Many graphic design clients are very specific about what they want for their ads. It has to be on-brand; you should move that title a few pixels over, etc.

But this customer takes the cake. Check out how this designer handled him.

You said you wanted an ad with only one color. You got it buddy!

This happened years ago in my past life as a graphic designer. But I still think about it to this day.

I was 22 and fresh out of college with my graphic design degree. My first gig was at an advertising company. We mainly did those really horrible print car ads that you got in your mailbox and immediately threw in the trash.

One of her clients with especially bad taste was growing even more ridiculous.

You know the ones: only one font and it’s huge and screaming at you. Every inch of space has a picture of car, cramming 50 cars into a 7×5 inch area. You know… trash!

Fresh out of school, I foolishly made suggestions on how to make actual ads and not hot garbage. But it was made clear to me very quickly and very aggressively that they wanted trash. So I compiled.

Now, we had one client who was THE client. He brought in the most money and bought the most trash ads from us. And he also was very specific on just how bad his ads should look. Font was Impact on all ads and it filled every corner of the paper.

On one ad I remember him demanding I squeeze over 100 cars into a single space. It legit looked like a magic eye poster by the time it went to print.

I dealt with that guy and his unreasonable requests for over a year. Well the guy amazingly got worse. Started telling me which colors I could or couldn’t use.

Then came a chance to show him that he was being a dolt.

One by one, the colors dropped out.

Eventually I had enough. After he said I could no longer use orange I said, “Just to confirm, you do not like and do not want me to use red, orange, yellow, green, purple, pink, brown, white, or black?”

He confirmed. I said okay. The only color left was blue.

So I spent hours taking all the cars, all the fonts, all the text and all design elements and making them all the same exact blue. No shading. No highlights. Just a flat blue. The end result was one giant flat blue square. Like someone took a paint roller over it.

The result was amusing and annoying.

I could have made a blue square in two seconds. But I spent hours using all the elements he told me to use to cover my behind. Because when we sent that blue square to proof, the client of course blew up. Called me, screaming.

I replied calmly that he told me the only color I could use was blue. I used all the pictures and elements he asked for and did exactly what he wanted and made them blue.

Our calls were recorded so I didn’t get in any trouble with my boss. And I got to waste several more hours remaking the same ad but with the original car pictures and elements.

It was a really fun day.

Here is what folks are saying.

I wonder what Freud would say about that guy.

(Visualizing) That would be cool.

Sounds frustrating.

A game for long drives!

I guess it depends on your market!

Client’s got the blues.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.