Art-directed by the client

As a graphic designer who runs a design business for a living, we always need to fulfill ridiculous requests to please clients.

For example, sometimes clients would send us semi-designed artwork done in Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint and ask us to tidy it up for output. "Just follow exactly what I did, don't change the design!" They never forget to remind.

As a so-called professional designer, what's our reaction? Such ludicrous/laughable/idiotic...(whatever you name it) design would never work. Then we will try hard to explain to client why it doesn't work and how are we going to make it work... Such battle would never end...

Till I came across Mr. Kay's blog entry that talks about this issue, it opens me up to a new point of view and it seems to provide a very good answer to this question. If you care and experience this issue too, you might need to read about it.