of-factly, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. It’s against company policy.” Someone has to put their foot down. I don’t think you need to defend it, either. Just say no.

Like they say, if someone told you to jump off a bridge...

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As I recall the reviews (which would have mainly come from the web design and tech community) commented on how well hinted Comic Sans was at small sizes on screen.

So what? No matter how well hinted - it still looks shite.

Nick Cooke

>So what?

I think you’re missing the point, the question was “was Comic sans ever cool?” - and if you look at the press and comments around the time of release the answer would clearly be yes - the press was was 90% positive.

So the question is, if it was so very, very bad, why didn’t anyone say that at the time?

Did anyone say John Travolta looked like a bafoon in Saturday Night Fever when it came out?

Some trends are good, some are bad. The good become classic or even potentially timeless, the bad become running jokes we look back upon with an innocent, shamed smile.

Comic Sans is dead.

Comic sans is less a bad font and more of a font used mostly in the wrong context 99% of the time.

>Did anyone say John Travolta looked like a bafoon in Saturday Night Fever when it came out?

I think that is a good comparison - allows room for a comeback - a la Pulp Fiction?

name this Comic Book!

Spiderman?

There is a cheat way to do it.....

No it’s not Spiderman

Watchmen. What do I win?

well done... did you cheat? you win nothing.. sorry.