Describe your ideal client relationship. I can't figure you designers out!

I run a marketing/promotions/specialty printing company and we have been using independent designers for the past 3 years. I have tried remote designers with some luck and some really bad experiences. For the most part I use regionally located freelance designers.

Here is what I do not understand. They continually want to bill me the same way they bill their other corporate clients yet I am supplying consistent and unsolicited design work right to their desktop. I am out selling the work and dealing with clients. They do not seem to understand wholesale rates at all.

For example, if I have a client that needs a logo, vinyl banner, balloons, and give aways for a grand opening event, I develop the concepts and send them over to the designer. They consistently want to bill $45 to $75 an hour to do the work. Well, I understand if the client had contacted them direct but shouldn't I get a better rate? I am confused about how you designers like to work. How can I set up a win/win relationship with my designers so that they are happy with the rates they are making but I still have margin in my projects? After all, I have all the risk of dealing with the end user (collection, satisfaction, printing, etc.).

Any advise?

 

I'm fairly new in the digital design industry (2+ Years). In such time I've done all my own Sourcing / data mining / Designing / Public relations / Advertising / Marketing campaign structuring / & More!

Because of this I charge in one of the following forms:

1.) $35.00 per hour with a 1 hour minimum (Standard).
2.) Set $ amount rate for piece work (With quote only).
3.) Set $20.00 per revision.
4.) If the Client provides a majority of footwork & data for the project, the Rate reflects $20.00 per hour with a one hour minimum.

Insight:

By the sounds of your issue, the majority of the freelancers you are working with are part of a larger organization with overhead (E.G. Payroll, Electric, Rent, etc..). This is a common cause for inflated price structures & corporate policies that do NOT allow any alteration in the price guidelines.

Freelancers in general develop a standard guideline over time but are not restricted to it. They can adjust the price structure in accommodation to the project, allowing for Bulk discounts, repeat / referral discounts, etc.. as needed.

I can see approaching a freelancer with bulk deal & requesting discounted rates for the work you've done yourself, on the other hand I also see the freelancers point of view; Constantly receiving promises of more work & it never comes. The happy medium here would be to do the first project at the freelancers standard rate with the understanding that if you do come back, the freelancer will honor some sort of repeat business discount or something similar.

This allows the freelancer assurance from the first project that you are a good paying client & also allows you (The client) the assurance that the future work from said freelancer will be of the quality you're looking for.

To insure that the first project goes smooth, start small with a minimal investment project just to test the waters, that way if something goes wrong, you're not out much money & can pass the word along about the freelancer not living up to standards.

As far as additional security for both you & the freelancer, a standard 50% down & 50% on deliver is acceptable.

Finding a good freelancer with flexible rates can be tough. Today's market is saturated with under skilled / over priced get rich quick freelance thinkers. Of course freelancing is NOT a get rich quick market, but trying to tell the new designers that is like trying to move a 2 ton truck with nothing but yourself & a crow bar for leverage.

The most common these days is:

1.) "CHEAP RATES" = very bad quality / infringements / & non-standard master file formats
2.) "VERY EXPENSIVE" = Large firm or corporation that needs to maintain a standard pay rate to compensate for payroll, rent, electric, etc..

Once you find a good freelancer, STICK WITH THEM!

My ideal client:

1.) Provides feedback & or additional documentation in a timely manor
2.) Good communication skills
3.) Understands that a designers work isn't easy
4.) Makes payments on time
5.) Good detail in a project brief (This eliminates any confusion later)
6.) Open minded to new / creative / innovative ideas
7.) Refers others
8.) Repeat business projects

Not sure if any of this helped you, but I figured I would share a bit of my experiences over the last few years. I could offer more, but this post may turn into a book, so I'll wait to see if you have other questions.

P.S.: ALWAYS have a Contract to protect you & the freelancer!!!!!

 

I do a little design work but I mostly try to work with existing graphics, but I charge $50 an hour and I charge for straight work I don’t charge for setting up gathering stuff ect. So a lot of the time I’m not making $50 an hour buy the time I consult with a client set up the work ect I end up making $30-$40 on small jobs if things are going smooth.

If a client has big jobs I do give discounts because I can set up an on going work flow which means I don’t lose set up time.

I pay $900 a month rent so I can’t run around doing jobs for any cheaper.

I think a lot of people don’t realize the other time spent setting up projects, a simple job that gets billed for 1 hour $50 by the time it’s done can take 2 hours to back things up talk to the client collect files ect so sometimes I make $25 an hour on a small job.

