As a designer-turned-developer, I find this topic and the comments amusing. I don't think there's much question that the agency in question treated the client t

As a designer-turned-developer, I find this topic and the comments amusing. I don't think there's much question that the agency in question treated the client terribly, and should have been fired post haste and early. That said, you couldn't pay me enough to get involved with design again in any way shape or form. The reason, as reflected by the comments and experience, is greatly increased customer expectations of the design process, number of expected mockups/choices, iterations, content changes, scope creep, etc. Even for small projects like the OPs, it's has ballooned to such an extent that many times it's practically impossible to know if something is going to take weeks or even years. 10 years ago when I last did design, if this author approached me I'm confident that I could have delivered a significantly better end result in far less time and at a cost similar to the original estimate. However, I would have be up front at the start (and in the contract) about maximum iterations and time spent before triggering the hourly rate. This most of the time anyway, worked pretty well to set the client's expectation to what I needed to match their estimate. I do understand that this wouldn't be palatable to most businesses anymore because it means having to be more trusting and flexible about the end result. Yet in almost all cases, I was able to please the companies I worked with and do it mostly on time/budget. Indeed, they sometimes had to compromise a bit but the end result as measured by revenue and traffic was almost never disappointing to them. I'm a big believer of listening carefully and delivering not what "I" want, but what my customer wants. That said, I also believe business should be open to the advice of design (and other) professionals, because that is what they spend all their time doing. If you're fighting stuff like color/font/design choices with your designer to the extent that you have to go through a million changes, you've either picked the wrong designer or you might also consider the possibility that you might not be effectively communicating your opinions and/or that they might not make sense.