How to Work with Family and Friends

How to Work with Family and Friends

on Apr 12th 2011 with 18 comments

At some point in your life, someone close to you will seek out your illustration or design skills. Trust me, if they haven’t asked you yet, they will. So what happens when friends and family become your client? We’ve put together some tips to help you out.

Bad clients are a nightmare. But imagine if they could follow you home or track you down on the weekend for an impromptu consultation. Not a nice thought is it? This is what it’s like to have a family member or friend — turned client — who cannot respect your professional relationship. The following list is a few ways to avoid any conflict and help keep everyone involved happy, including yourself.

Family, Friend or Partner?

Think about who your client is and how well you get along with them. If it looks like the project could fall apart due to personal differences, don’t be afraid to refer the work to someone else. There’s no point in taking a project to avoid a fight if there’s a high chance of having one later on.

Is the Request Realistic?

Family and friends may have a high opinion of how skilled you are. This is great, because it means that they believe in your skills. But a best friend who thinks you’re a superstar can expect more work from you than you can hope to achieve. Before you start a project, you need to sit down with the "client" and discuss exactly what it is that they want you to work on. If the response is along the lines of

"I really like Amazon.com, can you make a site like that for my small business?"

kindly inform them of how much work goes into the project, and exactly where your skills begin and end. Don’t try to meet unrealistic expectations, there’s a high chance that you will let someone down later.

Ask for a Written Brief

Another place where people can go wrong is informal project briefs. These often take the shape of a quickly written facebook message, or even worse, a few comments from a conversation that took place without you. An example of this would be a friend who needs a logo for their business, and the only direction you receive is,

"Make whatever you like, I’m sure it will be great!"

No matter who the client is, you should always ask for a written project brief. It doesn’t have to be overly complex but it should outline the basics such as, ideas, audience, purpose and timeline. Work together for as long as it takes until you both have a clear idea of what is required. This will save you a lengthy revision process later on.

"Communication" by Bucket’o'Thought

Set Deadlines

Just because they’re close to you doesn’t mean the project should be infinite. Setting deadlines will give you some leverage when it comes to chasing up payments or assets. This is especially true for multifaceted projects such as websites. Many people want a website but often don’t think of content creation as their responsibility. A deadline will help you break the project into small milestones and assign outside tasks to the appropriate people.

Negotiate a Fee

Negotiating a fee isn’t always about money. If you’re committing yourself to someone else’s project then you should ask for something in return. Can this person help out around your house? Do they have a skill, such as accounting, that you would find useful? A little bit of give and take will help grease the wheels of co-operation and won’t lead to any ill feelings if the project requires some extra time and effort on your part.

Do You Have a Story to Share?

Have you ever worked for a friend or family member? Was it a great experience or did it put a strain on the relationship? Share your story in the comments section below.

Tags: Workplace
 
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Kate McInnes specializes in Communication Design and Digital Illustration. Based in Melbourne Australia, she is the Associate Editor of Vectortuts+ and one half of the creative duo McKelly. Find her on Twitter as @bittenbypixels and Blood Sweat Vector.  

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  • Alex Baranov

    I kind of work with my brother. I’m a designer and he is a developer. At the moment projects go just fine.

  • http://inkrush.deviantart.com Radi Shafiq

    Very nice points. But I think it would be much better if you try and come up with more detailed guidelines.

  • http://fluid.cz Vertol

    I will never ever work for any memeber of my family:)

  • Mindy A

    I’ve once got asked by my father to design a xmas greeting card for him that includes a really beautiful photo of his classic car he was restoring that he took with his digital camera. He had some ideas on how the front cover should look and what words to put in. It was actually a cost-free project that only costed him printing fees to get them printed. The final result was really great and realistic with photo manipulation. After he mailed to family and friends, some had actually asked him “Where was this with your car?” referring to a photo of a snowy house with christmas tree in the window. It was so funny! He proudly told them that I designed the card and they were impressed that they thought it was real. Gotta love how people react!

