Business Ethics: Designer Returns Horrible Unusable Work, do they get paid?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve just started working for a tech company and one of my new responsibilities is marketing. I looked online for a designer and found someone that I thought had some potential (based on references and a bit of their past work) and so I gave them a shot to design an ‘infographic’ that explains one of our products. Unfortunately, the result was horrendous. They used 10 different fonts (no idea why) and amateur-looking stock icons smooshed together into a hideous illegible monstrosity that we could not possible use or benefit from. The image was of course accompanied by a hefty invoice for the artist’s work.

My question is what are my options here? Do we simply need to pay the designer in-full and write-it-off as an expensive lesson? Do we go back to the designer and say “look, we appreciate that you put numerous hours into this work but the calibre of the final product does not meet a professional standard and so we don’t think this invoice is fair”?

What would you do in this situation?

Here is a portion of what the designer made: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

And here is the example we originally provided of a design we liked: http://i.imgur.com/PD1CTqR.png

2

I think some of this is on you. It appears the designer does not have a clear big picture sense of what you are trying to communicate. I’d almost guess your tech description of the process is moon language to them.

Re the design elements it’s busy, but it’s actually a bit more modern looking than your reference graphic. It’s obvious the artist has no idea what your descriptive goals are here.

What kind of work space are you giving them to do this?

I thought the design process was where there was communication between client and artist, some possible ideas floated, an approach decided on and then executed. Where was your corporate feedback and oversight in this scenario?

3

What does your contract with the artist say?

4

What exactly was your contract with the designer? Did it leave room for drafts and iterations based on your feedback?

5

That would be my question as well. If I get a product and it simply doesn’t work for me, for whatever reason, my basic reaction is to return or exchange it. But if the sign said “no returns accepted” I’m just SOL.

6

There was no formal contract, just an oral agreement to pay a set fee for the graphic.

7

I would turn it back to him as unacceptable. Offer him a portion of the fee, and own your part in not having made sure he fully understood your needs.

If he offers to redo it, that’s up to you. But I’d give him a shot, and if he failed again, tell him you’re sorry but this just isn’t going to work out as either of you wished. Tell him you hope there are no hard feelings.

8

In this instance, I think you should pay up - but preferably a lesser price. The designer has put a reasonable effort into giving you a product as he or she thought it was supposed to be. Sometimes artist and customer just cannot mentally read each other’s minds.

If the designer merely splattered ketchup and mustard onto a canvas, digitally scanned it, and then said, “Here you go! That’ll be $800,” then I think you would be right to deny him or her payment. But in this instance the designer has reasonably produced a suitable visual image.

Perhaps you could negotiate a lower invoice, though.

9

My opinion (gleaned from years of watching Judge Judy and The People’s Court) is that you are not only ethically but also legally obligated to pay him. If you don’t like their work, you have the option of not using them again in the future, but you are stuck with this one.

10

I would return the file and offer specific requests for changes. EDIT: “This design sucks and is unusable.” is not constructive criticism and gives a designer no idea what to change or what you actually want. I would also pick up the phone to do this and follow up with an email. Might even set up a face-to-face meeting if that’s at all possible.

Also, I see only one, possibly two fonts here, but formatted in eleventy different ways. (Some small caps, some bold, some not bold, different colors.) I think it’s a cleaner design than the sample piece you gave, but if that’s all the direction you gave, it’s no wonder you got something you don’t like. It’s not a very compelling design, but I think the designer doesn’t really understand the product or your requirements for this art.

Also, I gotta wonder about the copy. Did you provide that to the designer or was she(?) expected to write it herself? Because that is some horrible, not informative at all text, which is not at all the designer’s fault seeing as how she was hired to design not write copy.

I’ve never met a designer who expected to knock a design out of the park on the first iteration. There are always changes. Always. When you speak to her about the very specific changes you want to make, mention that you received the invoice and when the work is acceptable and usable, you’ll pay the previously agreed-upon estimated price and not a penny more. She doesn’t get to keep submitting invoices every time you give it back for changes – at least that’s typically not how it works. Now, if you didn’t agree on a price (given the scope of work) in the first place, before actual work began and clear specifications were given in writing, then that’s on you. Do business better, but don’t stiff a designer without giving her some clarification and a chance to make the work right. Her reputation rests on this as well and she wants happy, repeat customers.

11

I do this kind of design work under just the circumstances you describe. I never have a contract as such. I just get an assignment and come back with the product.

Depending on the amount of money, I’d just pay him and never hire him again. If we’re talking about, say, $50-ish to $150-ish. If it’s thousands of dollars, I’d like to bid on your next job! (Just kidding… though not really.) If it’s a lot of money, I’d say, “This isn’t close to want we wanted, so here’s half of the sum we agreed on.” To me, it’s not worth the effort to try to get him to deliver something you can use. If the design had been close to what you had in mind, then I can see giving specific suggestions, critique, etc., but IMHO this thing really sucks. The reason you outsource this stuff is so you won’t have to think about it, and you can just assume something usable will come back.

Re Dogzilla’s comment, I have often hit it out of the ballpark the first time. That’s what I get paid to do-- take someone’s vague concept and nail it.

My 2 cents.

12

If I tell you that I want to buy a shirt from you, and you give me a shirt of the wrong style (I wanted a work shirt but you gave me a t-shirt), I think that you would have fulfilled your end of the deal even though I was left unhappy. I owe you every dime I promised despite my opinion.

If you provide a shirt that was just taken from a trash heap, then I don’t think you’ve made a good faith effort to uphold your end of the deal. I’d have no problem not paying you.

