23/06/06
53Friday Question: Can you get Great Design on a budget?
This was one the questions we imposed on ourselves during the @media panel last week. My answer at the time was emphatically no, as design is as much about ‘thinking time’. In a way, it’s a hard one to answer, as it depends on the scope of the project and the size of the budget.
Since then I’ve been wondering more about this question. Is it fair to make a client pay for ‘thinking time’? Should a ‘Great Designer’ be able to produce ‘Great Design’ quickly? Or is it just possible to get ‘Good Design’ on a budget, rather than ‘great’?
Discuss!
Tags: design, discussion
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garrett said 929 days ago:
I think you’ll get good design on budget, the kind of design that works but doesn’t break any boundries. To get a great design, you need the time to be creative and follow many different paths, which takes “thinking” time which really can’t be budgeted for.
matt Carey said 929 days ago:
Paul Rand (one of my design heros) used to give clients a flat price up front—if it took him an hour to come up with the design then great, but if it took him 3 months then fine. This way of working was not a problem because his flat fee was generally very high!
Ben said 929 days ago:
Whilst I agree with your reasoning, I would say no, simply because design is a non-linear process; you don’t (necessarily) get twice as good a result from twice as much time, because (as you say) most of that time will be thinking time rather than production time. The development of a good idea is part of the process, but once you’ve gotten that, the time remaining is what will differentiate between a good and a great design. If you’re exceptionally talented (or lucky) you might come up with a great concept early in the process and be able to refine it to something ideal for the project well within the allotted time. But even with talent, you may not be able to ‘hit it out of the park’ despite hours of brainstorming. It’s a difficult one to nail down.
I’m not a designer by trade; it’s more something I end up doing (from time to time) out of personal interest and tertiary involvement with what I’m really doing (PHP and XHTML/CSS/JS); in this, I know that no matter how much development time you’ve got budgetted for a project, unavoidable and unpredictable things will happen which delay you, and until those issues are resolved your time budget is being eaten away at. I imagine this is true of any creative process, but ultimately I always have to conclude that it’s not a linear process. Sure, you get more predictably consistent results with a larger time (and cost) budget, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get great results for less. Sometimes.
Heh, I think I managed to confuse even myself by the end there. Hope some of that made sense!
Dennis said 929 days ago:
Why not first of all apply a design that fits (like garrett mentioned) and then improve it by letting it pass some iterations? This approach has also the advantage that you will get to know what can be improved by really using the application or website.
boere said 929 days ago:
It depends I think on the type of design brief it is. If for example it requires a lot of slick photography and a specific style then that will cost as much as it’s going to cost.
If the brief is looser and more concept led, it’s possible to do powerful stuff really cheap with a few fonts and colours, or home spun imagery, as has been proved by a lot of good designers
Craig C. said 929 days ago:
This might fall under that classic adage “Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.”
Quality takes time. I’ve found no way to avoid it unless corners are cut, and the end result always suffers for it. Rapid productivity isn’t an adequate measure of a designer’s talent, skill or expertise. Sometimes you just have to try something and see how it looks, and I find that I also have to live with something for a little while and see if it grows on me. If I’m not sick of looking at it after three days, then it’s probably pretty good.
There are those rare exceptions, when you just happen to produce something magnificent on a first attempt and no iterations or experimentation are required. But that’s always a fluke and can’t be counted on.
So yes, you can produce a fairly good design without spending a lot of time on it, but it’s only going to be great by rare accident.
David Horn said 929 days ago:
Well, yes … you can. The ‘I heart NY’ logo was done pro-bono, the guy never received a penny. If you have good negotiation skills, then I’m sure you can get a great design done.
If the designer is invested in the project, is motivated by the subject matter, and – perhaps – there are moral or ethical incentives to work to a cheap budget, then sure. Why not.
Obviously those situations are rare, but they do exist.
Otherwise I tend to agree with Garrett – good design is perfectly within most peoples reach. Great design may not be.
