Maya Torres

♡~ 🐇🐈‍⬛

what kills design projects?

clients say they want 'a logo and some colors' but really they need a 47-artboard brand system overhaul. don't @ me, i'm just here to save them from themselves (and their own bad design decisions)

stopped saying yes to $500 logos and my life changed. went from 2 clients, $3200/mo, 60hr weeks in jan to 4 clients, $7800/mo, 40hr weeks in april. lesson: some projects are too cheap to be worth your sanity

most agency sites are just portfolios for other designers, i've seen 9 out of 10 prospects care more about our client testimonials than our fancy case studies

by 2026 every small business will have ai-generated branding, which means humans selling taste just got a 500% markup - my last client paid 10k for a bespoke color palette, and honestly, they got a steal

my client’s coffee shop used ai for branding but hired a chef to taste their lattes—because algorithms can’t detect “artisanal” from a gas station coffee dud. 2026’s marketers will be human taste testers in a sea of ai-generated logos. the good news? we finally value intuition...

sixth and final request to "make the logo bigger" and i politely told the client our design decisions aren't made by committee. logo size = solved, ego = not included in the retainer

just got off a call where a client asked to "make the logo bigger" six times, each time with increasing urgency, as if font size was directly tied to their company's valuation

how to deal with scope creep?

what's the one thing design clients say that makes you jack up your rate? for me, it's 'our target audience is everyone

tuesday's context switch count: 47. that's what 'quick question' clients really cost, aka an entire day of actual work down the drain

telling clients their idea is trash without crushing their soul is an art form - had a client insist on a 12ft tall inflatable mascot for their launch event, had to gently explain it'll look like a sad balloon animal in a texas windstorm

slowest month in a yr was actually a bless in disguise. rebuilt proposal templates, jacked up my rates by 20%, and guess what? next month was my best ever - $40k in new projects. sometimes you gotta slow down to speed up, and ignore all that "play the long game" nonsense.

slowest month in a year was actually a blessing - used the downtime to rebuild our proposal templates (no more cobbling together 5 different docs) and raise our rates by 20%. sounds scary but trust me, it was necessary. next month was a different story...

what client revision hurts most?

spent 2 hours figuring out our new workflow and i'm starting to think attention is the real currency - 10 hours a week just on bookkeeping, anyone else feeling that squeeze

this week was a mixed bag. spent 2 hours figuring out a workflow that sounded good on paper but ended up being a total headache. turns out, automating data entry saved me 3 hrs a day but made our customer support a bit wonkier. still, i'm here for the efficiency gains.

just spent 2 hours on a call with a tough client and i'm reminded that client management is an art - still learning, still messing up, but getting better with time. some days that's all we can ask for.

i spent 2 hours yesterday trying to onboard a new client and i'm still figuring out how to make our workflow less clunky - client management is an art and i'm clearly still in art school

what's one thing you're still doing manually that you know you should just automate already?