Today, Pascal invited me to the restaurant celebrating many colorful events expected from weeks. During the lunch I was given many great advises about being a freelance in front of the wild world of business. How not to be your customers’s slave ? How to plan a project roadmap to guide your customer and to make him agree and understand your ideas. How to be respected from your customers. Eccetaera

First, you have to make high profile in front of your customer. They need to know who’s the boss ! As graphic designer is a quite young job, many companies don’t even know how to work with us. They believe they have to participate in the creative part, this is why they annoy us with marvelous ideas and pictures. However, the customer must be included in the reflexive work not accepting his ideas but bouncing on them. Customers launch ideas like balls, the graphic designer has to direct them into the right goals. Then clients will believe they found the right ideas. Moreover in order to make customers participate, you can give them homework: After each meeting, ask them to do some picture search, make competitors analysis.

The great metaphor was the restaurant one. When you go to eat somewhere, the waiter show you where to sit, he gives you the menu, he serves you, he ask your choice and you wait. Stop. You wait and you accept what you asked for, you eat it, you pay and you’re happy. You would never enter the kitchen to give some recommendation to the chief. You wouldn’t give him your own ingredients because you like them too! You sit and and wait.

Here is the main lines of what Pascal taught me this evening. I hope I won’t forget it by writing it here.