Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Milena Živković; Source: designed.rs
It’s a known fact that young creatives have a problem to determine the price of their work. However, time and place in which we live has led to a situation that even the experienced and often award-winning artists cannot determine the price of their work due to the current state of the market. How and why did we come to this situation?
After more than ten years working in advertising agencies and design studio, I realized that some customers are not interested in the quality of work but only its monetary value. More specifically, they’re interested only in how much they have to pay to engage a creative. Sometimes I feel like I’m working in a flea market, and that all I need to communicate is how much a logo, a label or an illustration costs. I even thought of putting up a price list in front of the studio, same as the restaurants do, so individuals could know if they have big enough (read: small) budget for the service that they want to get.
What happened to the QUALITY of work? Are the quality of services, expertise, level of creativity, reliability, proactive, long-term knowledge of the market, insight and professionalism really not that important? How is it possible that the client doesn’t care how their product / service will be introduced to a market that isn’t forgiving? Or they actually care, but think it’s absolutely indifferent to whom the job will be entrusted? There’s constant mentioning that a lot of money is invested in other activities that accompany the launch of products / services on the market, and that additional investment in its looks is overrated!?!?
Why do I constantly come across the situation that the price is the only factor when deciding whether to work with artists (here I mean designers, painters, sculptors, architects and others). This isn’t even a secret anymore. Clients clearly communicate their decision.
When asked by a client how can a making of a single design cost SO MUCH when the designer did it in only 15 minutes, the calculation goes like this: behind the half-an-hour of work of an experienced creative stands four years of studies, one year of internship, two years of additional academic training, a couple of years of work on lowest positions, several years on the position of senior designer or art director, and countless sketches, logos, labels, illustrations, projects… In order for a designer to be able to draw something in 15 minutes takes a lot of time and investment, and that has its price. Of course there is a difference in quality, but the works speak for themselves. Respect for the work of a designer / artist is expressed through awards, praise, and even monetary compensation, because, at the end of the day, that’s how you make a living.
Perhaps the time has come that all creatives post their services on a single site, and to program a filter “Sort by price ascending” so individuals could choose the service that suits them. Or maybe this is just a decade’s long trend and all will soon pass.
I concluded that low price is important to people who don’t care to invest time and money into making their products/services something worth paying.
P.S. I won’t even go into talking about how many of them return after a year with a request to do a complete redesign of something that was done by someone at “favorable” prices. You’d be surprised. Some have figured it out, but what about the others?