Five Stages of Freelance Design

1. Client contacts designer, rains praise on his/ her work and explains that the designer's style is exactly what they're looking for. Designer and client meet and client explains the project. Designer goes home and begins generating concepts.

2. Client emails designer 20 minutes later and asks how it's going. Designer politely explains that this step of the process takes a little time and assures client they will get samples in a couple of days.

3. Client and designer meet again and client has a stack of his / her competitors products explaining they want the project to look "just like that.". The samples the designer brought get ignored. Designer goes home and tries to integrate his / her original ideas with the samples the client provided.

4. Client and designer meet a 3rd time and designer produces the new samples. The client looks at them and says, "hmmmmm". Client explains a second time how much they like their competitor's product design and suggests making it look "more like that". Designer explains that it's illegal to blatantly steal someone's product design. Client acts like he/ she didn't think of that and asks for more samples.

5. Designer generates more samples and shows them to the client. The client pushes them aside and offers another competitor's product that they want to look "Just like that.". Designer needs to pay the cable bill so he / she copies the product design exactly, requests payment and severs all ties with the client to avoid getting involved in the inevitable lawsuit.