design quandry

[Illuminator]

This question has probably come across all of us in the business at one time or another, i would love your opinions on how you handle it.

Customer comes in with a rough sketch of a design and wants you to make it nice, he will use it for graphics, t-shirts and decals. you explain that the time to recreate it and make the design camera ready will be charged at say $80/hour and you estimate an hour and 1/2 to accomplish this. During the creation the customer has new ideas and colors and the "i just wanna see what it would look like if's" by the time your done you have a graphic that makes him happy and he pays you for your time. Now the customer wants the artwork because he knows someone who can do decals for $1.00/each any size and also wants to use the design on his website. the design you created is 100% better than he brought in and other than 1 or 2 elements the design is changed.

Question do you give him the artwork for the design time or do you have a pricing method for usage or ownership? Usually i have given the a/w to customer to build good faith, but i recently discovered i cant eat good faith. thoughts?

 

[Pat Whatley]

You're not giving it away on good faith. You're selling your design time to him. If he hired you for an hour specifically to create the artwork then whatever you did in that hour is his.

 

[Rick]

Question do you give him the artwork for the design time or do you have a pricing method for usage or ownership? Usually i have given the a/w to customer to build good faith, but i recently discovered i cant eat good faith. thoughts?

Good faith on your part would mean that you would have a policy in place and you let the client know upfront what that policy is and stick to it. Kinda hard to change the rules when the game is already over.

---Give the guy the artwork.

---Make a policy.

---Inform future and existing clients of that policy.

My policy.... If a client came in with pencil artwork and wanted it vector, they get the artwork.. end of story. If they want original designs, they are charged by the scope of work, then given the artwork, if they want to change that scope of work the artwork is being used for, they are charged more. I ALWAYS keep rights of promotion, unless they pay me a lot more for complete ownership.

 

[QualitySigns]

You're not giving it away on good faith. You're selling your design time to him. If he hired you for an hour specifically to create the artwork then whatever you did in that hour is his.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I have never been able to understand how a sign shop can design something for a customer for a fee, and then have the sign shop claim that it owns it after the customer has paid for it.

I can understand, however, the concept of assumed copyright when a sign shop gives a customer a design and price for a proposed sign job. The customer has no right, in that case, to shop the design if unpaid for.

That's the way I see it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[K Chez]

I can understand, however, the concept of assumed copyright when a sign shop gives a customer a design and price for a proposed sign job. The customer has no right, in that case, to shop the design if unpaid for.

That's the way I see it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The key word is "assumed", which will most likely be interpreted differently by the customer and the artist. I think most would agree that there is a big difference in price when designing something that you'll be producing versus something that going to be shopped around to other shops. Laying out the terms upfront before any work is done is a must in this type of scenario.

 

[luggnut]

if they want to change that scope of work the artwork is being used for, they are charged more.

how do you pull that off... it seems like a good idea. but once they have the art how would you know what they were doing with it?

i would like to implement something like that if i could understand how.

my town is small so i produce most of the deisgns i do so i haven't really run into the problem, but i need to be prepared.

 

[Marlene]

when doing design work, you need to define just what it is that you are doing and what the charges will be. you kind of did that by telling him he would be charge 1 and 1/2 hours of labor. was he having you fix up the design for decals? if so, the thing to do would have been to write up a quote that states that you are re-working the design for the sole purpose of manufacturing decals purchased from you at $$$ and also the 1 and 1/2 labor to fix up the design. after that, you have a charge for an art CD or file that he can take with him for any other purpose.

don't forget that the customer has no clue how any of this works and it is up to you to tell them exactly what is what.

 

[mark in tx]

make the design camera ready will be charged at say $80/hour and you estimate an hour and 1/2 to accomplish this

That is the original agreed upon service.

During the creation the customer has new ideas and colors and the "i just wanna see what it would look like if's"

This is where you have to stop and explain to the customer you are now doing a different service, and have to agree upon a new price.

 

[Rick]

how do you pull that off... it seems like a good idea. but once they have the art how would you know what they were doing with it?

i would like to implement something like that if i could understand how.

my town is small so i produce most of the deisgns i do so i haven't really run into the problem, but i need to be prepared.

It's still a "trust" system, the only thing is, it's in writing. You make a contract and it's based on "scope of work". If it's a logo for a local restaurant, and they start having multiple locations, well thats good for them, the logo maybe added to some of the success. They start franchising the place, and the identity, which is part of the brand is the success, the scope changes and that should be compensated for.

Say it's a mailer for a local joint, they are going to get a production ready .pdf that would be difficult to make changes on, never the source files. The mailer for a small is business is always priced at the time it takes to make the mailer, I may put stipulations on it like area of use or a time limit (I'm pretty generous about the time because I don't want to hassle it), if they want it forever they will have to pay more because it is worth more. For a large 'national' business, the price goes up.

If it's a sign for a theme park, restaurant or local watering hole and then they want to use the sign design for t-shirts, if that was not in the scope of usage or they turn the logo into a product, then the logo is no longer being used for the designed purpose. I should be compensated for it unless they paid for full usage of the design.

My style of implementation is I'm not going to worry about it. I have only once had to take some action against a former client on some t-shirt designs. They went way beyond the impressions the contract called out for, I had to compensate the illustrator on one of the designs and I had to be compensated on a few. We went back and forth, I got a lawyer, they then paid me and the illustrator after a few letters. I may not have gone after the client on my own, it was my buddy who did some work that was bummed that he was getting ripped on the work. There may be other instances of some work being used beyond my scope, I want the option of having it, without the constant work of worrying about it so I don't.

Some good reading is the GAG book, a book by Shel Perkins called "Talent Is Not Enough: Business Secrets For Designers" a few more are "Freelance Design in Practice" and "The Business Side of Creativity: The Complete Guide to Running a Small Graphics Design or Communications Business"