Nathaniel said 929 days ago:
Assuming you’re billing full price for all your time, then no, you’re not going to get great design for low cost. Or rather, it’s very unlikely, since there’s always the chance that the first few ideas will pan out to great results.
Budget situations I think have always been where you pull out tried and true workhorse ideas, of course with some adjustments for the client. There just isn’t time or money for anything unproven.
Of course, there are always those times when we don’t bill fully for our time—be it for a non-profit, or just something that for whatever reason tickles our fancy. Those projects where I spend lots of unbilled time playing with ideas are usually the best ones I ever do.
Nick Harris said 929 days ago:
Hell yes it’s fair to charge a client for thinking time! It’s as much a part of the design process as pixel pushing in Photoshop, tweaking paths in illustrator or browser testing the end result.
If we weren’t to charge for coming up with ideas, naturally we wouldn’t spend as much time on it, therefore the ideas simply can’t be as well thought out. Great design is available on a budget, it’s just that the budget is a little larger than for good design ;)
Matt Caton said 929 days ago:
What do you mean by “Great Design”?
I would consider a well designed website to do 2 things
1) Bring in new business
2) Consolidate you existing business
Both of these requirements in turn mean
1) Your site is accessible
2) Your site is usable
3) Your site establishes community
4) Your site conveys trust
All of the above are a science, and not an art. As such you should be able to quantify what you are going to achieve for your client and give a stable time and budget to work to.
In all my experience of developing websites for small businesses, never once has great design = art been an issue, and if it had I would have gone under years ago (being a science graduate and not an art graduate).
Derren said 929 days ago:
I’ll bring a university perspective into this, so the question of budget doesn’t really matter – there isn’t usually much of one to start with.
I think great design comes about not because of one person’s beavering away in a garrett, looking for inspiration to fall from the clouds – we aren’t artists.
Great design, or as close as I’ve gotten to it, happens because the client works well with and trusts the designer, and doesn’t try and hijack the designer’s thinking process, or even tries to do that for them; the designer listens to the feedback from the client and the end-user, and is willing to make changes that can be justified because of that feedback. And it can happen quickly, or over a longer period. When I’ve been involved with a client over several jobs, the ‘quality’ of the design has got higher and the time taken is normally shorter.
More time can be good or bad – either you might spend too long working an idea over to get it almost more-than-perfect until it loses the spark it had in the beginning, or you know that thing you had to get rid of because you ran out of time would have worked if you just had a few more days to get it right. In the main, the more we work at something, trying to scrape stuff away and getting to the real heart of what the client wants communicated, the luckier we get.
I think that’s why it’s good to sketch away from the computer, and make font choices away from it as well – how many hours have you spent going though every possible font choice for a heading, and then going back to the first one you looked at?
Is a ‘great design’ one that looks great to the designer? the client? the person who uses the site in the end, and makes choices based on that design? All three will have different interpretations of a ‘great design’, and who’s to say who’s right? The guy that writes the monograph about you when you’re dead?
Hazel said 929 days ago:
It is possible to have a pretty good design without spending a fortune if you design it yourself with a reasonable good eye.
Eoghan McCabe said 929 days ago:
I think the real question here is “does good design take time”? It’s not about how much that time costs you; as has been said, you can always do it yourself for free, get a good deal from a professional friend, etc. Cost is incomparable.
As a youngster in the industry with not as much experience as I’d like, I’ve always presumed that the reason it takes me so long to be happy with a design is simply because of that inexperience. I’d be relieved to hear that even seasoned pros have the same problem.
Tim Barry said 929 days ago:
It’s perfectly fair to expect a client to pay for ‘thinking time’ as this is still the designers time. The worst thing to do is under charge for a project because if the client comes back for more, then they will be expecting the same low price. It’s called shooting yourself in the foot.
Pierce said 929 days ago:
Yeah, I think the budget you’re talking about here is time, rather than money. So no, you are unlikely to get great design on a tight time budget.
Of course it’s possible to get great design on a tight financial budget. Unlikely, if you hire some randomer. But if you hire your friend who is a great designer and he gives you mates rates, then you’re just as likely to get great design out of it. This happens all the time.
