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It's not fees per se that I am thinking about, but rather the right (high) level of fee.

The reason why I think that the right level is a high level is pretty straightforward.

The amount of respect you get from a client is roughly proportional to the total value of the project at stake. For example, architects work on projects that can cost, in total, hundreds of millions of dollars. Furthermore, these projects are on spaces that can affect human lives in very physical and immediate ways.

The dynamic works at consumer level as well. Owners of Mercedes treat their cars with more respect than the owners of rustbuckets treat theirs, because a Mercedes is worth a lot more money.

"Aha!" you say, "Mercedes are worth a lot more because they are fundamentally better." I completely agree, but this point doesn't change my thinking because I am writing about fee levels for designers who are among the better designers.

So the higher the fee, and hopefully the higher the value of the overall business project, more the likely the client is going to be willing to receive and debate your recommended solutions in a considered manner.

Where we get to with this line of thinking is: in the client's mind, high fees roughly equate to the quality and value of the service.

So, when you are next quoting, have the courage to ask for what you are really worth!

In order to have that courage, it may help to do some research into the client's business problem. The question that would improve your leverage over the client goes something like, "how much sales or investment is at stake because of what I am contributing to the overall business effort?"

Obvious places to start developing an answer are; asking your client (although don't be surprised if they don't have a clear handle on the answer!); reading about the client in the press; and reading about similar problems in business magazines and journals.

Gather your knowledge, make well-judged comparisons to your client's situation, and estimate how much sales or investment is at stake.

When proposing your fees, draw your client's attention to the relative size of your fees when compared to the size of what is at stake. You will no doubt need additional arguments as well, but don't forget to use this one.

Draw your courage from a foundation of hard-earned facts and deep thought.

Of course, if you are really keen, you can take general courses in business skills at university or college, in order to develop your expertise in assessing the total business value that your projects are a critical part of. You need to be keen, because those courses are quite generic and won't reflect any consideration of a designer's background or working milieu.

Cheers,

"We are designers from India and were very delighted to come across this site. All the articles and feedbacks are very invigorating. Working in a smaller metropolitan city, we often find it difficult to get paid the design deserves. We have adopted a strategy of not weorking for a client who does not respect the hard work and the solution providing thoughts which are the back bone of our designs (and many client cannot define the problems themselves). We were approached by a client for a packaging design recently. He demanded five designs for a meagre sum, becasue that is what his existing designer was providing. A conversation revealed that the client's concept of a design was a picture here and a drawing there which would make his consumer buy the product. He had no clue about who buys and why do they buy. We declined the assignment on the basis of lack of connection with the client, offcourse the fee was low too. However this conversation motivated his sister comnay to hire us for a fee we demanded....and guess what...when the product worked...and the market feedback gave the design 100% credit, he returned to us agreeing to pay the demanded fee!

We feel that sometimes we have to put our feet down to succeed.

As for respect...unless we respect our own abilities, we cannot enroll the client into respecting us."

"Recently, I was briefed on a campaign poster and a DL flyer going around Victoria at every HBA branch for a charity appeal.

I had sleepless night working on a tight deadline (1 week), due to the lack of logistics on my client he relied a lot on fax, driving backwards and forwards to change the content on both the Poster and the DL flyer. I charged them a nominal fee and I took these things into account:

The tight deadline (I had to turn clients down due to lack of time)

The fact that It was in association with HBA (Big Company)

The many changes done to the content of flyer and poster (8 and up)

The Monkey hours spent on it (Typing and fixing it)

My logistics (I brought my laptop and printer to his office)

After taking all that into consideration I gave him the invoice and he took 2 steps back and said "We will talk about this later". Now, he is a great client otherwise, however, I feel I have justly earned my dollar on this project, and I feel almost insulted he doubted me with his reaction (He thought the price too high).

Next time, I will be more specific as to where I start changing extra for any changes, that will be a reason to make up his mind and give me exactly what he wants, if he doesn't, the costs will go up.

Lesson learned, be more specific on my quoting, even when dealing with existing clients.

Why do people want high quality design and they are no prepared to pay for it? Do you buy Calvin Klein at the reject shop?"

"Yes Marc, your absolutely right - I was using "we" as referring to my company and didn't mean to use it as an all-encompassing term.

The point I was trying to make is that the price you charge should reflect you or your company's level of experience and expertise, your client base, and which markets you wish to appeal to. A high price shouldn't be charged for the sake of it - you need to be able to justify your prices and explain with confidence to your clients exactly why you're worth that amount.

Pricing is an important factor that positions your company (or yourself) in the minds of your clients. If you don't have the experience you can't expect to charge top dollar for your work. However those people or companies with the necessary experience shouldn't be scared to charge what they are worth.

