{"id":4618,"date":"2014-09-05T14:29:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T14:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/?p=4618"},"modified":"2026-04-10T14:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:08:12","slug":"10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Lessons That Designers Can Learn From Bad Client Horror Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Designers at the beginning of their career are super excited to have any client that they can get a hold of, however this eagerness often leads to them signing up with\u00a0clients that seem willing to take on an inexperienced designer. Watch out!<\/p>\n<p>These clients like to take advantage of new designers and push them until the designer can&#8217;t take it anymore. And what&#8217;s worse, if the designer decides to drop the client, they are the ones that end up with the bad rap! There are too many stories where a client proceeded to tarnish the designer&#8217;s reputation afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>If you search on the web for bad client horror stories, you&#8217;ll find dozens of websites dedicated to the horrors of the job, the terrible demands, and the clients who outright rob you. It&#8217;s an awful situation\u00a0and many beginners still fall for the trap!<\/p>\n<p>The only way to avoid these clients is knowing what to look out for and sadly, that ability comes far too late to stop you from experiencing the situation yourself.\u00a0My solution is to skip the experience altogether by listing the common occurrences that pop up again and again, and save you the hassle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Designers at the beginning of their career are super excited to have any client that they can get a hold of, however this eagerness often leads to them signing up with\u00a0clients that seem willing to take on an inexperienced designer. Watch out! These clients like to take advantage of new designers and push them until [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":11945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[295],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-graphic-design"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lessons Designers Can Learn From Bad Clients<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Beginner graphic designers learn some lessons the hard way and share their stories via #clientsfromhell. Take these lessons to heart and avoid bad clients that will stress you out.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lessons Designers Can Learn From Bad Clients\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Beginner graphic designers learn some lessons the hard way and share their stories via #clientsfromhell. Take these lessons to heart and avoid bad clients that will stress you out.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ZD Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/zilliondesigns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-09-05T14:29:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-04-10T14:08:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Horror-Stories.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"396\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"ZD Team\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@zilliondesigns\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@zilliondesigns\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ZD Team\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"ZD Team\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/02a0cd9f794e713c21a9b769b71cef95\"},\"headline\":\"10 Lessons That Designers Can Learn From Bad Client Horror Stories\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-09-05T14:29:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-10T14:08:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/\"},\"wordCount\":213,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Horror-Stories.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Graphic Design\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/\",\"name\":\"Lessons Designers Can Learn From Bad Clients\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/10-lessons-that-designers-can-learn-from-bad-client-horror-stories\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.zilliondesigns.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Horror-Stories.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-09-05T14:29:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-10T14:08:12+00:00\",\"description\":\"Beginner graphic designers learn some lessons the hard way and share their stories via #clientsfromhell. 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