Nick Harris said 929 days ago:
@Matt:
I’d say that’s a very generalised view of what makes a website successful. It thoroughly depends on what you’re client’s objectives are for the site. For instance, if a public company wanted to create a site accessible only by it’s share-holders to keep them informed of what the companies up to, designing that site with the goal to increase business for your client would likely result in a failure. The most fundamental aspect to creating a successful site is understanding completely what your client’s goals are, and that takes time.
Sure, there’s a lot of science to our profession, but to say there’s no art involved? Take Jon’s menu over there… Science told him that he needed logical sections and subsections, an easy way to find the site feeds, and that he needed to let us users know where we were and what he does. There are a million different ways he could have done that and he chose a way that’s a little different to the norm. Therein lies the art, and I’m sure he spent a not insignificant amount of time on that art.
tom armitage said 929 days ago:
Rather than answering the title, I’m just going to approach that “Is it fair to charge for ‘thinking time’?”
By and large, yes. It’s easier to illustrate this with a non-design related example. So, I’m working on some code (not markup – programming). I’ve got a problem to solve. I spend twenty minutes thinking about the problem, and then I write three lines of code in about thirty seconds. You bill for twenty-one minutes, not for thirty seconds – because without the thinking, the code just doesn’t happen. Sometimes it happens badly, or inefficiently, or in a rushed manner; sometimes it doesn’t happen. If you take extra time, you’ll probably get the better answer.
Another example: how a friend and I both wrote essays at University (we both studied English literature; we’re both web developers now). We both made a lot of notes before hand and planned in detail. Then, I hammered the essay out as fast as possible – about 1000 words an hour at my peak. When it was done, I printed it off, took out a black pen, and tore it to shreds, correcting left, right, and centre, completely altering structure. Then I corrected it all.
By contrast, my friend just sat in front of his computer and thought. And every now and then, a sentence happened. He never rewrote, barely corrected, and once he hit the conclusion, that was it – he just read it over, fixed typos, and handed it in.
In total, we usually took the same length of time. He produced a finely crafted sculture, but slowly; I started with something rough hewn and refined it over a series of iterations.
Were we billing on an hourly rate for those essays, I’d say we both charged the same, right? I spent more of my time typing than my friend – which you could describe as “actual” , physical work – but he was thinking about that sentence all that time. The difference wasn’t how much work we did; it was how we thought. I thought best when typing, trying to formulate ideas. He thought best in quiet, inward reflection.
“Thinking time” is much like “measuring twice” – it’s preparation, mentally working your way around a design, or an essay, or a script, in order that you need only cut once. If that’s the way you work, and you’re producing the results, it’s entirely fair to bill for it. Any process begins the moment you start to try to solve the problem in your head.
(Only corollary: if you suddenly have “that great idea” one day in the bath, say, I’m not sure you can bill for every hour you might have been thinking about it. You can certainly bill for the time in your studio looking for inspiration, playing with paper, doodling in Illustrator, though).
Bud Gibson said 929 days ago:
To me, this is a larger question about R&D vs. packaged products. I think it is possible to package reasonable design that people will choose out of convenience, witness Typepad’s or blogger’s set of blog templates. As a space matures, packaged alternatives are sure to abound.
If you’re trying to sell higher margin work, then it has to substantially differ from the packaged product. That takes thinking, and yes your clients should pay for that. Of course, the onus is then on you to deliver.
Andy Croll said 929 days ago:
Good Design comes with practice, great design comes with inspiration.
I’m not sure you can pay for inspiration… only after the fact, obviously :-)
James AkaXakA said 929 days ago:
Great design may equal more time, but more time doesn’t equal great design.
Rob... said 929 days ago:
As a customer, I am happy to pay for thinking time, but I’m not so happy to pay for your training time. Clearly to get a great design requires “thinking” time, so that has to be paid for. Having said that, if I’m paying top rates, then I would expect the designer to come up with a great design in a reasonable time frame as I’m paying for “effective” thinking time.
