http://industrialbrand.com/blog/do-clients-choose-us-or-do-we-choose-clients (Pasted below realm9's post)

Thank you for writing these words. They needed to be said. We are right now in the process of a long awaited redesign of our website. So, I was trolling the web for inspiration and came across this post. Rather serendipitous as we have recently added a tagline to our company name: "moral marketing online". It's not some facade, it's truly who we are. We've been at this for quite some time, and have come to the same conclusion about our morality. We're not rich, or snobby in any way, but we will turn down many clients for the same reasons you have expressed here. Although our blacklisted industries probably differ, the sentiment is right on.

To further elaborate on your points, it is our belief that the quality of work is directly affected by the moral character of the project or campaign, and especially our moral thoughts in relation. Simply, if we as designers do our jobs well, we should be communicating the honest emotions and intentions of the product and ourselves. Immorality can't be hidden by a shiny cover.

The time for unconscious design reflecting empty shells of monotony has passed. There are more of us designers listening to our souls every day. Further in a global society filled to the brim with so much falseness and artificiality, there is a movement to follow consciousness taking hold the world over.

-realm9

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Original article from IndustrialBrand.com:

We’re often asked about how Industrial Brand does business development and find our clients. Good question, but not one that can be easily answered in a short explanation or blog post. One issue that always gets met with raised eyebrows is the fact that we’re sort of picky about the clients we DO work with and often will decline work.

What? Decline work? During a recession? Are we crazy? I don’t think so.

We’ve often felt it was important to consider what our clients, their products, practices, and reputations say about us as their design partners. As we’ve said before, we are defined by our clients.

Things are always so black and white though. It’s easy to say no to a pornography website project, but what about online gambling? We’re confident we’d decline working for a tobacco client, regardless of the revenue potential, but what about drug company?

And can we please be honest about something? Realistically, how often really do designers engage in any real due diligence investigating their potential clients and their backgrounds the way company check our references? Not often enough I’ll venture to say.

So, understanding that we can’t always take super cool, well-paying clients whose companies, products, or service are things we love and endorse, we created a five point grid by which to judge all potential clients and projects. The rules are simple: If as we consider a prospective client or a RFP, or a potential client has contacted us asking for a quote on a project, we ask ourselves five simple questions:

• 1. Portfolio: Is there something about this project that will enhance and leverage our portfolio so we may attract more, similar and better work?
• 2. Profit: Is there potential to make money on this work?
• 3. Ethics: Is this client/product/service something we can endorse and believe in, or at the very least not compromise our ethics?
• 4. People: Are these people we will enjoy working with? Are they experienced enough or at least willing to let us do what we do best?
• 5. Gut: Are there any other factors beyond the above that we need to consider? What does our instinct tell us?

If the answer to these questions isn’t yes to at least three of them, for whatever reason, including gut feeling, we decline the work. Every time. Sometimes this has meant missing out on tens of thousands of dollars of work. But by doing this, we better understand who we are as a design firm, as a company, as individuals, and as a brand. Our integrity is intact and our reputation is unsullied. Well, mostly.

How do you choose clients? How often do you decline work?

Here is how it works. When you need a change or an update made to your website, simply fill out this form. Once acknowledged and logged you will receive a confirmation email with a "Maintenance Completion Time". Most updates will be complete in 48 hours or less. You may also pay an additional "rush" fee of $25 to update that *same day*.

To get a quote or to further discuss maintenance service for your site please send an email to maintenance[at]realm9[dot]com.

**email must be received and confirmed before 2pm that day for same day service.

Once we have learned about your company and your needs we will put together a plan and project estimate with details of the project like features, functionality, and development time. We request one half the total estimate as deposit to begin development.

After the particulars are worked out your project moves on to our client access center. Here you will be able to easily track progress, transfer files, and communicate with us directly through our web interface. Now for the fun part, we take everything you have given us and conceptualize the design and layout and deliver it to you for comments, revisions, and approval. Subsequently, we move on to implementation, giving you updates along the way, until we have your finished product ready for *preview* and launch on your server.

**Project balance is due when the finished product is accepted, shown on realm9 servers.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

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When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.

The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.