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Sign Craft Trade Secret #77 No more lost design fees

Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
I see one minor flaw with the copyright release, by giving the client ALL RIGHTS, the designer is inadvertently giving up his right of promotion. A designer should ALWAYS keep his rights of promotion (entering the work in competitions, magazine articles, portfolios, marketing materials) unless the client pays enough that it's worth not being able to show the work.

I work on more than signs, depending on the client/work, I design to a certain scope, then the scope changes, I would price differently, I occasionally restrict the use if the work becomes a product - like a franchise, shirts or impressions past an "X" amount...
 
visual800

visual800

Active Member
it all depends on that area you live in. in this town we cannot charge for designs or layouts as their would be no jobs at all. too many people giving them away. i dont put a lot of faith in sign magazine articles anyway as they do not deal with " real life" situations.

take for instance the " what would you get for it" section. where everyone prices out a 4x8 banner. this is the biggest lie. folks come up with these astronomicl bs prices only to be admired by onlookers.

design time 1.5 hours-$150
banner printing $350
6 grommets $60

total $560


in real life you get it printed from signs to trade for $45 and then add $100 to it
 
TXFB.INS

TXFB.INS

New Member
BIG EASY DOES IT said:
Direct link https://signcraft.com/libraries/materials-for-download/Trade-Secret-77-Larry-Elliott---forms.pdf
Click to expand...

tried that also

[h=1]Server Error in '/' Application.
[/h] [h=2]The resource cannot be found.[/h] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif] Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Requested URL: /errors/404.aspx

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.34009 [/FONT]
 
B

BIG EASY DOES IT

New Member
attachment.php
See if this works
TXFB.INS said:
tried that also

Server Error in '/' Application.

The resource cannot be found.

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Requested URL: /errors/404.aspx

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.34009
Click to expand...
 

Attachments

  • Trade Secret 77- Larry Elliott - forms.pdf
    374.9 KB · Views: 122
Jwalk

Jwalk

New Member
I like the concept. I have trouble with doing designs and then not wanting them at all. I have been toying with a fee if they don't go with the design to re-coop the design work.
 
neato

neato

New Member
reQ said:
Never in million years this would work in my area.
Click to expand...

That's why it won't work, because you don't think it will. :D

Ok, maybe it isn't that simple. But we do tend to hold ourselves back by basing what we do solely on what everyone else is doing.
 
A

Andy D

Active Member
visual800 said:
it all depends on that area you live in. in this town we cannot charge for designs or layouts as their would be no jobs at all. too many people giving them away. i dont put a lot of faith in sign magazine articles anyway as they do not deal with " real life" situations.

take for instance the " what would you get for it" section. where everyone prices out a 4x8 banner. this is the biggest lie. folks come up with these astronomicl bs prices only to be admired by onlookers.

design time 1.5 hours-$150
banner printing $350
6 grommets $60
total $560
in real life you get it printed from signs to trade for $45 and then add $100 to it
Click to expand...

I have to disagree, if we priced like above for a 4'x8' banner with a hour and half design time we would be out of business within a year.
Our policy is: if it's a 20 minute or less design, it's included, anything over 20 minutes is charged for. Our price for a 4'x8' banner with a hour
and half design time we would be $336, and we are too cheap, IMHO.
 
T

TimToad

Active Member
Andy D said:
I have to disagree, if we priced like above for a 4'x8' banner with a hour and half design time we would be out of business within a year.
Our policy is: if it's a 20 minute or less design, it's included, anything over 20 minutes is charged for. Our price for a 4'x8' banner with a hour
and half design time we would be $336, and we are too cheap, IMHO.
Click to expand...

First, I'm having a hard time believing that anybody in an average sign shop environment outside of NY or San Francisco is commanding $100 per hour for design services to begin with. A niche shop doing mostly custom work, yes.

Your estimate of getting around $5.00 - 6.00 per square foot for the banner itself seems pretty realistic from what we experience on a daily basis and we're in Cali where you'd think the much higher cost of both living and doing business would mean higher rates, but it doesn't. When I price this size banner anywhere over $6.50-7.00 per square foot, we typically lose the job to the folks down the road who have the term "Low Cost Banners" in their actual business name and all their advertising. I suspect they are in $4-5 per square range.

Thankfully, our better quality and superior design skills seems to appeal to enough folks because we do tons of banners even at a higher rate per square foot.

Last Friday, I got a call at 1pm about a doing a 3'x10' last minute to be picked up that day. I spent less than half an hour recreating a highly pixilated logo, adding the text and then another half hour trimming, taping and grommetting. I charged them $240 for it and came out looking like a real hero, but also felt guilty later for charging them $8 per square foot mainly because of how rarely we can command that amount.

I like and support the general idea of the topic and trying to prevent uncompensated use of our design work as much as we reasonably can, but in reality, it would only take a few examples of you going after someone for it legally to have word get around and then impact your business negatively. The places I can see it working are in little, tourist towns with only one sign shop where people expect higher prices to begin with and most of the work is of a more intensive design aesthetic to begin with. I'm not sure the added risk to one's reputation in a competitive market place is worth it, but anything that increases our perceptual alignment with "real" graphic designers in the eyes of the public is worth pursuing.
 
