Can I move your website a little more westerly-facing for you, perhaps?

Please excuse me and feel free to call me Basil Fawlty but I just have to blow some steam, momentarily.

*Pause*

There is NOTHING quite as infuriating being in the field of creative design as the client who doesn't know what they want ... just not the first three things you come up with for them, even though you've given them exactly what they asked for each time. It's fine-tuning at its most maddening.

Warning bells sound madly in my ears now whenever I hear the words, "Just do whatever, I'm not fussy, you're the expert" because, undoubtedly, 9 times out of 10 they most certainly are fussed (or fussy) about what they want. They just cannot convey it to you, the designer. This wouldn't be so bad if they also didn't have a budget they want you to stay within.

Sometimes I'm so far in to a project that it's too hard to pull out without cutting my losses (and I can't afford to do that most of the time) that I have no option but to soldier on. It starts to grind the creative process to a halt when there is little to no direction - or so it turns out - despite sticking to the design brief (and I use "brief" in every sense of the word). Hard to keep coming up with new ways to try and please.

Gahhhhhhhhhhh!

I swear, sometimes I do feel like good old Basil and would dearly love to cynically ask a client every so often, "Well, what did you expect to see out of a Torquay hotel window, madam? The Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeast sweeping majestically..."