  • http://www.brandonhalliburton.com Brandon Halliburton

    Good stuff!

    I personally have experience the “design whatever” attitude. It can be frustrating at times because you want to have some direction when I am designing something. I will be sure to ask for a written brief.

    Thanks!

    Brandon

  • http://www.behance.net/MonaParvin Mona

    I agree totally with this article. Working with family is not that easy as it might seem. I have worked with a few family members on their projects, identity systems & websites. The projects sometimes felt exhausting due to the number of requests & favors. Since they were family members I did not feel so comfortable asking for anything back in return. But as you mentioned it might have helped to ease the flow :)

  • http://simplyFULL.com Steve Rose

    In other words, treat it like a regular business deal.

  • Ronnie

    Its a total NIGHTMARE, because they are “all” asking, no one is paying and feel free to complain galore. It has been so bad that I have stopped doing anything for anyone and come across as a flake (admitting to it) beside my husband business (and he is the hardest to work with because he is unreasonable).
    There my rant

  • flyingfox

    I did the website for the business start-up of one of my wife’s friends once. I experienced quite a few of the beforementioned problems.

    First she had no clue whatever about corporate identity and what direction her logo design should head towards.

    Secondly she thought i could do everything just like this, design, development, some self-drawn icons as a topping, the disclaimer fpr her specific branch (content creation!) and so on.

    In the end it was a success, she was very satisfied with the end result, but i ended up not being happy about it.

    First, i charged very little (the friendship thing)

    Then, because i charged so little, it wasn:t my best work because i rushed through. This is the worst part. I am not proud of my work (even though it does meet professional standards) and whenever someone says, “hey, great site you did there” i want to reply “could have done a lot better” and i have to bite my tongue to shut up.

    What i have learned for the future is, that i would still do work for friends and family, but i would treat it like a regular job, no compromise whatsoever. If someone is not willing or able to pay my regular bill, then seek luck elsewhere.

    A friend who hires me will then get to know a totally different person. Not the funny, relaxed, take-it-easy designer guy (the image i guess i have right know around my hard-working banker lawyer and tax counselor friends). They would rather meet a highly disciplined 110% perfectionist who works very long and very hard for the easy-looking results he produces and expects the very same professional attitude from the other side.

    I think this can only be positive. I actually think, when someone asks you to do a designer job and says something like “do whatever you want. It will be great. But i need it tomorrow” all he shows is a great amount of disrespect for you and your work.

  • Ann Childs

    I work full time as a designer but do the occasional freelance project on the side for friends and family. I find that I enjoy these projects more if I do it on a barter system. I don’t need the extra money, so instead I usually ask for a couple of bottles or a case full of my favourite wine depending on the size of the project and it always seems to smooth the wheels and makes me happy to do whatever is required!

  • http://www.humblebunny.com Nathan Hoernig

    I’ve done work with family in the past and while it was great working with family, there were definitely a few times when I wasn’t sure what was happening with the project, couldn’t reach the person and deadlines passed.

    If you have a shred of worry about it not working out, don’t do it. There are a lot of things you have to look at including experience, their personal lives and other things to gauge whether they’re the type of professional you want to do business with.

    If both sides are professional, can make their deadlines and be punctual in terms of responding to emails and such, then that’s a good base to jump from…unfortunately, you may not know these things until after the project is over.

    The most important thing is to realize that not even family can meet eye-to-eye all the time. Just make sure that what’s business, stays business. It’s nothing personal, right? You may have had a different experience working with someone else but that shouldn’t affect the fact that you’re family and you’ve gotta make that work. Family is forever.

  • ne

    I had done a website for a friend and a wedding invitation for another friend.

    Both of them were pretty nice to work with and gave feedback that I could use. However, the projects did take longer and had major revisions done to them, but all in good sense.

    They were both happy with the final results, and I was too.

  • Janio Isacura

    Ok, the real deal starts when they say I like this one but I’m not definitely sure, give the same thing but different.

