I do not think it is fair for a client to take advantage of a designer’s trust. We may have done several successful jobs together, but it does not mean you can start to go astray and start abusing favors. We need to make a living too you know?
Design is not a product. It’s not something you can keep in storage for 30 days while you decide whether or not to return it as a faulty product. I actually do not give a damn if your committee does not agree on your failure to get a proper brief in the first place. What I do give a damn about is my hours spent working on your wrong brief. You cannot argue that because your boss didn’t agree with the design you’re not going to pay me the hours spent on work done.
No, it does NOT cost nothing to come up with our designs. It might seem easy for us to just whip up a design for free because we do it so often. It might seem like it costs next to nothing to create an artwork, compared to the cost of producing a physical product. We don’t require expensive raw materials nor do we need sophisticated, high tech machinery to create what we create. But we need time. Time is the only, and most important resource for any designer.
Designers are paid for their time. Not by the number of posters or websites they produce. Design is not a commodity that you can keep for storage, then sell when a client comes along. Although this seems to be catching on, with stupid sites selling stock photography, stock templates, stock logos, heck, we might see stock advertising campaigns soon too no?
Clients who view design as a buy-able off the shelf product, and god forbid, designers who see design as the same thing, are missing the whole point of design. Design is not just making things look pretty. It’s about taking time to analyze and solve the client’s problems with good design.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. When you hire a designer, you’re paying for his expertise, knowledge and skills to deliver a solution that will best solve your problem and help you achieve your goals. You’re not paying for a ‘Buy 3 get 1 free’ poster.
It’s so insanely annoying to get questions like “How much is a 3 page website ah? If I do 2 page only can cheaper? no? how about a 1 page website? cheaper? 1 page only ma!”
told you liao always money up front ha…dealing with singaporeans was the reason why i stopped designing…though dealing with them on ebay now ain’t much better.
nowadaes whenever people ask me to do design less pages cheaper or not i link them themeforest.
LOL! just link to theme forest xD
You should like make them sign terms of contract first, before accepting the job hahaha… And yeah, payment up front. I cannot stress it enough.
The problem is no one pays upfront, they all want credit base or 30 day invoice. It’s just how it is.
You going to have a nephew soon! Uncle MIng Jie~
you should just put a vending machine outside your office door, like the one outside some small restaurant in Japan, choose what you want, pay up, get a coupon, and you will get the service you have purchased, done!
sooner or later singaporeans will invent MWTDESIGN too
Agree.. love this post =)
wa mingfu you dig all the way back until this post “D