Same for software developers really; the time required to design and build the right system is fine, but the time for you to learn a new programming idiom (for instance) is not my problem.
Matt Caton said 929 days ago:
@Nick
“if a public company wanted to create a site accessible only by it’s share-holders to keep them informed of what the companies up to”...
This would fall into “reconciling existing business”, not generating new business.
I honestly think that 99% of website work fits into my generalisation. As for Jons menu, its very pretty an’ all, but … so what? As long as the information architecture of the site is usable and accessible, there are very few websites that really benefit from beautification. Beyond the trinity of typography, grids and color (all sciences) that extra creative spark (playing around with Illustrator) will not give any business value to a site. Yep, you’ll get link-loved and web awards. However.., so what? There is obviously a market for sites with bling – but there certainly isnt in Wales.
Benjamin Jackson said 929 days ago:
I think Mr AkaXakA has nailed it there!
Frode Danielsen said 928 days ago:
Thinking time.. hm. Well, I’d certainly agree that people have different processes. Some sketch and draw, iterating and re-doing, others push a pixel and ponders his next move. In this respect I’d say both could equally charge for their time spent. Where I think the shady area appears is when you’re suddenly having a great idea while doing something completely different, but then obviously spending some time thinking the idea through. The problem with billing for such activities is in the trouble with accurately measuring the time spent. It’s kind of the step between actively thinking some problem through, and on the other hand just let the brain churn on a problem in the subconscious part of your mind.
BigA said 928 days ago:
What about the client’s role in producing ‘Great Design’? An educated client who has done their own homework, is clear as to what they want/need, and allows the designer the freedom to create surely must go a long way in the resulting design.
reese said 928 days ago:
Like Garrett, I think good design can be done on a budget, but great design usually requires time (and thus money).
I used to struggle with charging for “thinking time.” It seemed unfair to clients, particularly when some projects seemed to take hours of thinking time, and others I was hit with inspiration almost immediately. What I’ve learned is “thinking time” isn’t necessarily limited to the project its applied to. In the times when inspiration has hit me quickly, it can likely be attributed to a lot of prior research and thinking before, even if on different projects.
As designers, thinking, sketching, research, etc is vital to growth and keeping things fresh. I build the cost for that time into my projects accordingly as I’ve begun to see what I do as not about an hourly rate but value I bring to a client. So I don’t put in, say “OK, 2 hours for ‘thinking time’” when I build a quote, but rather I’ve adjusted my rates to reflect the value I bring, which includes the thought I put into a design. It’s a little frustrating if a project takes a lot more thinking time than anticipated, but usually the next project tends to “make up” for it. :)
Nick Harris said 928 days ago:
@Matt
Exactly, you’re talking information architecture, which I agree is a science. But we’re talking “Great Design” here.
I thoroughly disagree that there’s no art in typography or colour though. Yes, certain colour combinations are known to invoke differing emotions (in different cultures etc etc), but using those combinations effectively is an art.
Part of great design is effective brand communication. Which is, again, part art part science. Jon’s “pretty” menu effectively communicates his brand and provides that functionality that was needed… and I’m sure the link-love he has enjoyed from his beautification has been good for business. Which goes to show that every client and every website has different requirements.
Matt Caton said 928 days ago:
@Nick
I do see your point – and looking at your site you are gifted artistically and able to include this in your work. And, to be fair your site is better for it and I expect it helps you pull in business.
However, for all the other 99% of businesses, from caterers to pet supplies, having a great work of art as a website wont do anything to pull in sales. The basic elements of style (TGC) go 90% of the way to making anything look 90% better than the competitors. Most importantly, it can be applied scientifically and in a fixed time and budget. To take TGC to a higher level will take artistic input. However, at this point the budget must include “thinking time” its very hard to sign this off against what the client gets back in return.
Most importantly I think is this. Give the client a fine piece of art and a content management system and within a few months its no longer a fine piece of art. Its a bit like new cars – they are only shiny if you keep them in a garage.
Matt Caton said 928 days ago:
To summarise my point ;) (and Im coming at this purely from a websites for businesses angle)
You can get “great design” on a budget because great design has nothing todo with art. A website is a business investment that should give the business a measurable return.
