Site of the week: comical commiserating with Clients from Hell
The now wildly popular story-swapping tumblr, Clients from Hell began in April 2009 with just a post per month, but has since expanded to multiple anecdotal posts per day. A sort of collaborative bitch fest, CFH collects anonymously contributed client horror stories from designers and freelancers all over the world as both a gesture of solidarity and a chance for comedy.
Although designers and freelancers certainly create a niche community, the kinds of dumb mistakes and ridiculous requests their clients make resemble the kinds of stupid people everyone has to deal with on a daily basis, regardless of profession. You don’t have to be a designer to appreciate the humor of this exchange: Client: “Do you charge?” Designer: “Yes.” Client: “Money?”
Most posts on the site consist of such exchanges whose absurdity reveals itself in the dialogue with no sarcastic commentary necessary. For example: Client: “You see there, where the text is black on white?” Designer: “Yep.” Client: “Could you increase the contrast there?” Designer: “No.” Client: “Just a little?” Me: “No.” Other posts are stand-alone quotes from the clients themselves, like: “Make it more subtle, but try to have it pop too,” or the ironically uncreative: “Use your creative ability to make this ad creative.”
Given the contributors, there are, of course, a great deal of nerdy jokes about color, typeface, and formatting, like the request to “make everything bold so it all stands out,” or “I don’t want dark grey. I am looking for more of a light black,” or “please create a minimal baroque font.” Even so, most people in this tech-savvy, digital age can appreciate a good crack about using Paint instead of Photoshop or not understanding how an email attachment works.
The site offers such an extensive archive of these humorous scenarios, like assuming you don’t have to pay a freelancer because wouldn’t they be called “paidlancers” if you did?, etc., that you’re bound to find something familiar, and therefore funny.
As we all know, one of the fundamentals of comedy is laughing at idiots, and Clients from Hell definitely has its share eligible morons.
