That time a client asked me to 'make the logo bigger' for the 8th time

I had a meeting last Thursday with a guy named Mark who owns a coffee shop in Portland. He kept pointing at his business card and saying the logo needed to be 20% larger after I already scaled it up three times. I finally took a marker and drew his logo covering the entire front of the card, leaving no room for text or contact info. He stared at it for a solid 10 seconds and then said 'yeah, that's too much.' Has anyone else had to physically show a client why their request won't work before they get it?

2 comments

2 Comments

danieljenkins4d ago

Yeah that coffee shop story is good but I think the real problem was Mark probably didn't know what he wanted in the first place, not the logo size. A lot of clients just throw out random numbers like 20% because they think it sounds professional.

alicebarnes4d ago

It's so exhausting when clients do that. Like they just google "things to say to a graphic designer" and pick a random percentage. I've had someone ask me to make their logo "pop more" and when I asked what they meant they just said "you know, like pop." No direction at all. It feels disrespectful honestly, because we actually studied this stuff.