I know there have been a lot of postings on this topic in the past. As an educator at the Vancouver Film School Digital Design program this is one of the most asked questions. So here is a breakdown of my thoughts and one of the most famous design quotes to kick it off .
” If I had asked people what they wanted, They would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford
The creative process is a collaboration between the client and designer. Leverage the insight of both parties to maximize your results. Let’s look at the design process through these two lenses.
The Client
As a client are you willing to use 10 -35% of your annual revenue to create the proper experience for your organization?
Most designers have specialized training, specialized equipment, and a great deal of talent in order to deliver effective solutions based on organizational needs. Design is not about making things pretty, it is about solving problems, connecting people and growing businesses. When you hire a designer you are not hiring someone who understands how to use a piece of software; you are hiring someone who understands design culture, trends, and opportunities.
As a client you are a business owner who wants good value and the best ROI (return on investment) possible. This is where you should leverage a designers experience to understand what you want to accomplish. What are your organizational and growth goals? Why do you need the website? What purpose does is serve? How does it fit in with your portfolio of products and services? Is it experientially driven, transactionally driven or other? Do you require a or a brand direction? What is the difference between a brand and a logo (I.D.?) Do you require any education around brand touch points and how this affects the consumer’s perception of the company? Are you looking to move a product into a lifestyle experience? and so on…. Good designers should help your identify and find clarity or your needs.
Most organizations spend 30-60% of their revenue on marketing in order to grow new business. A good portion of this can go into an interactive / brand design or re-design. The most simple website will usually require at a minimum a few weeks of a designers time. Free lance designers operate similarly to trades people. Think about the cost of plumbers, carpenters, and electricians. Designers are no different and they provide sustained results for your organization. In my career I have worked on sites that cost anywhere from $6,000 – $250,000 and software applications that range from $30,000 -$40 million. Websites that cost from $600 – $10,000 per page.
In return you have an organization with clear goals and communication strategies. Interactive brand experiences that consider all touch points of the consumer journey. Each design medium is a strategic work of art that considers finadability, learnability, assistance, narrative, informational design, hierarchies, user flows, telemetry, visual identity, composition, typography, color theory, emotional responses, motivations, compulsions, calls to action, and social interactions. “Design is a consideration of things.” Success if born through your ability to collaborate and empower your design team.
The Designer
Are you being paid for your ideas or how you can transform ideas into products and services that work for a core consumers?
Clients generally do not understand all the costs involved in design. It is a foreign field and most of the time need to be some education involved. First and foremost I believe all designers must protect the integrity of our field. So step one is to price accordingly and remember every region has different rates. San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, Miami, Los Angeles etc. Things are going to cost more relative to your geographical location, and the cost of living. A designer in the Midwest and Prairies can live on a lower salary than most coastal cities.
Remember that your rates need to consider resources / talent, computers, software, specialized equipment, locations, releases, fees, dues, consumables, printing, typefaces, stock art, building leases, insurance, etc. As a designer you want to price fairly and ensure that you are unique selling proposition is not your price, but rather your success record. I great mentor once told me ” it takes most people 50 yrs to understand their value. You are not being paid for your knowledge of tools. You are being paid for your experience and ability to captain the creative process.”
In your first meeting you should listen and work with clients to understand their organizational goals. As the Creative Strategist at Transient Pod, I try to find clarity early. My first hour is always free and if I cannot help the client after the first hour I will give him a list of companies that I believe can.
The tricky conversation for most designers is often around pricing. If you find yourself in a situation where you are working with a small business then you can always try to draw relationships to value. A clients perception of value is key here. But proceed with caution. We have all experienced clients who are looking for a $10,000 website for $500. If early on a client does not understand the value you bring then I suggest you move on. You must protect the integrity of your own brand and service offering. If you decided to proceed then conversations with clients around costs in their lives can be a good start. Have you ever had a massage, taken a golf lesson, been to the spa, dined at a nice restaurant? Usually the answer is yes. Then I ask what it cost? Usually it is somewhere between $100 – $350 dollars. Then I ask how long the experience was. Usually about 1 -3 hrs. Ok so you are willing to pay $50 – $175/ hr for a good or entertaining experience. How much would you be willing to pay if that hour could increase your bottom line by 2, 5, 10, or 20% or more?
