Who is design for?

This is a matter of opinion, and this is ours: Design is there to serve the end user, not the designer and not (with respect to the purse-holder) the client. There may be one client and one designer, but there can be thousands or even millions of end users, this should be their focus.

Some design studios have a ‘house style’ and every project that they work on will have a similar look and feel regardless of the end user, some clients will have strong ideas of what they like and don’t like, ultimately, none of this matters, what matters is that the thing that is being created attends to the need(s) of the user.

The egos of designer and client must be left at the door. An experienced design studio and an enlightened client will make any potential conflict manageable, difficulty can arise where one party is insistent on a way forward based on something other than user-need; this is where a more experienced studio will be able to really help.

Is design expensive?

This is a case of ‘how long is a piece of string’. Not helpful I know, but there it is. On a job by job basis, a designer can spend as little or as much time as you can afford on a project.

Now, in order to manage this, you as a client must first determine your budget. It may be helpful to get a few quotes from design studios to help you do this, but be sure that each studio is quoting on exactly the same brief, otherwise you’ll be comparing apples with oranges.

Typically, a good design studio will be charging anywhere from fifty pounds per hour upwards. The studio will give an estimate or a fixed cost, based on the time needed to do a job in their experience, so it is important too that you give them as much detail as possible as the start, so there will be no nasty surprises later on.

As with everything, cost is relative. For example: a studio charging £70 per hour could spend 8 hours creating you a marketing leaflet, charging you £560; the cost of printing may only be £100 for a few thousand (depending on spec of course). Now compare this with the costs for a large, multi-paged brochure: the design cost may well run into the thousands, but the print cost could be ten or twenty thousand pounds. It’s worth paying for expertise, as the stakes are high and a badly prepared job could be very costly when it prints badly.

Beware of printers, or some studios, that will offer to design (or artwork!) free. Those who do either do not value design as a tool for developing your business, or are more concerned with making money out of you by printing your job. Print costs do not depend on the quality of design, so be cautious of this approach.

The rule of thumb is to pay as much as you can afford for design from a reputable studio that can offer experience of the kind of thing that you need. Don’t go for the cheap option unless you are prepared to pick up the pieces yourself if things go wrong. Remember that an experienced designer will be able to do a lot more in an hour than you might imagine!