And like Marc said - it's about finding a balance, you may need to shift your prices around to find the right level."

""Pricing is about being confident in yourself to say no, this is what we charge because we are worth it!"

We should be a little careful, here. "We" is a very inclusive word on this website, and would perhaps lead anyone reading this to feel that they are included. The reality is that many designers aren't worth it. Many won't even break into the industry let alone make a living from it, purely due to lack of talent and/or business sense and regardless of degrees and diplomas.

If budding young designers were to charge high fees before they have established a good reputation, then they will find little repeat business from any one client, when that client realises that they can get a far higher quality of work from another designer for a little extra cost.

By all mean charge the fee you want, but be prepared to lower the fees if you find little demand for your work. Establishing your career in this industry is not about being arrogant or precious. We aren't a compulsory resource like GPs or primary industry producers, and we certainly aren't thin on the ground.

Like every other career, you should expect to spend years earning the respect of clients and employers. And part of that comes from offering competitive fees.

Your fees should go up and down for a while, until they find their own level, and this level will be influenced by competence, geographic location, local competition, specialisations, and client-bases (corporate or private, etc)."

"Design is very subjective and like property is only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it!

Design is just one element in the complete package, work out of your back bedroom and yes you will struggle to justify to charge the higher fees. Work out of swanky offices, employ account managers who have a good knowledge of the industry and experience in getting projects completed on time, to budget etc and of course this is a service that will warrant higher fees. It's all relative..."

"Pricing is all about positioning. If you have the level of expertise necessary, the right processes and can attract the customers that will pay a premium price - charge that price. If you charge a lower price, you attract lower paying customers who are more price sensitive.

Not all clients understand the process of design, nor understand the length of time it takes to develop and implement your ideas, some don't see the value in good design (run from these clients!!!) or basically just don't have the budget to afford a high price level. Its up to us to educate clients what they can afford within their budget limitations, and explain to them what good design costs, and what it can add to their business.

Pricing is one of the most difficult business decisions you can make, and it is about being confident in yourself to say no, this is what we charge because we are worth it!"

"It's not just a matter of deciding 'I am going to charge a higher fee now'. A fee should be reflective of the education level, experience and ability of the designer. There is no point telling graduates they should be out there billing at a higher rate because it is unrealistic and only undermines the value of more highly skilled/experienced designers (and ultimately confuses our clients and devalues design as a profession).

The overheads and costs involved in running a studio should also be reflected in the designers fee and again, it would be irresponsible to suggest that all designers should be charging high fees for the hell of it.

By all means charge the fee if it is warranted, but don't expect to get it if it's not."

"It's amazing the amount of people out there who are trying to pass themselves off as designers, especially in web. I think they're more like html operators with very little design skill. Are people actually paying these people to design their stuff? If so, have they no idea that we're out there????"

"The concern is not so much that a client could do the same job as a skilled designer. The worry is that clients - especially small business firms - will assume the lower standard of design that is saturating the commercial sector via glorified desktop publishers (and these would be the ones who are actually worried that they can be replaced by a client with Quark!) is in fact the norm.

It is difficult to convince a client who has been stung by a lousy design firm, that it is worth their while to pay more to another design firm who may or may not be any better."

"Don't worry about them buying a copy of Quark. Worry about them buying a copy of InDesign."

"It's not the designers charging more that we have to worry about. It's the people calling themselves designers, offering lower prices, that is making it harder for the professionals to charge what they are worth."

"I've experienced a client who thought it would be more economical for them to typeset a newsletter we'd been doing regularly. They figured they'd send it to us for the finished art as they thought it was a waste of money for us to do the typesetting because they had a copy of Quark too. By the time we had repaired the typesetting and graphics to a legible and printable version the invoice was far higher than if we had typeset it from scratch. Not to mention that the extra to-ing and fro-ing meant the delivery deadline to the mailing house kept being pushed back. Strangely, we got the whole job back for the next issue...

Let your clients see what it really takes to do the job. If they come back to you, that's great, hopefully they'll have an appreciation for the designer's job. If they don't come back, did you really need the hassle they caused?"

"T. Lan : "... our 'clients' will buy themselves a copy of Quark and start 'designing' for themselves."

In the unlikely event of this they will learn how much work and skill is required in design, and perhaps realise that it is worth the $$$ for a professional result!

Whether it be in lack of business or in Hell it's self, those who disrespect this insustry shall pay!"

"If we all start charging higher fees our 'clients' will buy themselves a copy of Quark and start 'designing' for themselves."

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andrew@lam-po-tangcom