If the question is can you get a “beautiful design” on a budget then obviously not. Anything beautiful in this life, from art to women, comes at a price.
Mark Boulton said 928 days ago:
For me it’s about craft.
Both good and great design can be done to a budget, it just depends how large the budget is and if there is room within the budget to pay attention the craft of graphic design. Yes, you can solve design problems within budget, and do it well. But, it’s the craft of design that takes time and makes the difference between good and great design.
Like good wine, or a bloody good cheese eh Jon?
Care, love, attention and time = craft. That’s what makes a great design. Oh, and enough budget. And plenty of tea helps.
lance e. leonard said 928 days ago:
AS soon as I read the original question, I knew this would spawn the debate Matt & Nick are having. ‘What is design?’ My response goes much deeper than could effectively be communicated in a blog comment, however it causes me to I ask another simple question. Is design ‘form’ or is design ‘function’? Well, design is a crappy word IMHO. However, in context, there is a ginormous difference between web design and web development. Too many times we try to compartmentalize all the work we do on the web with one title. We can’t do that. Websites (and separately, web applications) must meet business goals & be functional (both measurable) and have aesthetic appeal (subjective). Developers usually argue that ‘function’ is priority 1, where designers usually argue that ‘form’ is priority 1. They’re both right. It takes both to make a successful website. Can you be successful with one and not the other? Sure. (See Google and Craigslist as overplayed examples of pretty-less popularity.) For those that sit between the areas of development and design (or “do both”), that’s a really tough spot to be in and one at which very very few excel.
And my response to Jon’s original question will come in a link to this post by Andy Rutledge.
Meri said 928 days ago:
I know jack about web design. So let me take this into an arena that I vaguely know something about…
Tattoos!
I love tattoos. I have a bunch of them. The tattooing experience varies a lot, depending on the level of artistry of your chosen tattooist. I’ve been into places where literally all they can do is let you pick a picture off the wall and then execute it. Then there are the places that can “tweak” an existing design for you. And at the other end of the scale you have the original artists.
The best tattoos I’ve got are done by a woman called Karen Slafter who works in Austin at SouthSide Tattoos. The woman is a true artist and pretty much never does the sort of “off the wall” art that you see in most tattoo shops. You go in (hopefully with at least an idea and perhaps some source—a photo or a colour or whatever) and describe to her what you want. She invariably comes up with a load of great ideas and the proposed design is infinitely better than your initial thought.
The absolutely crazy insane thing? She doesn’t charge people for the designing time. I get the impression that this is because people have kicked off about being charged for “thinking” time, but personally I think it’s absolute BS. However difficult it is to quantify thinking time, there has to be some price differentiation because the end product is just SO much better than if you’d just walked in, looked at the wall and gone “that one, please”.
Personally, I always try and get an idea of how long the design has taken her and just pay her the extra. It’s amazing work and she deserves it. Would it bug me if I was charged directly? No, so long as the end product met my needs sufficiently. I would hope that we get to a point when all this creative/design work is regarded as important enough to be paid for … in all arenas.
Joshua said 928 days ago:
Absolutely I agree with you that it should be impossible to receive great design on a budget, unless of course it’s from a student or something trying to start out a portfolio.
And yes, they should charge for things like thinking time, just as any business would make sure to include in their pricing structure all things that contribute to the job.
Ty Hatch said 928 days ago:
I think Lance nailed the core of the debate. I recently had a potential project come and go and then come back because they realized that even though they could pay “a cousin” to do it for $500, they wouldn’t get an effective website for their business. To them, the visual design is just as important as the functionality of the site.
It’s a chicken/egg issue as both are equally important. But back to Jon’s original question: Yes, it’s possible. But so is getting struck by lightning. ;)
Dave Gregory said 928 days ago:
I wholeheartedly agree with Craig C. #6.
Just as any kind of designs, think, build, test, re-think, update, re-test, etc..
I have found that my phase 1 of any design, is typically lousy, but as things go on further, they get better.
