Professional Design Practice :: Lesson 4 :: Dealing with Clients

Originally published 2014. Updated March 2026.

Professional Design Practice Lesson 4: Dealing with Clients

They come in all shapes and sizes, from all different professional backgrounds, and we rely on them to pay our fees. A large portion of the freelancer’s lot is spent looking for them, bagging them, and spending a considerable amount of our daily slog trying to work out what they want. I’m speaking of course about clients, and this article is all about working with them, retaining them, educating them and occasionally letting them go.

Mention the word ‘client’ to a fellow designer and the response is quite often a humorous tutting under the breath, coupled with a rolling of the eyeballs. This is all very well — but a little examination reveals clients to be a generally good bunch, who, to state the obvious, we rely on for our livelihoods. At their best they push us beyond the safe confines of what we’ve become used to. The truism is fast becoming accepted wisdom: the very best design comes out of a collaborative endeavour between the designer and client.

This is Lesson 4 in our Professional Design Practice series. You might also want to read Lesson 3 on project planning and Lesson 5 on invoicing clients.

A Marriage (of sorts…) — The Designer/Client Relationship

“Without clients there is no graphic design and without demanding clients there is no great graphic design.” So says Adrian Shaughnessy. It’s a decent quote and should pull into sharp focus the sometimes unfair nature of things whereby clients are looked upon as an unknowable force, an irritating fact of life, a brake on our creativity.

I’ve attempted to redress the balance here — but how should the designer act towards them? The best piece of advice I can give, and this might strike you as blindingly obvious, is to treat your clients with respect and attentiveness, in a similar way as you would your friends. This isn’t to say you should befriend your clients (a modicum of professional detachment is always a good thing), but just as we all have to work at our friendships, an inconsiderate remark can damage a working relationship beyond repair.

Train yourself to be hyper-sensitive to each client’s needs. It’s a mistake to assume all clients want the same thing, or have the same expectations of you. No two clients are the same. Some will want to be highly involved in the design process; some will need lots of attention; some will be suspicious of the idea that graphic design has intrinsic value.

Develop empathy and understanding in a bespoke way for each client. By doing this you’ll strike the right tone, glean what they actually want, and begin to learn about each other. These are the conditions necessary for long-term relationships to flourish.

Retaining Clients

Winning new clients is a challenge faced by all freelancers throughout their career. Once you’ve built a solid roster, retaining them is the next challenge — but getting repeat work from an existing client is easier than winning new work from scratch. It won’t happen automatically. You’ll need to make your client aware that you’re available and looking for more.

Conduct yourself with honesty when discussing problems and briefs. Defend your work when it’s questioned, and admit to it when you’re wrong. Demonstrate that you care deeply about what you do. Deliver on time and within budget. Do all of this consistently, and you’ll be doing everything you can to hold on to the clients you’ve won.

Communicating Remotely

Much client work now happens at a distance. Video calls, screen sharing, and tools like Figma’s commenting and presentation modes have changed how feedback is gathered and work is presented. The principles remain the same — clarity, attentiveness, preparation — but the format demands a little more structure.

Send an agenda before a video call. Share your screen rather than describing what you’re looking at. Use Figma comments or annotated PDFs to make feedback specific and traceable. Clients who feel clearly heard and well-informed are clients who come back.

Educating Clients

There are corporations and individuals out there, skilled in the language of design practice, who regularly commission good work. They appear at the top of many freelancers’ wish lists. They do exist — but they aren’t nearly so numerous as those clients unversed in professional design practice, who require a little more help throughout the relationship.

I hesitate to use the word ‘education’ here, but as formal as it sounds, there really is no better term for the learning process which occurs between the inquisitive, receptive client and the articulate designer.

Smaller clients may be used to handing design work to ‘design and print’ facilities, or having a go at producing logotypes and layouts themselves. Contracting a graphic designer can be a leap into the unknown. Guide your clients through the tricky terrain of the design landscape with patience and understanding. Remember you’re speaking to a client, not a fellow designer, and adjust your language accordingly.

There’s No Easy Answer to this Age-old Question…

Possibly the single most common question which preoccupies graphic designers is this: how do I stop my client from meddling with my work? An overly-meddlesome client can be a bane on a designer’s existence, and it irks us to have our work interfered with by non-professionals.

Confronted with a situation like this you could flatly refuse to carry out the suggested amends, or you could agree and implement the suggestions silently. My own favoured, third way: acknowledge what the client wants to do, tell them you’re happy to do as they ask but voice your concerns, and say that alongside their request you’d also like to show them the concept you think would work best. Present several layouts and see what happens. As designers we aren’t always right and can’t win every battle — but by keeping a system for dealing with these situations, we’ll more often get our work through than not.

Be a warrior, not a doormat.

Sacking Clients

At some point in your career a client may prove troublesome enough for you to decide to let them go. Various things can happen to bring you to this decision. The client might be well-meaning but hopelessly disorganised to the extent that you start to lose money. Personal factors might make it difficult to maintain a working relationship. You may belatedly spot an out-and-out charlatan in your midst.

A client might not be able to pay you. If this happens, suspend all work immediately. Waste no more time or energy until your client has got their finances in order. If it’s a personal matter, contact them to explain that you are severing your working relationship — politely but firmly — and provide reasons why. Make sure all loose ends are tied up before doing so, and then act on your decision.

Useful Top Tips

• Never tell clients what to think of your work
• When defending your work, always argue from the audience’s perspective, never your own
• Take an interest in your clients’ affairs

In Sum…

For better or worse, we as freelance designers are linked in symbiotic relationships with our clients. Good clients keep us on our toes and can provide a check on our egos. They exist as puzzles which we must decipher and provide solutions for. It can be a highly satisfying part of the freelancer’s job to seal and then develop a working relationship with a good client — unravelling, deciphering, deducing, reassessing and reappraising throughout. To take less design-conscious clients and gently bring them on takes what they called in Victorian times ‘character’.

More than a necessary evil then. Let’s hear it for the client!

Continue the series: Lesson 3 — Project Planning | Lesson 5 — Invoicing Clients | Lesson 7 — Graphic Design Contracts

Want to build these skills? Our Certificate IV in Graphic Design covers professional practice from client management to contracts — everything you need to work with confidence.