Week 2

This week I get into numbers as I look at fee structure and hourly rates for the workshop challenge. I also attempt to present these numbers in a clear and inviting way through a client proposal presentation. Further, I begin to question who I am as a designer through swirly custom typography experiments, and slow attempts at building the beginning of a personal branding identity.

Lecture notes


Lecture reflections

I really enjoyed hearing about the different ways of running a design business during this week’s lecture. Moross in particular, provided an informative introduction to how a studio works and I liked her human take on business goals. Having a set of goals / ground rules like these seems like a good way of staying humble and kind in your work and I would love to make my own list for my hypothetical studio. 

What revenue models do I want?
Rehman’s discussions on revenue models, and the combination of several, was very insightful (Neef Rehman et al., 2021). The reasoning for having multiple kinds was, amongst other things, to make the company more resilient (Neef Rehman et al., 2021). I imagine this being a good idea for a freelance studio as well, as several revenue models might help fight the insecure nature of working for yourself. Perhaps in addition to visual identities, my company could sell typefaces, prints, software or other types of products? Or maybe I could give talks, host events or create organisations for local designers? This would also be a great way of building a personal network.

The importance of finding your niche
Both Rehman and Inglis mentioned the importance of having a niche when working as a freelancer/start-up (Neef Rehman et al., 2021), but since I’m still new to design, I don’t really think I have a niche yet. Does that mean I couldn’t start a studio? Or could the path lead to a niche as I develop my practice? At the moment, my hypothetical business does not have a clear USP, and so I wonder if it would be good to develop one in order to create an impactful business plan. 


Resource notes


Resource notes

AIGA Professional Practices in Graphic Design was great, as it helped me understand how to calculate fees, but also how to work with clients in a professional manner. Yet, even though I am left with a to the point guide, the book made me wonder about two things: 1; is there an easy way of systemising client interactions, in a way that secures both satisfaction and efficiency? and 2; is there any available pricing calculators or other software/systems out there that lets you calculate the price of a project in an efficient and reliable manner? 

Extended Customer Information File
To me, the idea of a Customer Information File, mentioned by Baker (David C. Baker, 2008), seems like a great starting point for my first question. However, I’m wondering if this type of file holds more potential than simply hosting notes on how the client prefers to be contacted and so on. Perhaps, a studio could develop it’s own customer journey, containing activities and checkpoints for each project phase, built to ensure customer satisfaction? This could entail anything from checking in on a weekly basis, to asking how the client is finding the relationship. By having such a structure in place, I imagine one being able to provide a personal customer experience for each client, whilst also making sure the project is on track. 

In terms of question two, I’m not sure wether or not an excel sheet would be the best option. If formatted right, this could easily let you change rates and other factors, particularly when you are only one person.


Further research

A freelancers guide to value based pricing

In this medium article, Femke van Schoonhoven discusses an alternative way to prising, than explored in the provided material this week. Schoonhoven suggests to base pricing on the product value, rather than hours spent, as this rewards efficiency, leads to conversations about value, rather than time and builds better client relationships (Femke van Schoonhoven, 2016).

I personally think Schoonhoven makes a lot of sense, particularly for my hypothetical business which focuses on visual identities. This type of work demands a lot of “thinking”, which isn’t necessarily done when working on the project specifically, but it also provides a business with a lot of value, particularly if the identity is used for several years. Yet, what makes most sense about value pricing in my opinion, is that you’re not punished for spending too little or too much time on something, which I think could stress me out and lead to less good work.

I would still track my hours and find my hourly rate, in order to ensure that projects earns money. However, I’d rather keep this inside the studio and use it to determine future fees, than to track billable hours and charge clients for the time spent.

HAWRAF: guide to working with clients & business documents

In an article about the shut down design studio HAWRAF on AIGA Eye of Design, I found links to the studio’s business documents (released as they ended the studio). This was very useful and I particularly liked their pricing list, where they’ve set price estimates for the different services they offered. If I was to use valuable pricing, this type of list would be great to have. I also imagine this being useful when meeting clients, as you can provide them with an estimated budget range straight away. Their 2018 metrics were also useful as I can use these as reference when calculating my fee for this week’s challenge.

Further, the studio’s article, A guide to working with clients, on The Creative Independent, was packed with great advice on pricing and communicating with clients. As someone who have never dealt with clients before, their detailed conversation advice feels like a great tool to use if I ever decide to go freelance (or if I start in a studio for that matter).