Some are good at making fairly good design quickly, but I have not seen great design done quickly.
Nick Harris said 928 days ago:
Matt,
Flattery will get you everywhere ;)
And I agree with what you said about taking TGC to a higher level, and this including thinking time. To me, that is the difference between good design and great design. TGC = good design. TGC + imagination = great design.
Christopher Anderson said 926 days ago:
Wow, what a great question!
I’m no site designer by trade, but I truly feel that you should be able to charge for ‘thinking time.’
Let’s say you start off with a couple of ideas/requirements from the client. You Photoshop, you code, etc. You get a pretty nice looking design/interface that you feel will be a great match for the client’s requirements/needs. You are done, for the most part, and this will be site “A.”
But during this process, after a few hours or days to let things process, you start thinking about a few other ideas, way out of left field that you feel would be a great fit for the site’s overall feel and flow. You put those in, and find that this leads to even more ideas that get implemented. By the time you are done ‘thinking’ (and implementing) you might have a site that is totally different that what you originally had. So the site has changed completely from its first iteration and this is site “B.”
All of this said, then do you charge for the work and time for site A or B, or both, even though the client only gets to choose from either? I say both.
Of course, you probably propose site A to the client, either get approval or no, and go about your business from there, so I’m sorry to make things muddier here, again, I’m not a designer by trade. ;o)
I absolutely think that ‘thinking time’ is billable to a client, but then again, if you are thinking for a week, and nothing is happening (no ideas, no implementation), that’s tough to charge for.
petros said 926 days ago:
This mention of “thinking time” reminds me of a documentary I saw about Michaelangelo on BBC Learning.
When Michaelangelo was hired to sculpt the statue of David, he asked for a payment in advance. He was provided with a substantial amount of money as well as his “studio” with a huge block of marble that would eventually become the statue.
For 7 months (or something like that anyway), Michaelangelo would wake up in the morning, go to the studio and lock himself inside for the whole day.
During that period, Michaelangelo’s patron decided to check up on his progress. Upon entering the studio, he saw Michaelangelo sat staring at the giant marble block, which did not have a single chisel mark on it. Furious, the patron demanded as to why Michaelangelo had not started working, dispite the fact that he had been paid.
Michaelangelo simply replied “I _AM _ working”.
I think that good design takes alot of thinking time, analysis and planning…
1 said 925 days ago:
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johnie1 said 925 days ago:
A woman was strolling along a street in Paris when she spotted Picasso sketching at a sidewalk cafe. She asked Picasso to sketch her. He obliged and she asked “What do I owe you?” “Five thousand francs,” Picasso answered. “But it only took you three minutes,” she said. “No,” Picasso said. “It took me all my life.”
Tomislav said 925 days ago:
I think that you can. Please see my portfolio
Christopher Anderson said 925 days ago:
Sorry, this is off topic, but did anyone else notice that Quark’s new XPress 7 product box features a design that is similar to Jon’s logo? I just ran across a pic of it in the latest Macworld mag, and as soon as I saw the box, I thought of Hicks Design. ;o)
Didn’t Quark get in trouble a while back for lifting someone else’s design for their new logo?
Scroll down to the “QuarkXPress 7 Box Shot” area and have a look
Euan said 924 days ago:
There is no reason why clients shouldn’t pay for thinking time. However, paying higher fees it would seem reasonable to expect the output to be greater for the same thinking time when paying lower rates.
I am not a designer by trade but the work I do (excel – financial modelling) takes me time to put together for each project. However, in the same time I will get more done at an advanced level than someone charging lower rates.
Nathan Olsen said 924 days ago:
I don’t think this is so much a design issue as it is a business issue. A good businessman will mark-up his bill to the client to account for thinking time in his estimate. Sometimes, he’ll take a little bit of a loss because arriving at a great solution will take longer than it usually does; sometimes, he’ll make a little extra pocket change because everything he touches that day turns to gold. In the end, he will find a way to avoid a confrontation with his client that makes him have to explain why they should pay for him to stare at a sheet of paper and doodle, most likely figuring the cost into his comp and revision fees.
