How Easy is Desktop Publishing?

How do you define easy? "Requiring little effort" and "free from worry or anxiety" are a couple of common definitions. Easy is hardly the term I'd use when working on a project with looming deadlines, clients or bosses hovering over my shoulder, or trying to decipher the not-so-helpful Help files for a software feature that I only use once in a blue moon. Clients, employers, and sometimes even our own assessment of how easy something will be is often way out of touch with reality.

Last week our About.com Graphic Design Guide, Eric Miller, posted a poll asking "What is the least favorite thing clients say?" The top two vote getters at the time I looked were "This should be really easy..." and "This shouldn't take you long."

Ah, yes. Love those. Read the comments after the poll for more entertaining client quotes.

People who know little about graphic design (or Web design or related fields) generally have no clue what it really takes to do those quick and easy tasks. Perhaps a lot of them are still stuck on the marketing hype of the 80s and 90s when desktop publishing software was new and amazing. Yes, it did make a lot of tasks less complicated and faster -- compared to how it used to be done. But that doesn't mean you can just slap something fantastic together in half an hour or so with "little effort."

It's not just clients who have unreasonable expectations. Recently I was working on some artwork for my husband (for the face of a guitar) and after hours of image editing and rearranging layouts he'd come back with some variation of an easy change that shouldn't take too long. And him standing over my shoulder doesn't make it go faster, either. ARGGGHHHH. And there's not even the consolation of a payday at the end of the frustration.

Do your friends, family, employers, or clients think your desktop publishing or graphic design work is easy?