Workshop challenge

For this week’s workshop challenge, I decided to continue with my hypothetical one-woman studio from last week, as this is the business I’ll write my final business plan on. Inspired by HAWRAF’s and Schoonhoven, I wanted to create a price list for my services, which takes value into account. I started by finding my hourly rate, which I later used to develop the price list.

Finding my hourly rate

As suggested by Bruck in AIGA professional practices in graphic design, as well as by HAWRAF in A guide to working with clients, I started the process of finding my hourly rate by calculating my personal and business expenses (Eva Doman Bruck, 2008) (HAWRAF, 2018). In their article, HAWRAF suggests to develop a bare minimum amount, a target amount and a goal (HAWRAF, 2018). In order to find these numbers, I used this Google spreadsheet.

Since I’ve calculated three income ranges, I can change my fee as I develop my business, by moving towards my goal salary. Since the spreadsheet changes in real time, the hourly rate can easily be adjusted by changing the cell used to calculate the rate.

All calculations can be seen in my Hourly Rate and Overhead spread sheet.

My billable hours number is based on Bruck’s suggestion that this should be about 50-80% of your time. As I gain experience, I would make sure to track my time in order to find a more accurate billable hour number. Since I’m planning on charging based on value, this would also be a beneficial way of making sure that my “high value” fees cover my “low value” fees. According to my calculations, I need to charge 42 GBP an hour, in order to meet my starting out salary target.

Developing a price list

After figuring out my hourly rate, I went on to develop a price list for my services, as suggested by HAWRAF (HAWRAF, 2018). Since I haven’t ever worked on real life visual identity projects, I decided to use HAWRAF’s pricing list timeline, and Hoodzpah’s quote example (explored last week) as guides for project management and process timeframes. Similar to my billable hours number, the estimated timeframes in my price list could be altered once I gain more experience from tracking hours spent on identity projects.

Fig. 1: Hoodzpah 2019. Graphic Design Tutorial with Hoodzpah Design (1/3) | Adobe Creative Cloud.

My calculations of hours per week are based on having two ongoing projects at all times (it can of course be more or less depending on demand). These two hours are then divided between my weekly billable hours (29), which leaves 14,5 hours per week for one project. Thus, one week of 14,5 hours, multiplied with my hourly rate, leaves 609 GBP per week. Revision weeks are only counted as half, since these weeks includes breaks as I would be waiting for the client’s revisions.

The visual identity starting package
In the Adobe Live video with Hoodzpah, the studio presents individual branding packages with various content, ranging from logos to social media templates (Hoodzpah, 2019). Since my studio focuses on visual identity, which often contains a group of elements, I thought this package-system could be a good model for pricing my services.

As established last week, one of my strengths as a designer is to develop thought through concepts. In order to do so, I will have to charge for the entire design process. I’d like my work to be based on the double diamond process, and since I wouldn’t consider selling a logo without this phase, I think it makes sense to include discovery as a mandatory part of the visual identity starting package.

The starting package also includes 3 concepts for logo and design system, 2 rounds of revisions, final exported files and a brand guideline document. Depending on the client, the number of concepts and revisions could be altered.

Identity ad-ons and smaller project work
Since visual identity projects varies in content, I have created ad-on packages such as Document Templates and Small, Medium and Large Collateral. This lets me cater a quote to the specific needs of each client, but it also lets me up-sell to clients who might not know their full scope needs. For outside services, like photographers and printers, I have added one day’s work for the supervision of their services. This is added on the outside service fee.

Valuable pricing
The price list above shows what I should be charging based on my hourly rate. However, as discussed previously I’d like to consider value when quoting for my services. Thus, I’d like to cater my fees to the client, in regards to their size, what the project will do for the client, and how interested I am in the client/project (HAWRAF, 2018). In order to do so, my client base would have to vary from smaller to larger businesses. As I’m starting out, I think it could be a good idea to use my price list. Then, as I gain larger clients, I could start to make variations to my fees, which would reflect value, but also help me hit my income goal down the line.

Brief

Since I developed a persona for my business during last week’s workshop challenge, I decided to use her, Siri, as my client for the brief.

Siri owns a local cheese business and her goal is to have her product stocked in trendy high end shops and sold to modern restaurants. She has taken over the family business and is looking for a modern and innovative rebrand. They currently do very little advertising and her packaging consists of labels designed by a family friend several years ago.

