This segment of your relationship with your graphic designer is brought to you by the school of hard knocks and painful lessons learned. When I started my venture into designing for business owners I was naive and excited. Believing that people would honor their word if I honored mine, I did not have contracts, down payments, kill fees etc. Everything was working well with the first several clients but then I learned why you have to have a contract. One month in particular, I had three wonderful clients lined up that I had completed several hours of work for.