    Another probability is when “the client” (family member/friend) wants to materialize the same idea they have in tehir minds, using you just as a puppet to arrange or rearrange random elements or pictures, obviously they think it will work just fine, cause they don’t know how to use the PC, but they claim that to be some kind of empiric graphic designers just for having installed some crappy paintbrush software, and since they’re paying you a very small fee (Cause you give them family treatment) is the “dowhateveriwant” payment… You guys can figure out how we deal with this kind of friends/Clients…

    My solution is just to shut down my smartphone or go with the scary cough voice…

    But seriously, this post will help me out a lot.

    Thanks

  • sharon

    Yes, and the most important piece of advice is don’t sell yourself short!! You may feel that you should offer your family/friends a discount for the work that you do. But once you grasp that they too, should be regular clients it gets easier. I still struggle with this. Another thing is to make sure you have the time, energy, resources, etc to work on their project. It’s a good idea to find out how commited they are to getting the work done, that will only fuel your commitment to putting your best designs forward. It’s hard to stay focused for someone who’s not really invested into seeing the project to completion.

  • http://www.mbspeed36.deviantart.com Mitchel (A.K.A. CloudHunter)

    Ohhw, dear. Family projects, INSTANT NIGHTMARES. I was asked once to edit some footage of a marriage by my uncle. I did not even know these people who were married, so it was stupid to accept it anyway without any experience of marriages… :P Well, I’m a perfectionist, so I tried as hard as I could to make it outstanding, but in the eyes of my uncle I failed and ended up not getting paid for my work, and I never heard anything about it anymore xD Total drama, but these tips are pretty useful I think! ;D
    Thanks!

  • http://www.audiodzigns.com Dan

    Family projects can be a nightmare for sure. Close family members will always offer money for my efforts where as it’s the friends that expect the work for free. I work for a friend as a consultant and freelance designer, we have a contract so we can both deliver and run our business respectfully.

    I currently am contract with the company my mother works for and work with a contract as well. I feel that even with friends it will keep the B.S. out of the equation. It has yet to fail me. The pro bono work, that has burned bridges.

  • http://--- Louie

    I got to work on a project designing posters of each person in singing group with a close friend who was heading the design committee. We got to spend lots of time together playing with colors and arrangement and they turned out great!

  • Chris

    I had a very bad experience with this lately.

    I’m trying to start my own online marketing business, and as such, approached two of my friends who have small businesses and offered to do some work for them for free in order to build a little portfolio.

    One of them was my friends wife. For her, I did graphics for her social media pages, and helped her customize it. As I’m still learning the Adobe software, it took me time to get her graphic to what I thought looked great.

    I then enthusiastically posted it on her page and told her that I had finished the work, and asked her to let me know what she thought, since the whole point of doing these jobs for free was to kind of go through a test run on services I intend to offer.

    Anyways, I was very curious to find out what she thought, and after two weeks gone by and not having heard from her, I find out that she didn’t even look at any of the work I did. She said she was too busy. I don’t know if I ever felt more insulted than that. She basically had this attitude that she was doing me a grand favor by letting me create an online presence for her for free. I seriously must have spent 20 hours on her stuff, and she couldn’t even spend 2 minutes to look at what I did, so I took the graphics down, since she obviously didn’t care. Oddly enough, I get an e-mail the next day asking what happened to the graphics, as she finally found the time to take a peak. I told her I took them down because I thought it was disrespectful to not spend 2 minutes to look at the work I did for her, and that I wouldn’t be doing any more work for free for anyone anymore, but would sell her these graphics for $50. She lost it, and told me off, and now we no longer speak or have anything to do with each other.

    So, having a project brief, timeline, and asking for something in return is definitely on the menu if I ever do work for a friend again. Personally, I don’t believe in working for free, since people tend to value your work as being worthless, regardless of the fact that she’d pay a decent amount to get the work done by someone else. Lesson learned.