S

signguy 55

New Member
Just find customers like Dan Antonelli who will pay you for 80 hours labor to vectorize a kids face, not counting the other design time..(Article in latest Sign Craft magazine). Great work if you can get it I guess. After looking at that art for 80 hours I would have to go outside so I didn't slap somebody!!
 
A

Andy D

Active Member
Actually I priced the single 4'x8' banner at $8 per square foot, the only time I get into the $5-$6 range is 100 sq feet plus.
Admittedly banners are not our bread and butter, I like them because there is a good mark up and they're pretty cut and dry,
so I can work them in between our bigger jobs.
If I were to drop our price to attract more banner orders that would limit the
time and attention we spend pursuing the customers and producing the projects that pay our bills.
 
T

TimToad

Active Member
Andy D said:
Actually I priced the single 4'x8' banner at $8 per square foot, the only time I get into the $5-$6 range is 100 sq feet plus.
Admittedly banners are not our bread and butter, I like them because there is a good mark up and they're pretty cut and dry,
so I can work them in between our bigger jobs.
If I were to drop our price to attract more banner orders that would limit the
time and attention we spend pursuing the customers and producing the projects that pay our bills.
Click to expand...

I guess my math skills aren't that sharp anymore.

At $8 per square foot, the banner itself would be $256 and then adding the $150 for design would bring the total to $406.

I think you and I both know that doing banners even in the $5-6 per square foot range provides one of the highest profit margins of any type of work we typically do. I think 13 oz scrim is running us around .20 per square foot these days, hemming tape is pretty cheap and grommets cost less a penny per pair.

The problem with ANY conventional type of work we do everyday is the boredom factor and competitors who undervalue their own labor and skills by price the stuff too low.
 
A

Andy D

Active Member
The $150 design fee is something you came up with, not me.
Like I said, they get the first twenty-ish minutes included so I rounded
it down to one hour of design time at $80 per, so $8 x 32 +$80 = $336 does that math work out for you?

And my largest mark up is probably laminated, backlit, vinyl, it starts at $20 per square foot with
a 10 foot minimum... of course the price can drop the higher the square footage.
 
B

BIG EASY DOES IT

New Member
And were on the other side of the spectrum. I believe banner material is about the cheapest material you could buy to put through your printer. Especially short term banner materials. The banners are super easy to cut and hem together either with tape or hemming machine. Grommet machines just shoot grommets in with the pull of a level. A very large banner could be done in a matter of minutes. The design of that banner alone though could take much much longer depending on desing. Is my time spent designing the banner less valuable per minute then the time I spent actually putting the banner together. NO. Were almost to the point where the design portion is the more valuable portion and should be charged accordingly.

Either your initial design cost is incorporated into the overall cost and then you charge more for changes or you have a upfront design fee for any time spent designing something ($50 minimum design anything under an hour like us). You must get paid for your time and work.
 
A

Andy D

Active Member
BIG EASY DOES IT said:
You must get paid for your time and work.
Click to expand...

Exactly, No company ever gives anything away, someone else has to pay for it. If you don't charge design time to the
customer that gives you crap to work with and expects a beautiful banner, who has to pay for it? Typically it's passed
on to the customers that bring ready to print art, that may be fine in the short term but over time you will run off the profitable customers
and keep the PITA customers.

I have been in signs/printing for about twenty years and I can tell you there are two types of shops, and I have worked for both.

1st you have Mom and Pops, they have 90% customers and 10 % clients.
They fret over the guy down the street doing banners for $3 a square foot because most
of their customers will shop around to save a few buck, these are customers that are leftovers that nobody else wanted.

2nd type of shop has 90% clients and 10 % customers because the owner didn't get
bogged down with the day to day running of the shop, he/she went out and hunted down clients by getting
involved in local boards such as zoning, real estate, chamber of commerce, school, etc.
They Sponsor functions /events and invite local business owners / managers.
They bag the type of clients that don't have the time or inclination to shop around to save a few buck.

I can tell you we love the guys down the road that do cheap prints, we send all of the "tire kickers"
to them, without wasting time or being the "bad guys", that way we can focus on the order that the GM for the local Nissan Dealership (for example)
Just placed and needs out ASAP.
 
T

TimToad

Active Member
Andy D said:
The $150 design fee is something you came up with, not me.
Like I said, they get the first twenty-ish minutes included so I rounded
it down to one hour of design time at $80 per, so $8 x 32 +$80 = $336 does that math work out for you?

And my largest mark up is probably laminated, backlit, vinyl, it starts at $20 per square foot with
a 10 foot minimum... of course the price can drop the higher the square footage.
Click to expand...

visual800 came up with the price breakdown, I just questioned it. When you spelled it out, of course the math works.
 
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