Design fees and payment upfront

[phototec]

For us, most design time gets hidden in with the overall work like some have said. Logos and obvious hourly design time involved with a job will be a line item. If a customer comes in almost blatantly making the design process difficult, providing non-vector artwork, wanting their order right away but then being overly difficult during the design/setup process, It's definitely a line item and usually a large one in hopes they never do anything like this again.

What if they ask you for a copy of the full-size artwork to take to another shop to use for additional signage, T-shirts, or used on a partial vehicle wrap, do you just give them the file or do you charge them some kind of release fee? Thanks

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Got a question about the design fee, lest say you create a custom multi-color window graphic (30" x 36") design in Photoshop (lots of 3-D effects and textures) and it takes several hours to create and you only charge the customer $50 design fee for the one sign.

What if they ask you for a copy of the full-size artwork to take to another shop to use for additional signage, T-shirts, or used on a partial vehicle wrap, do you just give them the file or do you charge them some kind of release fee? Thanks

Charge more than 50 bucks for that. That looks more like a logo than a sign layout, there's a difference and a customer is generally going to want their logo files.

 

[3Dsigns]

I usually give them 3 Choices; 1# Free quote, no design. #2 Free quote, design fee, start designing, give them a vector file of the design, or JPG if it's for printing. #3 Free quote, start the job at 50% down, design and build the sign. The design is always included in the sign cost unless I am creating a logo design.

 

[Stacey K]

Got a question about the design fee, lest say you create a custom multi-color window graphic (30" x 36") design in Photoshop (lots of 3-D effects and textures) and it takes several hours to create and you only charge the customer $50 design fee for the one sign.

What if they ask you for a copy of the full-size artwork to take to another shop to use for additional signage, T-shirts, or used on a partial vehicle wrap, do you just give them the file or do you charge them some kind of release fee? Thanks

Sometimes if I know my design time has been covered and it's a good customer going to apply the design to something I cannot do I will send the artwork. In this situation I would charge them a fee like a logo design fee to release it. It's hard to get money out of people after the fact. I have on occasion spent more time than I should I design for my own satisfaction and don't end up charging what I could have. Sometimes it works to my advantage because they are so happy they order more stuff and the extra time spent was well worth it. In this case it sounds like you cannot do the things they want...or can you and they are just choosing to go else where?

 

[Gino]

If you charged $50 for it, then they get what they requested. Was the $50 itemized by line in your quote or invoice ?? They need to know ahead of time what they are and are not getting.

Your mistake here was in going above and beyond your $50 mark.

There are all kindsa ways of getting around this, but if you made a commitment, then you should stick by it.

However, my first question would be...... can we bid on the sign you want someone else to make ??

 

[3Dsigns]

Unless it's something quick and simple, like 30 minutes or so, $50 is not enough for most designs.

 

[truckgraphics]

Time is money. If it's a lettering job that's easy, we usually roll in the price of design.

But if it's a wrap, or partial wrap, you are darn tootin' the customer will pay.

Which, gives me a chance to bloviate about a past customer.

We had a fellow, a repeat customer, come in who wanted a re-design.

I sat down with him. After a while, it became apparent this was going to take some time (and fortunately it was a Friday afternoon and I didn't have anything scheduled.)

I told him after the first 20 minutes or so, we were going to charge him $xx per hours. He told me that his company (an tech design firm) doesn't do that. I told him, we aren't his company.

Three hours later, we have a design. He asks for it. I tell him to give me a deposit on the job, but at any rate he owes me for the design. He pays me.

Next Monday, he sends me a completely different design (not set up to go on a truck) and he wants it on the truck in a day.

I tell him no way.

He wants his money back (which was equal to our hourly rate.)

I tell him, sue me.

Never heard from him again.

Good riddance.

 

[bob]

"...billable hour..."
Are you running a law office or a sign shop? The differece beinbg that a law office sells time and a sign shop sells signs. In a sign shop there are no billable hours, there's only signs. One of the tasks in making a sign is laying out the sign. This is just a step in doing a sign, it is not some separate product for which you get to charge. Some signs are more complicated than others, some are a study in simplicity. So what?

