Design Pricing

Here’s a pretty good concept from David Airey , the Design Pricing Formula .

He also lists a few interesting links to articles about Design Pricing:

12 Realities of Pricing Design Services , by Steven Snell
Nine Factors to Consider When Determining Your Price , by Collis Ta’eed
Is Charging More the Right Thing to Do ? on Men With Pens
The Subtle Effects of Pricing on the Mentality of Clients , on FreelanceSwitch

(via SwissMiss)

Edit: After reading through all this, I feel it like it’s the same old song sung by different birds. This is the same problems as for kids coming right out of college of any design schools. First thing. why is it that almost no schools never teach how to value ourselves? (Please leave a comment if you come from a school that actually teaches you how to do the business of design). Yes, we are not trained to lead the management side of a design studio, however, how many of us end up to be freelancers, and are just left running around having no fucking clue as to how things are done.

More often than not, I have a feeling most designers are undercharging. Perhaps most of them are not very good, but is that really the point? Has design gotten to a point where it can be compared to a painter for your house? Have we become ‘interior decorators’? Let’s move your ugly couch over here, painting there, logotype here, acid green there.

Any case, what strikes a chord with me, is that if you call a plumber to check on your pipes because there is a leak, the moment he/she steps out the office, that’s €50-€75. He takes a look at your pipes, thinks for a second or two, the meter is rolling! €50/€75 isn’t unheard of.

“Well,” he says, in that plumber way, “we’re going to have to change this and that, won’t take very long”. It never takes very long, but somehow, we’re always shocked at the billing stage. Then, here you are, at the end of it all, €300 please. And all this, meanwhile, if you are a designer, perhaps you only got through your first design brief meeting! I mean, what is the difference between a designer and a plumber? The plumber has that special box of tools, which I have a feeling doesn’t have to upgrade every 10months to a new CS version!

Let’s see what else we can find. Let’s look at training, it seems like the €20,000 – €30,000 tuition fee, plus the €30,000+ for living during the time counts for the shitty €1000 monthly salaries?!

I guess I left Italy partly for this reason. Now please don’t get me wrong, I think it is not the plumbers who are cheating here, but in fact the designers. Yes, we are the ones who are cheating ourselves our own values, as well as others in the industry. One reason I had to leave Italy, was that I couldn’t continue working for people that didn’t see the value of design.

Let’s suppose that one would need €1500 per month to live normally, for food, rent, entertainment. Then €1000 for expenses to run the equipment/studio/maintenance and so forth. Then €500 for insurance, transportation, other misc. expenses. We’re looking at €3000 just to stay afloat month after month! This is not including taxes, pension, holidays, savings, investments, mortgage, other debts. Meanwhile, what are people accepting for monthly wages? What I find is common, is at €1000, however that could seem quite good, comparing to most which are paid €300-€750, or even lower. And let’s look at the hours, it is not uncommon to find designers clocking 55+ per week. What happened to the 35-40hr work weeks? Non existent. We’re looking at people’s hourly wages of around €1-€5. That’s just great, I’m sure looking forward to paying back the education I just spent!

Might want to start looking at doing that plumbing job.