I was hoping I would find some people in the industry that could help me decide what's the best price to charge to design (in this case) business cards.
What are standard prices for professional designers?
From a firm point of view? From a freelancer?
I don't want to overcharge clients but I don't want to ruin the industry by underselling my services.
I assume you are asking how much you should charge to design a business card. The answer to that is:
your hourly rate * the number of hours it takes you to complete the job
The key is to figure out your hourly rate. That is:
annual revenue $ / # BILLABLE hours you work per year
Your annual revenue is all the money you need to bring in to cover all expenses and leave yourself a profit for your salary.
annual revenue $ =
desired salary + insurance + equipment + software + office supplies + etc
Your billable hours are the hours you can actually bill a client for doing work. This will NOT be 40 a week.
annual billable hours =
(40 - non billable hours) * (52 - (vacation + sick days))
Non billable hours are all the hours you spend running the business rather than actually doing client work. High end firms hope to get 75-90% billable hours out of their billable staff. On your own, expect that to be closer to 50%, as it takes a lot of hours to just keep the business going (accounting, billing, marketing, travel, tech support, training).
If you are looking for some answers on pricing, I read a really good article called: "The Dark Art of Pricing" by Jessica Hische if you haven't already seen it take a look it helped me.
A few bullet points:
Pricing hourly punishes efficiency.
Pricing hourly seems much easier than flat rate pricing, but because you have to give clients a ballpark full-cost price upfront (the total hours you plan to work x hourly rate), you can end up in a very tough spot if you don’t have a firm grasp on how long it takes you to do things. You’re nearing the halfway point in the project and are already over the total hours you’re contractually committed to. What does this mean?
Licensing and Rights-Management
Most designers take into account the hours they’ll put into a project when coming up with a price, but the seasoned professionals use it as part of the way they quote a project, and not as the only defining factor. Once you feel comfortable with your hourly rate and can somewhat accurately predict how long it will take you to do something, there are a few other things to consider that will boost your prices and turn this design hobby of yours into an actual sustainable career.
Correspondence
They didn’t give me much to go on here aside from the actual work I’m creating. It sounds like a cool job, but I’m going to need to do some investigating before giving a proper quote. The biggest young designer mistake here would be to quote a flat fee without finding out what kind of usage rights they want.
What We Know
Pricing for Presentation
Sample Usage Scenarios
How do you know if you priced right?
Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about pricing?
The Pricing Domino Effect
How good are you compared to your competition? Especially local competition.
Is there a lot of competition in your area?
What's the local economy like?
Are there a lot of small business?
Do the businesses seem to care much about branding, or is it almost entirely word of mouth?
How much time do you spend on a given project?
Pricing is probably one of the hardest things to figure out in this field. There is no perfect answer, just different opinions.
That said, a decent measure I'd go by is at least 1.5 - 2x what you would be willing to work for per hour at an hourly job. You'll spend more time looking for new clients, negotiating, briefing, and pitching to clients than you will doing work on the clock.
In addition to the sorta-mathematical ways to determine a price shown above, the soundest piece of wisdom I've heard regarding this is "Don't submit a rate unless you're embarrassed by it"
If you are charging a flat rate based on the project, as you mentioned earlier, make sure you give a clear description of what that covers. Some clients, as I'm sure you know will ask for many revisions while others will gladly accept what you design for them on the first round.
So setting clear expectations around your 'fixed price' will help avoid awkward conversations later about how they need to pay you for overtime when you never really set hours to begin with.
Try to discuss:
I encourage you to visit the American Institute of Graphic Arts, AIGA.org, for pricing models, guidelines, competitive strategies, and psychology (the value of aesthetics in dollars). Search for "pricing" from their home page.
Support them.
As an aside: A request for "business card design" is actually a cry for a brand identity program. Establishing a brand identity for your client first makes all the stationery requirements for the enterprise a cakewalk. Work on the program and everything else will begin to fall into place harmoniously, aesthetically, and practically. Your client will recognize your brilliant logic.
Then, as part of the above established brand identity design criteria, I would propose various layouts for promotional materials.
This is more than merely responding to a simple request. It is recognizing what is really needed by a potential client. Separate design from production. Price accordingly.
If you are designing for less than 25 an hour I probably wouldn't hire you. You bid too low you loose, you bid too high you always win. You either get the job, or they can find someone cheaper. It's important to read the client needs and get as much information as possible before submitting the final bid. Sample information need for a BC would be:
