[Smudge]

I once hired a designer to put together the cover art for a CD, based on the fact that he was nearby, affordable, and had a limited but decent portfolio online. (The project had a small budget, so we weren't shooting for the stars or anything.)

Little did I know, his expertise was in building ambigrams, and we spent an entire round of drafting + feedback moving away from an ambigram concept. Everything worked out in the end, but the initial miscommunication was probably our own fault. We hadn't done our research, and we probably weren't the best of clients to begin with, as we had no idea what we really wanted and thought we were safe leaving the direction up to him (with hardly any input on our part).

So, ultimately, we trusted him more than we probably should have, given how little we actually examined his style and areas of expertise.