Brief:
Siri got in touch to ask for a proposal on the rebrand. After explaining my process, we agreed upon me sending her a proposal, to include:

  • Visual identity development;
  • Packaging design for her cheese line (5 varieties), as well as smaller material such as business cards and tote bags;

(Please outline the time and costs required to deliver initial stage one body of work across three concepts. Also provide an indication of production costs based on your design proposals.)

Proposal: numbers

Since Siri owns a small/medium business, I will use my price list to determine the fees, rather than valuable pricing. Had she owned a large and established business, or perhaps a charity, I would have considered this when setting my rates, by charging more or less. As a new designer however, I think it seems easier to depend on my price list until I gain some experience which lets me understand what certain projects and clients entail.

Visual identity, including:

  • Discovery
  • 3 initial concepts (logo in variable orientations, design system and strategy, colours, typography and other graphic elements)
  • 2 rounds of revisions on favourite concept
  • Final files in digital and print formats
  • Brand Guidelines Handbook

4300 GBP

Packaging design (Collateral Small Package), including:

  • 5 packaging designs based on brand identity
  • Business cards
  • Tote bags
  • Other small collateral (depending on concept and strategy)
  • Assistance with sourcing the relevant packaging materials and printers, based on concept (the choice will be up to the client. Printing supervision is included)

2400 GBP

This adds up to 6700 GBP.

*Photography and printing fees comes on top, and depends on material and photographer choice.

Production costs

In AIGA professional practices in graphic design, Bruck mentions that some studios prefers printers charging their clients directly (Eva Doman Bruck, 2008). Since my studio is quite small, I think this would make sense financially, as payments from clients could be late, and waiting to be reimbursed for a high print production project could be damaging. However, I would still like to offer print supervision, in order to make life easier for the client, and to ensure that everything gets done correctly. I would also like to offer advice on printers and material. This service has been built into my collateral packages.

Although I’m not charging the client for printing and materials, I’d still like to give an estimate of costs, in order to help them see the full financial picture. As advised on the ideas wall, I reached out to a couple of local printers in order to get an estimate for tote bags and caps. Unfortunately they weren’t able to provide an answer without a real brief, but if I had more time I would have given more printers a call in order to get an estimate. I also used online pricing calculators for the label and business card estimates.

Fig. 2: Moo. ca. 2018-2021. No title [screen grab]

Proposal: presentation

According to HAWRAF, a proposal should/could include deliverables, budget, timeline, contact information, background, the team, the approach, outline of each phase and individual check-in or hand-off dates (HAWRAF, 2018). In order to deliver a professional proposal, I therefore decided to present it as a PDF, including these elements.

In addition to HAWRAF’s list, I used Hoodzpah’s quote presentation from the Adobe Live video as reference. This is where I got the idea of a visual timeframe, and the design process breakdown. My overall structure is also heavily influenced by their presentation.

Visual process
Since the visual design of this brief isn’t the main focus, I decided to create my proposal using the design from last week’s about page. However, I still tried to design it in a style that I felt at home with.

The modern sans serif feels appropriate, as I think my work is often quite simplistic and functional. The lines add to this look, and so does the mono colour palette. I also like the icons as they add a touch of friendliness and expression to the design. Yet, although I like simplicity, the proposal presentation felt a bit too strict, and perhaps not as expressive of my personality as I would have liked.

During my tutorial with Paul this week, he mentioned how we could use typography to communicate who we are in our designs. With the time I had left, I didn’t think I’d be able to create a completely new design for my proposal. Paul’s suggestion therefore inspired the idea of experimenting with custom made typography.

As a designer I am quite interested in the balance between functional and fluidity. I therefore started experimenting with adding curves to my studio name.

In the end, I had a couple of Rs that I felt represented me. I also experimented briefly with colour, but due to time restrictions I didn’t take this further into my final proposal. If I had more time I would have loved to implement a clean and bold colour profile.

In order to make my R fit the rest of the “logo”, I made several adjustments to withs and proportions. This led to my final result, which I finally implemented into my proposal.

Fig. 17: Reigstad 2021. Type experiments

Final result

My result this week is a proposal for Siri, who wants a rebrand for her cheese business. The calculations in my proposal are based on my hourly rate and price list spreadsheets, where I have created fee packages for each of my services, broken down into process stages. I have calculated the fee for each service based on my hourly rate, and so if I’d like to increase my salary, or just charge more from a larger client, I can easily change the hourly rate cell. As I gain experience and start tracking my hours, I can also change the amount of hours for each stage to make the final amount more accurate.

