I was asked by a new friend if I would help him work on some graphics for a CMS he is working on because I am the only person he knows that can put anything together graphically. I said yes, thinking that the project would not take more than an hour or two, and that this new friend would not be picky as I was giving my time up for free for a project that he had not even really started yet.

So here I am trying to make it look good and detailed in Photoshop the best that I can. I send him over the image of the first mock-up and he totally tears it down. I rework the whole thing and send it to him again, and he likes it a bit but hopes the final version is much better. “OUCH”

So then he asks if I could whip something up for the admin panel. He says he likes how Textpattern looks. I go ahead and take some elements from Textpattern, as well as my own creativity and the colours he specifies. I send him a mock-up and he looks at it and says basically that I did not understand what he wanted. He basically wants a rip off of Textpattern using his own colours. That killed the project for me.

People that don’t respect that I am doing something out of the goodness of my heart and using my creativity and time to put something unique together don’t deserve the help that I offer.

It is one thing to want design changes, but remember when you are getting something for free or cheap to not monopolize a designers time, and if you want a rip off of another design…do it yourself because any self respecting designer should say no when it comes to what is basically wiping whatever reputation into the mud.