Last year, I got to work with a lot of new clients and with that came new experiences. The main one that stuck with me is what I refer to as: The Disappearing Client #Ghost #Casper. This client would hire me to work with them, and somewhere between Phase 2 and the final phase, pull a disappearing act. Not respond to emails, messages, calls, just completely drop the project.
I recently saw one of those clients at a ‘social gathering’ and they acted as though this never happened, and the act of running into them had me wondering how to better prepare and safe guard against future instances like this. What do you do when a client has made a down payment, agreed to work with you, you’ve submitted work for feedback and never get it? Or you work through to the end, the client just has to give final approval and never does? What happens to those projects? Who do you bill for the work? When do you stop thinking about the project and move on?
Personally, when a project isn’t finished and is drawn out longer than expected, it feels like a weird limbo stage, the in-between. Closure, while it’s a bad word these days when referring to relationships, is a necessary part of work. You need to finish things, cross them off lists. What do you do when finishing is out of your control?
I don’t have answers for my questions just yet, but if you do or have some experience, do share. In the meantime, here’s a logo I created that I really like, that may never be used.
Words by Ayrïd Chandler 
Reblogged this on dennise demming and commented:
I call this the creative dilemma. It is the knife edge where you decide if this is a “wuk” or if this satisfies your passion. Here’s a 2 our of 3 decision criteria which is useful. Will I make money? Will I learn something new? and Will It open my circle of interface? The activity has to satisfy 2 or the to get me involved.
This one hit all 3 and yet here we are.
In our business we’ve experience this disappearing act for the many reasons clients come up with. Instead of looking at it as not getting closure, we’ve decided to look at it as another challenge that we’ve conquered and use it to increase our portfolio and fill our website with pretty images. Lol
At least you get reasons. I get nothing lol. But I like adding to the portfolio in spite of.