Also remember success metrics. Not all projects have metrics that have a direct correlation to the bottom line. Remember marketing can increase traffic and exposure but if the product or interactive experience does not meet the consumers expectations, then conversion can be low. Your metrics for a campaign are tied to traffic. If you are being hired to think of the entire user experience then you need to understand how exposure converts to transactions and churn. You will have to understand current telemetry and create metrics against this data.
Designers must also remember the design A, B, C’s. Are they in order? What is your creative capacity and does it align with the needs of the organization you are serving? Are you willing to use your experience to challenge the ideas of the client and deliver beyond their expectations? As designers your job is to understand the organizational needs of a client and provide the correct design solution for both them and the target consumers. Create an appropriate consumer insight strategy that clearly understands the goals of your target audience and allows you to develops strong personas. Understanding motivations is the only way you can effectively design desirable solutions. “Design is a consideration of things.” Success if born through your ability to manage the expectations of your client through communication, collaboration and a results driven design philosophy.
A Scenario
You are a small business who needs an interactive brand presence (website) and you have never created or are looking to re-align your brand strategy. How much time would this take to create?
First the brand. Branding is usually broken down into two areas. How the consumers feels about your product and service and the internal mantra / war cry you want to communicate to your organization to drive future growth. A lot of the time small businesses are looking for just an ID (identity.) A logotype that consumers can associate with the company, but I would encourage a client to talk to their designers because a proper brand strategy better helps support the organizational goals of the company. It also solidifies your vision and mission statements.
Second is the experience. How big is the experience. How many pages is the site, or experience? How much content is going to be involved? Does it need to work on computers only? Or does it need to work on computer, smart phones, and social networks. What technology is required? Flash does not work on most apple portable devices? Do you require a software engineer to create a server side application? Are their images, visual assets etc? If not the project will require a photo shoot, illustrations, or another kind of asset creation. Does the client what a specific typeface? What is the cost of this typeface? Who is going to write the content for the site? Do you need creative editorial writing or Search Engine Optimized writing for the web? An the biggest an most overlooked; who is going to maintain the website / brand experience?
Here is a breakdown of what goes into a project. The number of hours is dependent on the complexity, technology needs, and scope of the project.
Brand Strategy & Logo
- Research on competitive / competitive analysis
- Perceptual Mapping (understanding where you organization lives relative to others)
- Development of brand character, attributes, values, mission and vision statement
- Identification of target audience / persona creation (archetypes of your target consumer)
- Development of logo, logotype etc
Interactive – Web, Devices, Presentation
- Requirements gathering
- Finding Inspiration / Mood boards / Emotional Touch points
- Content Inventory (core information on the experience, identify calls to action CTA’s)
- Wireframes, user flows, interactive stories,
- Conceptual Mock Ups
- Visual Asset creation (photos, illustrations, images)
- Photo shoot or Stock Image purchases
- Writing for web, editorial writing, content strategy
- Production Ready Comps – Interfaces
- Style Guides and Graphic Standards
- Front End Development – Presentation Layer – Flash, PHP, Javacript,
- Server Side Engineering- Database, AI, E-commerce,
- Deployment and bug tracking
- Ongoing maintenance
- Ongoing writing for web / blogging
This is is only a rough outline. There can be more, less and everything in between. It does illustrate that even the most basic website requires a lot of work. The old analogy that was shared with me earlier in my career is this. A client will ask a designer for a Maple Sausage. Clients don’t need to understand everything that went into making the sausage, but it does have to taste like maple and the client needs to willing to pay for the production costs.
Author – Miles Nurse Copyright © Transient Pod - If you would like to understand how we can put this to work for you please feel free to contact us using the link at the bottom of the page.
