Hasta La Ideas

A few words with one of the secretive figures behind the client horror story blog

Web designers, those anonymous talents who help make sense of the sheer volume of white noise out there, are the unsung heroes of the digital age. The transition for many businesses is rarely seamless though—irrational behavior coupled with an unhealthy dose of old-fashioned racism is expressed by many of these Clients from Hell.

Consider this one:

Client: I want more ethnic people, I feel as if there are too many “white” people.
Me: I see only one picture with Caucasian people in it—you want them gone?
Client: Maybe you could just give them a tan? Or make them more “thuggish?”

Or another:

“I got this email once from some lawyer in Nigeria and when I opened it and clicked the link, the same email was sent to everyone in my contact list. I thought, hey, this is a pretty smart and simple marketing technique. When I send out this email to the 4,000 people, I want it to automatically forward to everyone in their contact list. Can you have this done for me by tomorrow?”

The Clients from Hell blog has been cataloguing these types of exchanges since 2009 and came out with a book late last year, offering a humorous form of therapy for the tech community and a rare inside look at the petty and downright insane requests to which they are often subjected.

Cool Hunting tracked down “Vincent,” a web designer in the 18-25 demographic, who is part of the shadowy team of disgruntled designers that have been running the site and recently published a 150-page book.

Cool Hunting: Which anecdotes do you find the most disturbing? Most amusing?

Vincent: The only anecdotes I find truly perturbing, actually, are the ones where the person who’s sent it (the “me” speaker) is jeering and maligning someone for not knowing something they couldn’t have possibly known. That’s not the spirit of jest, y’know. When it comes to poking fun at someone for being technologically ignorant, the tone ought to be spoofy, if not just a bit frustrated. When it comes to the real slimy characters, the ones we hear about who casually employ misogyny and racism as business models, those are the guys that you can really sink your teeth into—they deserve it.

CH: How did the Clients from Hell communities develop?

V: The way most communities develop. We settled around a body of water, or some other lush, food-bearing area and proceeded to erect houses and practice agriculture, until the crop-yield became sufficient enough that we could support guilds and artists, forms of governments, kleptocracies at first and then monarchies and then democracies. Then we abused that democracy and sold our interests to foreign investors and got mixed up in a few wars. 😉

Do you see different patterns in different countries and regions?

It’s mostly American, Canadian and English submissions, I think, with some Aussies peppered in. I always love getting submissions from people whose first language is clearly NOT English. Their delivery and word choice is incredibly awkward, but you can tell that they find what they’re saying really funny!

What kind of submissions are unpublishable and can you describe why?

Ha ha, well the aforementioned submissions where the English is horrid but the emphasis is still punchy (e.g. “And then he ask me make Sunday work for only same prices!!!”) are generally unpublishable. And we get a surprising amount of submissions where someone has clearly read one of our earlier posts and has a very similar story, so they send that. We can’t publish the same joke twice, though, I feel like telling them.

As a design professional, is the relationship getting better, worse, or does it remain the same?

I’d imagine that as the generation that grew up alongside computers begins to grow up and take over companies, that the client/designer dynamic will be less of a comedy of misunderstandings.

What effect—if any—do you think the CFH phenomenon has had on your profession?

Very little. The people that ought to be learning from it aren’t, unfortunately, the ones reading it.

How long do you reckon the CFH site will continue? Is their a clear goal aside from making a mint?

As long as there are fresh injustices or some fresh ignorance at which we can laugh or roll our eyes, there will be a CFH. If, one day, all the client relationships everywhere magically become harmonious and right, then we’ll retire it.

Stephen King poster by Nick Tassone, 2010 (left); A Tolmer, from Mise En Page: the theory and practice of layout, UK, 1932 (right)

The Redstone Book of the Eye is a compendium of fascinating imagery that celebrates the act (and art) of seeing…

The Book of the Eye is another curatorial feat from the Redstone Press founding editor/designer, Julian Rothenstein. As with the diaries, alphabets and collections of Mexicana that have made his small press relatively famous, Rothenstein’s, um, eye has been honing in on evermore enticing imagery for this latest collection.

L’Oeil magazine cover, 1955

Themed around images that trick, delight, cause surprise, or celebrate the act of ‘seeing’, the Book of the Eye plunders the worlds of music, design, art, photography and science.

“In addition to people and animals; potatoes, storms, needles and robots also have eyes,” writes David Shrigley in his introduction, and while the full gamut of his reference points aren’t necessarily included, the book takes the reader on a tour of eye charts, street photography, pictograms and illustration.

Many of the most interesting images contain a kind of visual epiphany – that moment when the penny drops.

