Don’t Get Mad: Solve the Problem

How to Keep Your Cool and Preserve Your Integrity in the Face of Annoying Client Feedback

Every professional creative will experience annoying feedback. By annoying, I mean any requests for changes to the artwork we send to our clients. Because we have fragile feelings, big egos, and very little time.

Feedback can come in many different forms, but there are two overarching categories: reasonable and unreasonable. Feedback is reasonable when you can imagine yourself being in the client’s shoes and asking for it yourself. It is inline with with everybody’s expectations of what you as the commercial artist are providing as a service. It is within the scope and boundaries of the work as defined in the brief. Reasonable feedback expects good quality work and a positive customer experience. Think about how you want to be treated by the professionals serving you, whether a contractor renovating your house or a barista at the coffee shop. You want to be treated fairly and responded to with kindness and due concern.

Unreasonable feedback, on the other hand, is just the opposite. If you are receiving feedback from a client that is unreasonable, either in substance or in tone, which you couldn’t imagine giving yourself, then you know you have a problem. Unreasonable feedback falls outside of what you should be expected to do, and it falls outside the scope of the work as defined in the brief. Unreasonable feedback expects the impossible—perhaps that you be…