Understanding Design Costs/Contracts
Nobody Wants Their Budget to Blow-Up!
Part of what we want to do here at Anthrobranding is to help educate you, the normative sized church, about matters of design. So that you will be empowered to pursue these things with confidence, whether in house or through an agency, like us. One of the biggest unknown areas when it comes to design is the money aspect. To be fair, most creatives are not good with this side either so you aren’t alone. You’ll find in this post a basic rundown of what to expect and look for to ensure that you get what you pay for and to keep your budget from being blown wide open.
Contracts
If you only remember one thing from this blog it is this:
CLARIFY, CLARIFY, CLARIFY, CLARIFY, CLARIFY, and when you think everything is understood, CLARIFY one more time.
The best way to increase your chances of staying on budget and getting the logo or design that you want is to clarify and communicate. In order to do this well, you need to understand a few pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the business side of design.
You need to understand how they (designer/company) are going to charge you for their work. The two most common ways will be either, per hour or per project. Both of these are pretty straight forward when it comes to understanding how they work. This should be the first thing that you look for in contracts. The next part you should look for is the finer details of these.
They will show you the estimated man-hours going into the project
Some companies have a minimum threshold for this, so if your project is only 2 hours of work, they may require a 5 hr. minimum be met.
Other industries use minimums in a similar fashion so this shouldn’t be too foreign for you.
They will show you a pricing total for the project.
Sometimes they will show the estimated man-hours of the project, so you can see the value, and estimated savings for you.
You can expect this in our proposals with your church
The next thing to look at will be the scope of the contract. Now, this usually includes exactly what is expected as well as how many revisions their proposal covers. Revisions are somewhat self-explanatory, but there are different ways that they are considered in these contracts. The sub-points to this will be how they show up in proposals
If they are charging you per hour, they will either explain how many revisions they have included in their estimates. So you can understand that the hours they are estimating are accounting for a certain amount of revisions
While others will not include revisions, so you will have to communicate with them to ensure that your change requests are not pushing them beyond their hourly cap.
Per project pricing is going to be the same way, most will include a specific amount of revisions as part of the pricing of the estimate.
If you do not see this, make sure to clarify with them to ensure that you stay within the scope of the estimate, keeping you on budget.
Take your time to understand these different aspects so that you can understand which avenue will be the best value for you and your church.
The next important thing to understand is the structure of payment expected. We all want to know when we will be billed and how much we will be billed for. So pay special attention to their billing policies. There are a few different elements that may be new or unfamiliar for you or the church.
It is fairly common that they will require a payment upfront before the work begins. This is especially true if they are doing the milestone payment structure, see the next major section for more on this.
Expect this to be in the ballpark of about 50% of the total contract.
The majority of the work of the project is in the creating and developing a presentable product for you to evaluate. This will easily take about 50% of the time of the total projects
Milestone payment structures will attach a percentage of total due at each milestone agreed upon by you and the company. This looks something like this: 50% at the start, 25% after the first revision, 25% at the completion of the project. They should explain or list this out for you within the contract.
This is helpful to both you and the company as it provides amiable times where the partnership can continue or if you are displeased can discontinue after these marks.
Allowing you to only pay for the work completed, and ensure they have been paid for the work they had done up to that point.
Most companies will structure exit points at these milestones but, not all. So make sure you know if you have these exit points or not.
Some service-specific tips
Website
Understand what is included in the estimated costs
Are they including domain and hosting costs?
If they are using a platform, are they including the usage costs?
Are they planning on maintaining the website after it is completed?
Are they building in a retainer for their services for a certain time period?
Is the scope of work for their retainer defined if it is in the contract?
These can all add up to a significant total and should be understood before you start work
We will include the hosting and domain into our costs and then add our services to that so you will not be surprised when these bills appear.
Logos
How comprehensive will their design be?
Are they only making an icon?
Are they creating a wordmark as well?
Are they creating an identity system for you?
Are they creating and providing documents for you to understand how to use each element and maintain consistency?
These services can go from cheap to expensive in a heartbeat if you do not clarify what you specifically want and what they are planning on doing.
Final Advice
This is by no means a comprehensive lesson on contracts and design, but it will put you on the right path to understand these things. A few more points I want to make in regards to churches and how they interact with designers/outside companies in general:
First and foremost, you are an ambassador of Christ and anyone you work with should see Christ in you through their interactions with you.
Don’t be cheap, seek to be fair and charitable with them.
Let them enjoy working with you, leave a good witness (especially true if working with those outside the faith).
Secondly, find someone in your church that is familiar with contractors and working with contracts to help you through these conversations.
Clarify
Again, if you are unsure, even to a small degree, clarify. It is better to ask and clarify than to let it slip and find a bill for way more than what you wanted to pay.