Hot take: that lawyer who told me to watermark everything was dead wrong

Had a client in Seattle ghost me after I sent them a watermarked draft of a logo I spent 12 hours on. They said it looked unprofessional and bounced. Next time I'm just sending a low-res JPEG with no watermark but enough detail to prove I did the work. Anyone else had a watermark scare off a legit client?

3 comments

3 Comments

faithpatel23h ago

My friend runs a small design studio in Portland and she totally stopped watermarking after a similar thing happened. She sent a watermarked mockup to a bakery owner for a logo rebrand, and the owner wrote back saying the watermark made the whole thing feel like a scam or something. She ended up spending three hours on the phone trying to explain why she does it, but the client never came back. Now she just sends low-res screenshots with a tiny invisible layer of text in the corner that you can't really see unless you zoom in. It's not perfect but at least nobody's gotten scared off yet. I mean, it's a bummer that we have to deal with this at all, but clients don't always get why we need to protect our work.

kimr9113h ago

That Portland story from @faithpatel actually made me rethink my whole stance on watermarks.

the_drew22h ago

Yeah it's like the whole world forgot that protecting your stuff isn't the same as being shady.