The problem I have with design work is people have a big image of what they want and they want it for cheap. The come to me and have graphics from large companies and they say I want this but just a little different for about $100, and they have a set of complex graphics that probably took a team of designers hundreds of hour to produce.

It’s hard to find people you can understand what they want and to be able to create it for them. And then a lot of times you understand what they want and it is unrealistic.

But there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in Graphic design that clients don’t realize and that designers don’t get paid for.

You can find people for cheap that will promise you everything but.. well you get what you pay for. lol

 

For an ideal client decision does not always come down to the price if you want to find someone with rights skills for the job.

Ideal client should also be clear on communicating the requirements and work with the designer throughtout the project to ensure what they are designing meets your expectations - so there are no surprises at the end of the job

Designer should be proactive enough to communicate but the client should also be in interacting with the designer.

And as the previous poster mentioned.. if you find a good freelancer, stick with them!
There are lots of them around but the good ones are not that easy to come by

Mike

 

I can understand this comment to a point, because I have seen it happen here on DP. However, I want to point out that there are a lot of us designers that gives top notch quality, obeys copyright laws and do go by the standard formats for a cheap rate.

I now have little over 4+ years under my belt and I have grown a lot when it comes to web design. However, I have a very small cliental list. So, I keep my prices down to $20/hour that way I can grow my list. Also, since I am a full time college student, I have not expanded my business out as much as I want. However, I do have 4 clients right now with another potential client coming my way soon. I can handle 8-10 clients in total before I go into over haul between school and my business.

Totally agree with you here..... I have a client of my that would always put me on the back burner for payment. After a while, it was getting very annoying. So, I put a simple contract that he and I had to sign. For the exception of one time, he has paid on time every time.

 

What are your thoughts about a tiered payment system. For example a base rate that decreases as we reach certain thresholds in a given month. $50/hour for up to 9 hours, $40/hour for up to 10-19 hours, etc.

Or, I have also though about trying to buy in blocks of time in advance. I just have not found a designer that I trust enough for this type of arrangement where I pay in advance a bulk rate for say 20 hours of work and they bill against this time until it is used up.

Another question, should I expect to pay for time to fix errors and typos caused by the designers?

 

I do logos for 50-100$. I dont work on hours, l dont have a hour system because l dont think it's right. A designer can be lazy and say yes l worked 10 hours pay me a lot. It makes non-sense to me.

I must have a good communication with my client. I mean when l send him/her a concept, he musnt get back to me after 10-12hours. He must pay in time and have respect to me.

Clients who refer you, are awesome by the way

 

Thanks Soner. Does anyone have a good project brief sheet that they use when they are gathering information for the project? Would you be willing to share this template? I think I should develop something like this and then require the designer to think through the project in a bit more detail before quoting. I am not always sure if I am underestimating the amount of time that something should take or, like Soner says, the designer is getting lazy and taking too much time.

 

I wouldn't work on the scaled basis you've exemplified above simply because I could find work elsewhere that would pay full price. It's nothing personal, but business it business. However, I do give return clients small discounts and incentives (e.g., I'll throw in a simple business card or banner, or lower my estimate by 50$)

The designer is responsible for fixing mistakes he's made up to a certain point. Don't expect a designer to print off another 5000 business cards once you've approved him, though.

I always, always send my work to the client before I start coding or printing to make sure that they are 100% satisfied and that any additional work past this point would be billed to him since he's signed off on it.

It may sound harsh, but when you've designed for a few years, you're bound to hit some sleeze-ball clients.

 

I always work with my clients on discounts if project are big, but I just can’t do discounts on lots of little one because I lose to much time in set up for each one.

But it is a good incentive to a freelancer to have a good block of set up work so you might be able to get someone to work with that type of deal. Communication goes along way, when you try new deals always get feed back and make sure things are going well and everyone is happy.

A lot of it comes down to if people can make a living off of the deal.. If you talk someone down too much and then they are making the same as the guy flipping burgers they won’t be happy and you will have to find a new designer.

If you pay people well they should fix there mistakes free..

I do any way, people aren’t paying for mistakes, they can outsource for cheap and get a bunch of mistakes, but when you pay the going rate you are paying for quality.

I try to be real careful and get approvals and make sure to be clear on just how much is expected.

A lot of people will try to have you do edits and fixes forever for free.

