For those that freelance, or work as a full time professional as a creative, you certainly run into many challenges throughout your day.  Sadly, we continually face the same problems over and over again. Here are just a few that I have encountered, and certainly not meant to be an exhaustive list.

Resources
Do not set impossible goals and expectations without being able to provide the resources in order to meet those goals.  Website comps, flyers, brochures, and posters can typically require the need for stock photography.  Do not expect a Jaguar with a Ford Escort budget.  Sure, there are free resources out there, but simply dumping your project off on a designer and not affording them any tools or resources to reasonably meet your expectations surpasses being unfair.  A company that I recently worked for got this right.  My boss understood the value of the visuals at a trade show and budgeted for stock photography to be used.  He allowed our team to purchase several photos for what we needed to do.  We combined that with our own in-house photography and turned out some really interesting pieces.

Expectations
Give the designer something to go by.  I was once told “I don’t know what I want.  But I know what I don’t want.”  Giving your designer poor directions such as that only hurts the project.  Unfortunately, the light does not always come up when flipping the creative switch.  So input as to what is expected can prove to be invaluable.  Thankfully I am able to sit down with my boss and run through some ideas.  Just the other day we both sat down and prepared a low-res logo comp for another department.  Having my boss directly involved and providing insightful creative direction made the final result that much better.  Had my boss simply told me to “just create something for me to take a look at” the end product would not have been as sharp.

Be Realistic
Do not ask your designer to cure cancer.  Nobody likes having projects dumped in their lap at the last minute.  It makes everything rushed and the quality of the work suffers greatly when that happens.  If you do not like having crap dumped on you, don’t do it to someone else by accepting projects with unrealistic goals simply because there is an invoice in it.  Be ready to say no a time or two.

Know Your Project – If you are handing off a project to a designer or other creative, take the time to do the research up front and set deadlines up front.  If it a large project, deadlines throughout the creative process are helpful and they ensure everything keeps running smoothly.  It is not up to your designer to figure out your deadline.    And if you figure out your deadline is different than what it originally was, be prepared for lower quality results.  If you have never worked on a specific project before, seek out those who have and gain input on what they did well and what they did poorly.  This would help you create your own benchmark and not rush the project through.

Trust Your Designer – While your designer should be given some guidelines, you either hired them or contracted with them for a reason, most likely because you liked their work.  If that is the case, trust them to do what you are paying them to do.  Micro-managing every aspect of a design is one of the best ways to smother out the creative process.  If you disagree with a choice the designer made, let them know the reasoning behind it rather than just telling them to change it. The designer might have an idea that you missed.  Yes, I realize some are poor at communications, and as much as I try, I do not always get it right.  However, when I offer a variation to a design I include a reason for that.  That shows that you did not just go against what they originally had in mind but that you had something that you felt would benefit the project. But if your designer has the ability to communicate and design, why not let them do it?

I would love to hear some of your favorite horror stories.  Feel free to share them here.