I think in this case, the person made a good faith effort to satisfy you but didn’t hit the mark. I could see that the product, as amateurish as it is, could make some clients satisfied.

Therefore, I think you owe the person what you promised him. You didn’t include in your agreement that he was to work on spec, as though he only gets paid if you’re happy or use the product.

13

Ditto.

14

Ethically? Yes, you pay people for work they do for you.

In your case, I’d certainly have a conversation with the designer and give clear feedback about what doesn’t work for you; they may, as a professional, be willing to improve the work in order to make you happy.

If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s not “this designer sucks” (which they might). It’s “we need to do a better job of hiring designers.”

I recommend Mike Monteiro’s book You’re My Favorite Client —here’s a good excerpt.

15

I’ve seen far more amateurish work in presentations from IBM and Microsoft. Pay up, don’t use them next time, write a contract that permits iterative changes with acceptance criteria and a pay cap.

(i.e. "for $500 there will be three iterations - a proposal for us to agree we are heading the right direction, a draft, and a final copy)

16

Seriously. While that be OK for a white paper that is some seriously godawful technical writing for an ad where the point needs to be delivered succinctly. Where did that text come from? If it came from your end you’re hobbling them from the start. The text in the older red and white ad is much clearer.

17

This design is ***not ***“hideous,” illegible," “monstrous” or “horrendous.” It is quite legible and reasonably visually good. It does not seem like “something we could not possibly use or benefit from.” From your description, I was expecting something like Picasso.

Not to make this personal, but it seems that the way you judge the design, or the standards you are holding this artist designer to, may be just as much of a problem as whatever the design itself is.

18

I’m a programmer, an artist, and I regularly work with artists.

Visually, the end-product looks fine to me. The color palette doesn’t stand out terribly much, but it does look professional. If it doesn’t make sense, then that’s just a matter that the artist doesn’t understand the product well enough to make it make sense. You just need to give them better text. Unless you need to turn the design into a webpage, and figure out how to lay everything out and do all the fonts in CSS, I don’t see that you really need to care about how many fonts there are. Leave that to the artist.

As to what you should do. Well:

  1. Never expect an artist to do what you want. On the whole, you should expect an artist to be as dumb as a box of bricks. (Not always true, but often enough that it’s a reasonably safe default.) They’re never going to get it right. It will seem like they are actively avoiding the requirements that you gave them, just to fuck with you. So far as I know, they are not, it’s just their nature. Accept that and move on from it.
  2. Just send them back a list of revisions that you want made. If you have a technical reason (e.g., because it needs to be rendered in software on an embedded device) for there to just be one font, then tell them there needs to be one font. But if you’re just thinking it’s “ugly”, I would probably suggest relying on the artist’s sense of art than your own.
  3. Ignore the invoice, just send your revisions back. They want the money. They’ll do your revisions.
  4. You’re never going to get what you want. See point 1. Accept that you’re going to need to compromise at some point. It might take a couple of revisions to get to something that you can accept, but you’re going to need to grit your teeth and accept it. This is fine. Move on from it.
  5. Once you’re ready to accept the art, just say that it always takes a couple of revisions to get it right, and you’re not sure if they included that in their initial estimate. Do they want to add 20% or something for the extra time?
  6. Write up a contract next time. Put in a review and revision schedule for the whole thing. Have them deliver a set of 5 second mock-ups of design ideas for you to select from, as stage 1, so you can trash all of the ideas that you don’t like even at the high level. Put limits on them and yourself.

There are artists out there who are not as dumb as a box of rocks and who do not actively destroy your faith in humanity. But you need to scout around to find them. If the one you have hired makes you grit your teeth at every corner, I’d say that you should expect that this state of being will never improve. Either learn to live with it or keep trying out different artists until you find one that you enjoy working with.

19

I’m a writer who’s worked with designers for decades. Personally, I think the designer made great improvements over what you provided. In fact, I checked the links multiple times. Are you sure you got them right? (The piece you provided has lots of red type, while the piece the designer did has blue type?)

But leaving my tastes aside…

If you don’t like the design, say so. Someone working on a handshake agreement should be willing to make at least a few modifications at no charge, or tell you up front how much time and money it will take to do the changes.

Check back with the references. Ask them if in their experience the designer needed a lot of hand-holding and direction, if they were reasonable about making changes, etc.

Did the designer offer you a preview or first draft, or take everything back to the office and come back with a finished product and a bill?

If you don’t like “amateur-looking stock icons” do you have industry-specific icons available? Do you think the icons represent the wrong thing? What’s a better way to represent a bad signal than a hand blocking the signal?

What does the person who wrote the copy think? The writer ALWAYS has an opinion whether the graphics reinforce or confuse the message.

For heavens sake, try to be specific and constructive in your comments. Calling someone’s work “horrendous” and saying it “does not meet a professional standard” won’t get you anywhere.

If you can’t reach an agreement, just pay the bill and walk away. Don’t refuse to pay an invoice if you didn’t establish beforehand what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

Finally, is this your first experience in marketing? Do you treat creative people as an actual part of the team, including bringing them in early in the project, providing them with clear expectations and being available to provide input and feedback (and paying them for their time)? Just handing them a project and telling them to make a design is like handing the sales force your product and telling them, “go out and sell it.”

20

I ended up spending two hours on the phone today with the designer going back and forth with iterations. I think made made some decent improvements :cool:

What do you think?

Before: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

**After: ** Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Lesson here seems to be to focus more on communication and give people the benefit of the doubt.

What a relief.