 

Revision responsibilities:

As a Designer, one MUST take responsibility for Typo's, However, Requesting feature alterations, such as shorten the nose, bigger ears, change color of clothing, give him boots rather than sneakers, etc.. classify as revisions & are rightfully charged for. There may be a fine line there depending on the project brief, if say, the brief entailed a "man gazing out of a window looking at the empire state building", & the designer delivers a "Man gazing off a balcony at the sears tower". At this point, the designer clearly didn't follow the brief & is responsible for corrections.

However, if the brief was minimal & just state they wanted a "Man gazing at a building", the designer is Not at fault & the client becomes responsible for revision costs.

Brief & other Form examples:

I use simple Free quote forms myself, I'm more than happy to let you look at them (as you requested to see some). If more info is needed (Due to the basic nature of my forms) I normally request it prior to quoting. At any rate you can view my basic forms here to get an idea: Free Quote Forms

As far as basic contracts / Notices I use to help protect me & the client, Here are a few:
DMCA Notice (I send this to a Host & ISP when i find an infringement of mine or a clients copyrights to have it removed from the servers)
Standard Design Agreement (Work for Hire)
Non-Disclosure Agreement (If requested)
Confidentiality Agreement (If requested)

The above are just a couple I use & make available on my site for clients to download as PDF's or Print out. I'm sure it gives you an Idea though.

Tiered Payment System:

As far as the tiered payment system, I just don't see that working, by the time the designer puts in 50 hours on a large project they are down to making $5.00 to $8.00 an hour... This system just wouldn't work on large projects. The discounted rate system is still the most feasible in my eyes here.

Buying Blocks:

Buying in blocks would be like a Retainer, lots of designers do accept retainers & once the amount has been used, the remaining gets billed to the client. This is also relative to the 50% down / 50% on completion payment arrangement (A standard in this industry).

In conclusion:

Again, If you're not sure if you can trust a designer, start with a small project, test the waters, see how things work out. If you are satisfied, then move onto larger projects with the designer.

I'm getting long winded again, I'll stop here & wait to see if there's more questions

 

Yes, the designer is to correct obvious typos that he catches but he's not paid to proof-read or re-write what you send; he'll most likely copy and paste the material that was provided to him and style it appropriately. Granted, he should run a basic spellchecker whenever possible but there's some materials we can't scan like names, e-mail addresses or phone numbers.

It all depends on where the fault lies. If you send me your phone number as 555-1235 when you meant 555-1234, then the onus is on you. It's all situational; there's no set-in-stone rule when it comes to this and it will vary from one designer's policy to the next. Talk to your designer before signing the contract.

 

I agree with you 100% when it comes to the Ideal client

 

The sad thing is that ideal clients are getting rare these days (As far as meeting everything I listed)

I'm running into more & more that:

1.) Take a week or more to get you the documentation they promised to provide & then blame you when the project goes over the deadline for completion.
2.) Thinks that designing is easy, yet they can't do it
3.) Takes forever to pay or has a bunch of excuses as to why i have to wait for the final 50% payment (Then have the nerve to complain because I wont release the work till i get paid)
4.) inaccurate project briefs that they, them self sent & then question why you did what they wanted you too.
5.) Set in a particular concept (Because a buddy told them it would be cool) & not open to discussing important aspects about the overall design such as Target Audience & make adjustments for a higher retention / conversion.

The above are just a few things off the top of my head.

 

Good Points Scorpion,

I will say from the client side that designers are not always the best communicators (in my experience). They often times indicate that they understand what the client is looking for but the product does not reflect that understanding. I believe the burden is on the designer to ask the right questions. The clients (especially end users in my industry) are clueless about design elements and retention/conversion.

A good design questionnaire/brief is critical and it needs to be free of "industry jargon". Ask simple questions the client can understand and relate to. Most of all, if you ever feel like you are not sure you understand the project, STOP, and ask more questions. Show the client what you have done so far. So many times I find that designers are reluctant to share progress work or early drafts. I am not sure of the reasons behind this but it is frustrating. I would rather look at something and tell you it stinks than have you keep going down the wrong road.

 

These are the main reason I try to stay away for doing complex graphics from scratch it is just so hard to understand peoples ideas and then make them..

It’s good when you find people to work with and after a few jobs you understand what each other wants and you know how things will turn out. I’t takes so much less energy working with people you know and understand. But that is hard to find.

