For as long as I have been in graphic design, I often see designers complaining about clients. Designers scream about how bad clients are — they prepare terrible terms of reference, ask for whiter white, or, oh, the horror, send a logo in a Word document.

I’ve seen articles in which clients are assigned types. For example, a designer client, an aesthete, an invisible man, a friend or an enslaver... All these types are not described in the best way, and underneath the articles, understandable comments from designers. In my world, this attitude is unacceptable. I think those designers should change their approach to working with people or their work.

There are two sides to the coin — it’s hard for clients too!

• The designer disappears. He works and works and suddenly stops responding to all contacts. Advance is paid, but work is not finished.
• The designer siphons off the budget. A project comes, the client gives out a list of wishes, and then the designer says: “There are only two changes. The rest are for an extra charge”. The client pays more or stays with the result, which does not suit him 100%.
• The designer drags deadlines. Project launch in a month. The designer seems to be working, but the deadline is approaching, and the end of the project is not visible. It happens if the designer has not calculated his efforts and properly allocated time. If interest in the project has faded, something does not work. The result is one — the deadline is broken, and the client loses.
• The designer does not solve the problem. There is a task, but the designer does something different because “he sees so”. The budget is spent, but the task is not solved.
• The designer pretends to be a professional. The client sees beautiful pictures in the portfolio and trusts the project with the designer but gets a low level of work.

How do you not fall for such a designer? There is always a chance that something will go wrong. I recommend looking at the publicity of the designer and the processes of creating the work. I want to believe that there are more conscious designers. Well, clients can be different, and yes, they can ask for whiter white because it’s not about colour at all. Our task, as designers, is to understand our client and solve his problem.

I was going through my projects and found one as far back as 2014. I want to show it :-)

I once had dreadlocks, and I was braided by a beautiful couple, Pasha and Nastya. They call themselves Dreads by Mohh or “Kind Dreads”. The Mohhs didn’t have a logo or any style. They chose their font and used it on social media.

That was the logo

At some point, Mohh organised a competition amongst their subscribers for a new logo and avatar for social media. So I decided to participate for the sake of interest.

While looking for an idea, I was looking at the guys photos, and I found an interesting photo shoot:

Photographer Alena Pavliuk

“This is it!” — I thought and drew the guys in a paper boat:

I won the competition, and Mohh is thrilled :-)

The cartoon Mohh didn’t end there. The guys asked me to draw avatars in the same style, so I did.

It was like this at first:

Then I drew another one:

I also came up with a business card:

For illustration purposes, I drew beads on the dreadlocks that Mohh sells:

And here’s a real-life business card

Valeria is a master manicurist and pedicurist. For her newsletter and to attract new clients she needed a guide in which she talks about hand and nail care. The guide needed to be in both electronic and printed form.

I made two versions — A4 format for mailing and A5 format for printing.

Some pages from the printed version of the guide

In the electronic version, I added a bit of interactivity: users can follow a link from the content to any page and back to the content, and I also made the links within the text active.

Some pages from the electronic version of the guide

First version of the logo

In 2015, I designed the logo and identity for Maria. After five years, we decided it was time to update the logo.

I modified the sign without changing the basic idea:

In the text part, I changed the first and last name and updated the descriptor:

Here’s what came out:

Following the logo, I changed the website: I updated the homepage, added a pricing page and a blog section, and made the colour scheme less saturated.

Read also about the new logo and the  first version of the website.

A presentation video appeared on the home page:

It is followed by a welcome block with a picture of Katya:

Also, for more clarity, there is a comparison slider in the decor section — now you can move the arrows left-right and see before-after photos:

There is now a page with prices (previously, the block was on the home page):

And a blog was started:

Project Members

Task
To do a small rebranding: update the logo and colour scheme.

Old logo

Wreath with Katya Keshchyan’s logotype.

Until today, the agency’s logo was a drawn character in a flower arch (Katya herself was drawn by a commissioned artist, I don’t know her name). But the House of Weddings is growing, and with the growth, we needed a real logo. The text part came from the Duck House. We decided to keep it for now but supplement it with a graphic sign. We also decided to redesign the arch, to make the colours less saturated and to get rid of the wreath.

Started with an abbreviation

First, I try to make a wreath out of the letters “ДС”. I got this sketch:

I sent it to Katya and got the go-ahead to develop the idea. I sketched flowers and leaves from the wreath and attached them to the “ДС”:

Katya didn’t like the tail on “Д”. I try adding another flower and the ring the character is holding:

In response, I got a picture from the film Avatar :-) Katya says that the tail looks very much like the tail of the Na’vi creatures.

Na’vi

I decide to move away from the wreath and try the ring shape.

The abbreviation “ДС” fits perfectly in the circle

I remove the flowers and add a diamond from the character illustration:

Katya likes the ring a lot. See the sign for an example on the website:

In this form, the “ДС” wreath blends with the text part better than the “ДС” ring.

I go back to the first version and add detail to the “Д” tail so it doesn’t conjure up a Na’vi tail. Here we go:

In parallel, I try to connect the “ДС” ring with the text part in some other way and find a great option:

Katya likes it. We decide to settle on this logo variant. Finalising the diamond itself:

In the process, I tried adding the diamond feet, but they seemed superfluous

Working on the arch and the character

At the same time, I was working on the arch. The main task was to get rid of the bubbles. So first, I cleaned them up, and in their place, I added vegetation:

After — Before

Thought of a variant with dark red on the character and in the colours of the arch:

It was abandoned at once

I’m trying to reduce the arch a bit and make it thinner. For this purpose, I removed bubbles and vegetation and reduced the flowers themselves:

By this point, Katya decides to move away from the arch altogether for now and leave it as is.

Adjusting colour saturation in images. Before — After:

Putting together a guideline