One of the most common questions I get from other designers is around pricing. I usually start off by saying "don't sell yourself short, no client is worth it". Which is usually followed by "yeah but I need the money/portfolio/fame/experience/etc...". The fact is that, like anything, if you do it once, if you compromise your integrity for quick cash, if you sell your self short, even just once (regardless of the reason) it becomes progressively easier to continue down that road. And in the end your work suffers because you take on too much to make a comfortable living, you end up with nothing you'd want in your portfolio, and most of all you don't get a chance to learn. I don't mean that you won't learn to get faster because you will; you'll find where you can cut corners and quality for the sake of speed and delivery. What you won't learn though is how to evolve, how to build quality in your work that justifies the cost, and most of all you won't learn how to balance your life and work which could ultimately burn you out and force you to loose interest in what you do. And then what do you have? A half-baked career and a desire for a job where you don't have to think.

In addition to loosing your self respect, creativity and drive, you will also end up with a nightmare client. Clients who expect something for nothing are usually the biggest pain in the ass because they don't value your time and ability to begin with; to them you are a "worthless commodity" (to steal a line from the martini shaker). Too many talented artists are lost to the abyss of under pricing. I'm not advocating price gouging or pricing beyond your abilities, but you deserve to get paid what you are worth, and you're worth more than $35 and a six pack.

My $0.02...

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Design, Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.