I chose to deliver my proposal as a PDF, which presents my studio, my way of working, an estimated timeline and a break down of costs and deliveries. In order to set the grounds for the project, I have tried to outline amount of revisions involved in the fee, and how the delivery date will change if the feedback comes back late. This way, the client might not feel disappointed if things don’t go to plan. In terms of tone of voice, I have attempted to seem friendly, helpful and clear. I want clients to feel welcome and assured that my studio is the right choice. The previous work and designer bio is supposed to help with this as well, by letting them get to know me.

In terms of visuals, I have tried to express my love for the combination of function and fluidity through my curly R. Due to time limitations, I didn’t actually get the time to fully implement this detail into other areas of the design. I got some great suggestions on how I might go around that on the ideas wall, and I think it could be great to work on this further as we move on to next week.


In conclusion

This week has been very insightful as I have never calculated fees or hourly rates before. I have learned a lot, but I am also left with uncertainties on subjects like knowing the amount of time needed for each stage of a project. 

Spreadsheets designed for income range goal
I think I have managed to establish a clear proposal this week, which takes several factors into account, like how much money I need to get a decent salary, and how much I should charge for extra revisions. I am also happy with the fact that my spreadsheets are optimised for raising my fee down the line. This way I can work towards my income range goal, by increasing the fee regularly or for larger clients.

Could have spoken to business owners
If I had more time, I would have loved to get in touch with freelance photographers and illustrators. This way, I could have built their fees into my brief, and the challenge could have become a bigger learning experience. In terms of design and proposal structure, I also would have liked to talk to business owners in order to detect issues and possibilities for the proposal document genre, as well as for collaboration between clients and designers. 

Taking the type experiments further
In terms of visuals, I really enjoyed my type experiments. However, I would have liked to work on them further, perhaps by incorporating the swirl into other areas of the design. The colour experiments could have been taken further as well, in order to create a more vibrant and expressive presentation. At the moment, the R isn’t working on a small scale, so if I decide to use these experiments in my final business plan, I’d like to develop them further, perhaps by making the R an icon, rather than part of my name (as suggested by Paul on the ideas wall). 


REFERENCES:
David C. Baker (2008) ‘How clients want to be treated’, in AIGA professional practices in graphic design. New York: Allworth Press.

Eva Doman Bruck (2008) ‘The Process of Setting Fees’, in AIGA professional practices in graphic design. New York: Allworth Press.

Femke van Schoonhoven (2016) ‘A freelancers guide to value based pricing’, Medium, 15 September. Available at: https://medium.com/the-apartment/a-freelancers-guide-to-value-based-pricing-5c7c29580cd6 (Accessed: 6 June 2021).

HAWRAF (2018) ‘A guide to working with clients’, The Creative Independent, 25 June. Available at: https://thecreativeindependent.com/guides/a-guide-to-working-with-clients/ (Accessed: 7 June 2021).

Hoodzpah (2019) Graphic Design Tutorial with Hoodzpah Design (1/3). (Adobe Live). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N0zmrZnL0M&ab_channel=AdobeCreativeCloud (Accessed: 30 May 2021).

Neef Rehman et al. (2021) ‘The Business of Design’. Canvas Falmouth Flexible [online], 4 June.

Perrin Drumm (2019) ‘Starting a Successful Design Studio Is a Lot like Making a Really Shitty Quilt’, AIGA Eye on Design, 14 March. Available at: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/starting-a-successful-design-studio-is-a-lot-like-making-a-really-shitty-quilt/ (Accessed: 6 June 2021).

LIST OF FIGURES:
Figure 1: HOODZPAH. 2019. Graphic Design Tutorial with Hoodzpah Design (1/3) | Adobe Creative Cloud. . Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N0zmrZnL0M&ab_channel=AdobeCreativeCloud [accessed 31 May 2021].

Figure 2. MOO. ca. 2018-2021. No title. [screen grab]. Moo [online]. Available at: https://www.moo.com/us/business-cards/luxe [accessed 10 June 2021].

Figure 3-12: Ingrid REIGSTAD. 2021. Proposal draft. Private collection: Ingrid Reigstad.

Figure 13-15: Ingrid REIGSTAD. 2021. Type experiments. Private collection: Ingrid Reigstad.

Figure 16: Ingrid REIGSTAD. 2021. Type experiments. Private collection: Ingrid Reigstad.

Figure 17: Ingrid REIGSTAD. 2021. Type experiments. Private collection: Ingrid Reigstad.

Figure 18-27: Ingrid REIGSTAD. 2021. Proposal. Private collection: Ingrid Reigstad.