How a good project goes bad
Almost never through one outrageous demand. It happens through six small requests, each of which is genuinely small.
Move the logo. Try it in blue. Can we see it with the other photo. My colleague thinks the headline is long. Actually the first version was better, can we go back. One more with the new tagline.
Each of those is ten minutes to ask and forty minutes to do. The mechanism that makes it damaging is that neither side can see the total. The client experiences six separate small asks over three weeks. You experience one unpaid week. Nobody is behaving badly. The information is just missing, and it is your job to supply it, because you are the only one who can.
Write the brief the client did not write
Before quoting, ask:
- What does this have to do? Not what should it look like — what job is it for.
- Who is the audience, specifically.
- What already exists that it must sit alongside.
- What is the deadline, and what is it tied to? A deadline attached to a real event behaves differently from one someone invented.
- Who else has to approve this?
That last question is the highest-value thing you will ask all year. The hidden third approver — a founder's spouse, a regional manager, an investor — causes most of the rounds that were not scoped. If there is one, get them into the first conversation or get their criteria in writing.
Then send the brief back in your own words and get "yes, that is right". An email counts. It is free, and it is a record.
Define a deliverable as a countable noun
"Social media designs" is not a deliverable. It is a hole.
"12 static posts at 1080 by 1350, delivered as PNG plus the editable source file, in one language, from photography the client supplies" is a deliverable. Every part of it prevents a specific argument.
Specify: format, count, dimensions, whether source files are included, language, and who supplies photography and copy. The last one matters more than it looks — a project waiting on the client's photographs is a project you will be blamed for delaying.
Define a round
Write it down: *"One round of revisions means one consolidated set of written feedback from one named person, returned within five working days. Two rounds are included. Further rounds are billed at [rate], quoted before they begin."*
This is not a defensive clause. It gives the client something they did not have: a way to know when this ends. Clients who have been burned by open-ended projects find it reassuring, not aggressive.
The change note, and the sentence that carries it
When the extra request arrives, do not refuse it. Price it.
*"That is outside the two rounds we scoped. Happy to do it — it is X and adds three days to delivery. Want me to send a change note?"*
Three things happen at once. The total becomes visible to the client for the first time. You stop being the person who says no, and become the person who says how much. And the choice moves to them, where it belongs.
Say it every time, including for the small ones. If you absorb three and object to the fourth, you have taught them the line is somewhere else and then moved it, which reads as unfairness even though you were the one being generous.
The ones you should absorb
If you misunderstood a brief that was clear, fix it free and fix it fast. If your file had an error, same. Being rigid about your own mistakes destroys the goodwill that makes the change notes acceptable.
Telling the difference between "the client changed their mind" and "I got it wrong" is a real judgment, and getting it right is a large part of why people rehire you.
When it is not a revision at all
If the direction changes fundamentally — a new audience, a new product, a new founder with new taste — that is not a round. That is a second project built on a dead brief.
Stop. Say so plainly, without blame: *"This is a different direction from the one we scoped, and it is not something two rounds covers. Let me re-quote it as a new phase."* Continuing quietly is how a three-week project becomes a four-month one that you resent and they do not know you resent.
Before you move on