Cover for Match magazine by Salvador Dali, 1939

Anatoly Belsky, film poster for The Private Life of Peter Vinograd, directed by Alexander Macheret, USSR, 1934

Joan Colom, Untitled, Spain, c.1965

The Redstone Book of the Eye is published by Redstone Press/Square Peg (Random House); £20. See theredstoneshop.com, rbooks.co.uk.

CR in Print

Thanks for reading the CR website, but if you are not also getting the printed magazine, we think you’re missing out. This month’s issue has a superb feature on the Sainsbury’s Own Label packaging of the 60s and 70s, a profile of new Japanese creative supergroup Party and our pick of this year’s top graduates. Read all about it here.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

“I first became interested in type when I bought David Bowie‘s Hunky Dory album in my teens. Taking it home on the upper deck of a London bus, I remembered staring intently at the sleeve for clues to what might lie inside. Hunky Dory offered its wares in a type called Zipper, a classic bit of buzzy sci-fi text that suggested something spacey and robotic (the songs were actually spacey and vulnerable).

It soon became clear that type was strong stuff, able to confer emotion and mood in the most direct ways. The bus I was riding had its destination letters in less imaginative type, but they were no less functional (they were in the ultra-clear Johnston font that also adorned the London Underground). Like reliable architecture, form followed function: The bus letters had clarity while Bowie’s had intrigue.”

–Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (Gotham), in an essay published in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Apple Computer, Inc. has never developed an entirely new electronic product: it did not invent the computer or the MP3 player or even the cell phone,” writes Ina Grätz in her introduction to Apple Design, slated for publication by Hatje Cantz in November. “That these devices from the company are nevertheless considered to be among the most innovative of our time can be explained above all on the basis of their product design.” The forthcoming book, a sleek and souped-up catalogue for the Grätz-curated “Stylectrical” exhibition that opened last Friday at Hamburg’s Museum for Arts and Crafts, features more than 200 examples of Apple designs by Jonathan Ive and his team, from the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh to the latest iPad. Each object is pictured from multiple angles and examined in detail as part of a broader exploration of Apple’s approach to industrial design, production, materials (including pioneering applications of translucent plastic and aluminum), and, of course, marketing. Did someone say Dieter Rams? Indeed. An entire chapter of Apple Design is devoted to the company’s overt references to the simplified forms of Braun products. In an essay entitled “Kronberg Meets Cupertino: What Braun and Apple Really Have in Common,” Bernd Polster demonstrates how Apple has deployed and fulfilled each of Rams’ ten principles for good design. Artbook is now taking pre-orders for Apple Design here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The first retrospective book on the 20th century’s film title master

Saul Bass, best known for transforming the way movies begin, was in fact a designer of incredible versatility. As design historian Pat Kirkham shows in his forthcoming book on Bass (co-authored with Bass’ daughter Jennifer), the legendary “visual communicator” also applied his graphic wizardry to album and book covers, typefaces, packaging, retail displays, a hi-fi system, toys and a postage stamp. He also illustrated a children’s book, collaborated with architects, directed films and developed identities for companies including Quaker, United Airlines, Dixie, AT&T, Kleenex, the Girl Scouts and more.

For much of his prolific career Bass worked side by side with his wife Elaine. Together, they came up with beautifully simplified concepts—many that still serve as benchmarks for intelligent design—and led the duo to work with and be revered by masters in their fields like Martin Scorsese, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock.

Defining himself simply as “a creative person in the deepest sense of the word,” Bass allowed his imagination to guide the way, toying with metaphors and abstract symbols until he reached a point where it would make sense to his audience, yet purposely leaving out one element for the viewer to fill in. “The ambiguous is intrinsically more interesting, more challenging, more involving, more mysterious and more potent,” he explains. “It forces reexamination, adds tension, gives it life.”

Perhaps Bass’ most significant contribution was his ability to make Modern Art relatable to everyone. While his style experimented with abstraction and other contemporary tropes, his artistic interpretations were still easily digestible, having emotional impact no matter the project or medium.

Despite being one of the most sought-after designers of the 20th century, he never denied how terrifying a blank page can be. His tenacity, trying idea after idea even when they weren’t working, was a significant part of his process. “A modest amount of imagination with a great ability to persevere can produce an important work,” Bass proposed. The approach also speaks to the advantages of working on a range of projects. “By simultaneously working on a variety of problems, I find that one creative problem helps me solve another.”

With more than 1,400 illustrations—including many never-seen-before storyboards—”Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design” is an incredible look at the inner workings of his genius. The monograph will be available beginning October 2011 from publisher Laurence King, where you can sign up to be notified of its availability. You can also pre-order it from Amazon.