This was actually several years back, but yes -- this conversation really happened. It was for a local festival, which happens in the fall, so we took the sample they sent us -- a decent layout with nice autumn colors -- and turned it into a web page.
Me: "All right, we've built a sample page for you. Take a look at see what you think."
Her: "The colors are wrong."
Me: "..."
Me: "..."
Me: "...I sampled them directly from the Coreldraw file you gave us."
Her: "Yes, but those aren't the colors I wanted."
Me: "..."
Me: "...What?"
Her: "I want Fanta colors."
Me: "Fanta colors?"
Her: "Open up the Fanta website. I want to use those colors."
Me: "Fanta. Colors."
Her: "Exactly."
Me: Then why didn't you...? No, you know what? Never even mind. "Okay, Fanta colors."
And the real kicker of the zillions of conversations with customers like this is - they think the color is some MAJOR deal and totally miss out on the functionality aspects of the "sample" I learned you HAVE to ask silly questions like "What colors" (and all manner of innane questions) when doing your initial analysis so as to limit these time wasting discussions otherwise these fickle OCD customers get fixated on minor details and miss the guts of the project only to later say "You never told me about X (guts)" because they were to distracted by colors and verbiage ... (sigh) ... thanks for the reminder - I don't miss that aspect of the job :P
ReplyDeleteWhat killed me on this one was that they sent us a sample graphic, to show us what they wanted, that didn't show us what they wanted. I just... I don't... I can't. Even.
ReplyDeleteBut, yeah -- the number of times we tried to explain that it's a website, not an art project. People come to it to get information, not be impressed by your design skills, and still wound up having detailed conversations of the minutiae of appearance... crazy-making, it is.
I just... I don't... I can't. Even
ReplyDeleteOh how WELL I know that feeling/response ...
Oooohhhhmmmm ;)