buzz07

I've been working on a logo + website project for a startup client. When I presented the logo proposals to her the first time, she picked her choice and was quite enthusiastic about it. After a couple of days, she came back to me saying that I have to come up with a new series of proposals. She had shown her choice to people she knew and one of them had a bad reaction to it. I explained her, as diplomatic as I could, that this was all well and good but that I would have to charge her extra if she required me to start from scratch. She reacted badly to this. In the end, I did the new set of proposals without asking her for any additional cost.

A final logo design was chosen, which I fine tuned further. Then I started work on the website, which again she approved, before it was handed over to a developer. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Then all of a sudden I get a call from her saying that she'd like us to restart everything. She said that she had "matured" over the last few weeks this project has been running (she's already in her forties so perhaps she meant her ideas had matured!) and she now realizes that she had been going in the wrong direction. Now she knows exactly what she wants. When I mentioned the cost, she agreed that there might be extra charges but that these should be kept to a minimum.

To top it all off, she now wants to sit next to me and work together on the new concept. It seems that she has a very specific idea of how the logo and website should look like and she wants to use me as her hands.

My inclination is to just walk away - even if I had to pay back the 50% down payment (although up until her matrix moment, the project was about 90% complete and I had worked the corresponding hours - and that's not including the earlier volte face). Who's to say she won't flip-flop again?

However, I'm hesitating for the following reason.

I built-up a good reputation working in agencies (including working for some difficult/demanding clients) before recently deciding to become an independent designer. My client base is small and everyone seems to know everyone else - especially through an active online professional community that both I and this client are members of. There is therefore a significant risk that she might bad mouth me to existing or potential clients.

I don't want to lose my good name after working so hard to get one.

Any tips on the best way to handle this situation?

Thanks