Most of these memes express one of the many frustrations and stressors of design professionals: meeting client demands.
According to creative designer and Alarcon Pro Painting founder Bryan Alarcón, most of these difficult situations stem from two reasons: clients are unable to clearly communicate what they want, and they set deadlines without due consideration for the creative process.
“Endless revisions resonate so strongly amongst us not just due to the subjectivity of design, but mostly because it's a common frustration for many creatives,” Alarcón told Bored Panda. “And frankly, what makes it all the more heartbreaking is knowing that many of these endless revisions could have been avoided if only sufficient time and detail were requested and provided.”
Alarcón did clarify that creatives also have their fair share of faults. One of them, he says, is when designers accept challenges they don’t understand, resulting in an “endless circle of fixing” in revisions.
“If creative designers can put away their fears and worries that they may not appear professional enough by asking “too much” of the client in terms of explanations, then this avoidable circle of revisions will indeed be avoided,” he said.
Ultimately, it’s about building a harmonious relationship, whether you’re the client or the designer making things happen. Marc Caposino, CEO and founder of the UI/UX agency Fuselab Creative, shared tips on how to approach it.
“Clients should bring the real problem to the table, not dictated visuals,” he said. “In return, designers should set their egos aside and explain the logic behind their choices in plain, jargon-free language, rather than expecting the work to speak for itself.”
But since burnout appears to be the overarching theme among these memes, Caposino also offered suggestions for preventing it while staying creative. His advice for designers: embrace terrible first drafts to bypass the pressure of perfectionism early in the project.
“Knowing when to stop endlessly tweaking pixels and step away from the screen to live life is the ultimate cure for creative burnout,” he said.