 

[gnubler]

Design & proofing has been killing me lately, I see others are dealing with the same crap. I generally do mockups on all new jobs - definitely helps me get orders and I try to build it into my quotes, but it can be a time suck. As others have stated, the online designers like Canva are an absolute scourge on our industry and 99% of files I get from customers end up taking more time than starting from scratch. Easy stuff like throwing a banner together with text and an existing logo I usually don't charge for art. Everything else is $100/hour. I generally list it separately on invoices and explain it won't appear on reorders.

People generally want to see what something will look like before they place an order, and having a visual also helps me to accurately bid on jobs. As someone else mentioned, 30 minutes tops for a quick mockup is usually enough to get an order going. I've gotten burned a few times doing free proofs along with estimates, I presume they got sticker shock and didn't have the budget so I just move on.

NEVER send out proofs with vector art in them. My proofs are either reduced scale medium-res JPGs, or if it turns into a multi-page PDF I rasterize everything.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

If someone wants a design that they paid for, like a logo, then they should get the design, charge accordingly. A layout is a different story, IMO, it is part of the price of the sign. With all of the garbage out there, I'd want to see something before shelling out any money unless it was with someone that I had already worked with.
I take a picture of the screen with my phone and send it for a proof. It works for for basic stuff

 

[Gino]

Hahahaaaa......... I know this is old school, but it works, does away with all this billable and non-billable computer time and gives the customer exactly what they want.

Thumbnail. We could draw out a sign layout, a truck door or just about anything on a napkin, the back of a pizza box or whatever. We could make a sign literally come to life in merely 2 to 3 minutes. The people saw the sign coming together and knew ya knew your stuff doing that. You could make lights & darks and we all had a dozen of so type styles we could duplicate on the run. I can't tell ya how many signs were sold that way...... uhh about all of them. If ya wanted to get fancy, once ya had the sale, you could do tissue overlays and give them some choices, but do any of you really realize why there are so many perfectly made ugly signs out there and why there's so any codes and restrictions on this sh!t ?? Cause nowadays, ya have idiots in this business turning out 100% crap and many of ya are accepting customer generated crap. All cause ya have a button to push and don't know any of the basics.

Oh, and to this day, I still do thumbnails right in front of them and make the sale right on the spot. That'll happen several times a week, no lie. Thumbnails are KING.

 

[gnubler]

Doesn't work for me, I can't draw for crap. Computer graphics is more my talent. For those of you doing logos, I use Vecteezy all the time. Annoying interface but free, I just download a few vectors and pull out various elements and change the colors to make a new logo.

When I do mockups I try to use the customer's actual vehicle or building, they really like that.

 

[Scotchbrite]

As others have mentioned, we generally include the design work into the price of the sign. One of my biggest pet peeves is billing with a bunch of line item ticky-tacky charges. Like the mechanic adding a $5 rag disposal fee, or the tire shop with their tire disposal fees. Just roll that stuff into the rest of the bill. It makes me want to ask for the dirty rags in a trash bag for me to discard in my own dumpster. My father-in-law used to take the old tires back, and then pitch them over the fence into the pile of used tires in the back lot of the same tire place. (That only worked because his lot backed onto the tire shop's lot, and obviously this was before the proliferation of cameras.)

Sometimes my business partner wants to start adding a fuel surcharge to the equipment rates when fuel costs start getting high. I always tell him instead of the surcharge we should just raise the equipment rate.

I think a lot of people hate feeling like the being nickel and dimed on things.

Our biggest issue as a sign shop is business cards. We started offering business cards as part of the sign package because I would routinely get customers asking for them and we'd just be sending them to another print shop where they might start getting banners and other things that we could have been doing if we hadn't sent them to another shop. But then it comes back to bite us in the ass when someone refers them to us for only business cards. We always have to explain there will be additional design charges that so and so didn't have to pay because it was part of their sign purchase. Business cards are so cheap, you can't just roll the design cost in with the cost of the cards. Anymore we just tell people we only do cards as part of a larger sign package.

