i’ve worked at small and big agencies, and it depends. at my agency, we pride ourselves on being good at what we do - that’s why the client hired us. if they want to dictate type choices, they should hire a production artist and skip the agency fees.

whenever clients dictate things like this for no reason, reason it out of them. Justify your typefaces and why theirs are wrong for the brand for whatever reason. If you let them run all over you, they won’t respect you and you’ll be stuck doing production work instead of designing.

Yeah, the client is always right.
But Comic Sans? That’s harsh.
What did you propose, that drove the client to consider CS?

The client, with all vendors, businesses and services, has an influence. I think the skill set in some organizations can manage the client, and in many ways you have to, since ultimately, we won’t produce anything unless the client signs off first.

If your creative and marketing presentations on a campaign contain “researched detail” on the effectiveness of your proposed imagery, copy, graphics, type choices upon the target audience, you just might get away from facing the clients “personal preferences” for color or photos, etc.

I have had comments from very big clients on very large interactive projects asking us to change the shape of a “button” on the global navigation. “Yes sir, we will look into that with our Information Architect and Creative Director. But you see, sir, they specifically selected this particular shape since the click-through rate just happens to be 12% higher than your suggested shape, sir.”

Business is business, and art isn’t.

If a client insists on making you do poor work, the client will reap the rewards of their own heavy hand in the end. In turn, you will not look good or prosper if your clients don’t.

It is a fine balance between paying the bills and maintaining some reputation for yourself or your group. I don’t think you can be too careful and choosing the work you do. Be ready to travel light and be picky.

Not that I’m anybody, but you can tell your client that there’s a taco shop located really conveniently near me I that refuse to go to solely because they use Comic Sans for their logo...

I figure if they make poor choices like that about their appearance, what poor choices do they also make about their food?