Never talk about specific client relationships with a third party

Creating a design is not like creating an algorithm for a software security company. But even though, you should keep your client relations a secret. If clients agree, you can share your work on your portfolio site or upload it to your social media, but besides that, sharing details of your client relations with a third party should be off the table.

Never talk about bad clients

We all have clients that pay late, reluctantly, or nothing at all. We all encounter clients that demand services that were never agreed upon before the payment. And we all run into clients that don’t respect our work or us. Sometimes we even get clients that talk disrespectful about us behind our backs themselves.

But whatever these “bad clients” do, we should never talk badly about them to others.

It is fair to warn your design colleagues about non-paying clients to protect them from exploitation, granted. But you should not write a blogpost about Client X, who paid only half of what was agreed upon with a three-week delay.

A stay-silent-policy protects you from legal issues and it protects your own reputation.

Just think about it: If you publicly complain about bad clients, future clients may see that. They will ask themselves how you will publicly frame them if they work with you. And they will ask themselves how it was even possible that the designer ran into a bad client.

Bad clients are cheap clients. Cheap clients look for cheap designers. And cheap designers are primarily cheap, because they’re bad designers.

Does a good client search for a bad designer? Surely not.

Never talk about good clients either

As stated before, you can share your latest projects in your portfolio or social media, if the client agrees. This is what I would refer to as “Talking about your latest work results”.

The moment you talk about money, contracts, agreements, client discussions, or anything but the result of your work, you are doing more harm to your business than it does good.

Even if your client relation worked out fine in every perceivable way, sharing details of that publicly can create legal problems and prevent future clients from working with you. And this is still true for clients who allow you to share everything you want to share about the work relationship.

You’ve finally gotten the big contract with the company you always wanted to work with? Great, but only share the result of your work and stay silent about the rest!