It's a fine line to walk trying to balance how much time you put into designing a sign so you can quote it. I've found when I have tried not to get too detailed in a design for a quote, it bites me later. A big one is catching a small change in size that will allow for more efficient material usage. Experience helps offset a lot of it in regards to not losing profit, but you still kick yourself for not realizing you could have done it better.

 

[Humble PM]

Hahahaaaa......... I know this is old school, but it works, does away with all this billable and non-billable computer time and gives the customer exactly what they want.

Thumbnail. We could draw out a sign layout, a truck door or just about anything on a napkin, the back of a pizza box or whatever. We could make a sign literally come to life in merely 2 to 3 minutes. The people saw the sign coming together and knew ya knew your stuff doing that. You could make lights & darks and we all had a dozen of so type styles we could duplicate on the run. I can't tell ya how many signs were sold that way...... uhh about all of them. If ya wanted to get fancy, once ya had the sale, you could do tissue overlays and give them some choices, but do any of you really realize why there are so many perfectly made ugly signs out there and why there's so any codes and restrictions on this sh!t ?? Cause nowadays, ya have idiots in this business turning out 100% crap and many of ya are accepting customer generated crap. All cause ya have a button to push and don't know any of the basics.

Oh, and to this day, I still do thumbnails right in front of them and make the sale right on the spot. That'll happen several times a week, no lie. Thumbnails are KING.

Years ago, I managed a photographic studio - advertising, product, designers work.
Had one client, an ad agency around the corner, based in an old bank. They had a guy who I'll call Big Al. Used to do all the briefs for shoots as sketches, or water colours, or biro scribbles. The old school photographers loved him, we all loved him. Knew exactly what he was after with out being over descriptive.
Went over to their studios to talk through a brief. Meeting was held in the basement, behind serious iron bars, and an obviously still functioning vault door; they had some very prestigeous clients.
Big Al's job title, on his business card said Facilitator. He made beautiful things happen.

 

[Stacey K]

If someone wants a design that they paid for, like a logo, then they should get the design, charge accordingly. A layout is a different story, IMO, it is part of the price of the sign. With all of the garbage out there, I'd want to see something before shelling out any money unless it was with someone that I had already worked with.
I take a picture of the screen with my phone and send it for a proof. It works for for basic stuff

I do the same thing...sometimes I can get even a more complicated design done in a few minutes with a quick texter and thinker on the other end. I love it when it happens like that...

 

[Johnny Best]

Oh, and to this day, I still do thumbnails right in front of them and make the sale right on the spot. That'll happen several times a week, no lie. Thumbnails are KING.

 

[gnubler]

I thought "content is king"? Vomit.

 

[caribmike]

What an interesting post! I must be very old school! I charge a minimum $25 design fee and then $65 per hour or fraction thereof. There is no free graphic design in my shop. We're a commercial printer, sign shop and t-shirt printer. I've never once had a client squawk about paying for graphic design.

 

[rydods]

What if they ask you for a copy of the full-size artwork to take to another shop to use for additional signage, T-shirts, or used on a partial vehicle wrap, do you just give them the file or do you charge them some kind of release fee? Thanks

If they ask me for artwork to take to another shop there's usually a good reason and I want to find out why. If they are unhappy, I want to fix it. If a customer is upset about something, 99% of the time I can see their point.
If they want the artwork to take to another business because it's for something we don't do or they think we don't do, I'll either tell them we actually provide this service or we'll give a recommendation.

No matter what the reason may be, we'll provide the artwork to them. I'll never hold it hostage.
It's my job to cover my design labor at some point. Unless you have your artwork fees fully outlined for the customer to understand and they know they'll need to pay a release fee if they ever need their artwork, I believe it's shady practice to withhold it. I also believe that it will ruin any possible relationship, with this customer, in the future.

 

[brdesign]

I once had a customer that called and complained that there was a separate line item on his estimate for a design/setup fee. He said he didn't mind if we increased the price of the sign to cover the design fee, but he was really against having it as a separate line item!?!?