I hear occasionally from graphic designers who feel guilty about charging too much for their work. This profession often begins at around NZ$30 an hour and can creep up into the two hundreds, so no wonder. Some hang on to those old ideas about charging two-figure hourly rates.
   But, I tell them, what about all the times you undercharged? The times when you forgot to add on the time taken to bill, or to recover an amount for a late-paying client? Answering repeat emails, or doing alterations that you considered too minor to raise an invoice for? But, as I read on Signal vs. Noise, experience?
   Sometimes, the inspiration hits us immediately, and we can distil a client’s essence into a graphic instantly. Matt Linderman writes of how Paula Scher—who, in my book, is yet to do a bad design—came up with Citibank’s logo in seconds.
   Scher said, in a video, ‘How can it be that you talk to someone and it’s done in a second? But it is done in a second. It’s done in a second and in 34 years, and every experience and every movie and every thing of my life that’s in my head.’
   That does count for something. I am not advocating ripping off clients, but you have to have those jobs that balance the ones where you have spent days thinking about it—and thinking time is not billable.
   It’s about valuing your time. That’s why I support Cat Morley’s No-spec.com campaign, and why I dislike those folks selling ready-made logos—which can never, except through freak coincidence, express a client’s existing vision and strategy. Designers have a strong part to play in business success, and need to be valued accordingly. Posted by Jack Yan, 08:36  permalink

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