Things like business cards or flyer are easy but with websites people get these huge ideas, they want transparent layers that weave in and out of flash with an auto updating calendar that displays art work according to the weather.
I just know there is no way to create what is in their head.. So I tell them go get a template and 2 weeks latter they come back and say “I looked at thousands of templates and can’t find one”.
Some clients are just impossible and will never be satisfied.

I agree with this, I always do a lot of mock-ups I start with the basic layout get approval add some more to the next stage get approval. A lot of times clients act like I am bugging them for unnecessary stuff but if you don’t like something at a early stage it is easy to correct and shuffle around but 10 hours of work later it is a huge deal to change it.

 

I also have to agree on what resto pointed out. Designers should be doing the work in Phases to begin with. This eliminates the headache of unnecessary revisions & keeps the client involved. I've found over the years that the more the client's involved, the smother the process goes & makes for an easier project closing.

Phases & Wire-Frames:

I've posted a few things I use that are more than likely now being used by others that didn't have it structured that way yet. I don't want to just hand over everything, however to give an idea of what i do in phase 1 of say, a web site design, I send a .Pdf compiled with layout wire-frames to the client (This gets them involved out of the gate on the project & eliminates a majority of layout revisions.

The wire-frame layout samples are in 4 categories; Basic Business, E-commerce, Personal, & Complex Corporate. Each category sample has 10 wire-frames to choose from. The client can simply select the layout they like & tell me the # on it, or they can specify a couple different ones for a more customized blend. Just so you can envision what I mean, here's the Basic Business category: Basic Business Wire Frames

I'm mainly a 2D Vector designer, but I do get involved in the occasional (GUI) Graphical user Interface. In doing so, the Wire-frames prove to be a great foundation to build on.

In short, the Phases break down like so: Phase 1 (Wire-Frame selection), Phase 2 (Navigation), Phase 3 (Theme/Graphics), Phase 4 (Content/supporting documents), Phase 5 (On-site Optimizing), Phase 6 (Final Proofing/Corrections).

The above Phases vary depending upon the complexity of a project of course. I'm only laying out a basic scenario as to what designers should be doing to minimize revisions, headaches, & upset clients.

Project Details:

I can totally understand the clients side of frustration with a designer that doesn't seem to organize the project, nor data mine for more information when unsure of what to do next.

In this day & age I think it's safe to say that for every 1 good designer with the skill sets / experience / work flow / organization, there are 500 that are inexperienced / unorganized / insecure in there skill sets.

As far as the Brief questions go, i feel that too many non related questions to the project at hand could be a turn off to the client & cause the form to turn into a annoying questionnaire. Over the years I've actually had a higher success rate with a minimal, yet to the point brief & then once I analyze the projects foundation, I can ask further questions targeting specific areas that need individual specs.

I agree that all the Jargon, while understood by designers / developers, tends to be a communication roadblock as if speaking another language with clients. In light of this, I've noted to make some alterations to my own basic questionnaire forms.

 

I've found if you make it across the board with a flat fee it is much easier. I charge $100 per logo. That's it. Unlimited revisions. As for the "you get what you pay for" mentality, this can be true and you need to research whatever firm you choose to go with. I feel if you look at my portfolio you'll see my work is quality.

As for having a good client relationship I think the most important thing is communication. I enjoy having artistic freedom while designing but I also need to know what YOU want.

Now, I do have a quite a few return customers that I offer to give a discount to. All of this is dependent on past experiences with the client. Did they keep an open line of communication, did they submit payment promptly, were they polite?

 

I can see that working if you are just starting out. However, Unlimited means that for $100.00 you are now obligated to work on that one project until the client decides they have what they want. 6 times out of 10 a client thinks they know what they want, but truly don't. That means the client may keep changing their mind (Knowing they have no limits & will never be charged more) & have you tied up reworking a logo for 1-2 months (Or even more). Honestly, even 1 week (7 Days) for $100.00 is way to low.

Tying up that much time for $100.00 just doesn't sound like it's helping accomplish why we all go into business (E.G. To make enough money to pay all our bills & live comfortably).

Of course, if you're not living in the U.S / Canada / UK then that amount of money might actually have a positive impact in your economy. So, I suppose (If that's the case) then you're doing ok.


If you're just starting out, it's a great way to get a portfolio built. Eventually though, you will change the service to at least a flat fee with a limited amount of revisions & then either a set rate or hourly rate for additional work past the pre-set package.

We all go through that phase while growing in this industry. It's rather common, however it also limits a designers income potential by tying up time that could be used on other paying projects.

Just my 2 cents, I wish you the best!