I think “great design” is something of a misnomer when talking about branding and advertising in any case. I think if you talked to the designer of any great ad campaign you would find that their final solution was delivered under a tight deadline and that they employed many design cheats and shortcuts that they had developed over the years to avoid “designer’s block”. What makes that designer great is usually not an unlimited time frame or budget, but years of experience.
And, to respond to those posters that believe in designing and then re-designing a project for a client as part of the process, I think one would be hard pressed to find a client that would be happy with such a workflow. First, I think information architecture and design are being confused, the former needing to be hammered out before the latter is attempted. Second, clients expect their ad agencies/designers to display confidence in their work. It’s fine if a client rejects your first round of comps; it’s not so fine if they love your comps and then you go back to them and tell them to fall in love with something else. It’s confusing and unprofessional. If they’ve been sold on a comp, it’s because they were told (by you) that it was the best way to communicate their message to their target audience. And they believed you. Changing your mind half way down the road because you hadn’t thought everything through I think it a great way to poison your relationship with the client.
Oscar F said 924 days ago:
I believe you can get “OK” design on a budget, but not great design, just as with any other service an individual or a company pays for.
Great designs (again just like any other service) come from great designers, and it’s highly unlikely that these great designers would put most of their efforts on a project with a very small budget. They will naturally focus their “thinking time” on the most profitable projects, which they will always (most likely) have on the table.
And yes I do believe clients should pay for “thinking time” when it comes to design, since that’s just the planning process of the final product, just as clients have to pay for requirements gathering, system analysis and design when they request a software to be developed for them.
Stewart Curry said 924 days ago:
Do you ever do any work on “mate’s rates”? I’m working on a website for a friend’s band, and they have a miniscule budget to work with. The deal I made is that , in return for a large degree of creative freedom, I’d design their site for them for next to nothing…
Jon Hicks said 924 days ago:
Wow, these are really interesting responses folks! I do particularly like how James summed it up:
Keep your thoughts coming…
Euan said 923 days ago:
I have had a real problem in the hijacking of my design work. I do a fair amount of design work for the charity I’m employed by (I’m employed in a non-design role!). The CEO (it’s a small charity) tends to work closely with me on different design projects – I’m talking about him sitting next to me and going through ideas he’s got and wanting me to visualise them. It’s been a frustrated time as I’m essentially the tool he uses to visualise and tidy up the ideas he has in his head – and he’s no designer! So I’m producing some mediocre stuff (in my opinion) as a result as I’m not really getting any input apart from that of being able to use a computer and some design packages. I’ve gradually begun the process of trying to educate him in the way I ‘do’ design and that the final result might be different to how he initially sees it, but be much more considered in its approach.
My point is I guess, sometimes it happens that no matter what the budget is there can be restraints on how great the design is because of the influence of an overbearing client; their wants and opinions.
Do we strive for great design or is our responsibility to please the client?
My hope is that I’m getting a balance whereby I’m trying to educate the client as to what great design is so that they can appreciate it and therefore accept it.
Stephen said 923 days ago:
I would say the difference between great design and good design is accessibility and userbility – is it what the client wanted – if it is then that particular project was a success.
paul handel said 923 days ago:
Should a client pay for thinking time?
Well, if you were the client, would you want your designer to be designing for you without thinking?
Allan Reyes said 923 days ago:
...and a great budget does not guarantee a great design! Yet, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”
Mark said 922 days ago:
One trend I have noticed going strong for a while now is people submitting an existing design to a designer then having them 1) make it work better and 2) modified till a goal is reached. This can cut both cost and time. There are two sides of the fence on this too. Some people get jobs because they charge more whether or not they are good and others charge too little and are awesome. Tough decision sometimes.
Jon Hicks said 919 days ago:
sorry folks, I’m getting some bad spam action lately, so I’m going to close comments on this one while I work it out
(Its my fault for circumventing the in-built anti-spam features in Textpattern, just so readers don’t have to preview before submitting)