Freelance Graphic Designer Frustration: Waiting in Limbo While the Client Critiques Your Artwork

Have you ever wondered where and how your clients go when they make decisions about your projects? For most creative freelancers, this is a mystery...a black box to them. Would that include you? In essence, the designer submits the artwork and the client(s) go into some secret voting booth and talk about your project with family, friends, colleagues, etc. When they're done in the "secret booth" they report back to you what they like and what they liked changed. For 75% or more of creative freelancers, this is the approval process they know and love...well, actually there isn't a lot of love for this approach but they don't know any other way. This used to drive me nuts - I'd wait for days for a client to get back to me, when they did I couldn't believe what changes they wanted to make. I wanted to tear my hair out...but I did come up with a solution, more on that at the end.

Instead of having clients make decisions by themselves or with other people that are not really qualified to help them sort through a design project, wouldn't it be more effective to actually be a part of that approval process? What if you, as the creative freelancer, could help your client evaluate the project rather than sitting in limbo just waiting to hear back from the client?

PS - If you've been pulling your hair out with this, check out the From Zero to Graphic Design Hero I have on iTunes in there I've included a 10 minute audio clip on "Avoiding the Revision Merry Go Round".