GDE 730

WEEK 2

Business Models, Studios, Estimating, Invoicing & Budget Management  

This week we focus on different models of business in the design industry and how they price their work and go about the business of design.

The main question driving the week was:

How do you prepare a quote and accompanying paperwork for a prospective design project or creative initiative of your choosing?

Lecture – The Business of Design

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Then at the end we try, we don’t always have time, to have a mini wrap up where we will sit together after the job is over and talk about how we feel it went financially, emotionally, between the team, who handled it well, who didn’t. It’s a helpful tool in moving on and being better at projects in the future.

Kate Moross

The lecture was very enlightening, I always related to the business of design as being a freelancer or part of a studio or agency. I think I conflated a studio and agency into one type of business. This clarified that there are differences. I would say I pretty much work as a freelancer but I don't practice as an individual rather as a corporate entity, so you could say at present I'm in between a freelancer and a small studio cross. I hire freelance designers, copywriters or animators on a project basis. Apart from that I do most work on my own.

Studio_Kate

Kate Moss's conversation was interesting what really resonated with me was the how she has divided the practice into internal departments depending on the kind of work that comes in. Her process and fee structure and mini wrap up practices were most relevant to me. The process was quite simple in how it worked and I can relate to it in the way I work. The fee structure was not something I actually anticipated, the fact that they have different types of focus for jobs, I always thought the only two ways were project based estimates or per hour small jobs. The 'silly money' and 'lose money' categories really opened up my mind in terms of how one can go about charging for work. The mini-wrap up is something I've engaged in with larger teams inside in-house teams for companies but I never thought about it as something to do with one's own creative team and to also cover the emotional aspect. Usually jobs are done and people complain while its happening but when it's done part from a post-mortem about what went right and wrong emotions aren't really a consideration. I think this is something I will adopt with my team. Thanks Kate!

Agency_Neef

I would say Neef's presentation offered the most to me in terms of learning, and key ideas I want to take away and apply to a future speculative studio. The idea of an agency having multiple revenue streams and not just being a sevice but also selling products really was intriguing to me. And how one area can feed into the other area and provide a safety net. I would love to apply this and am already thinking of how this could be implemented in my speculative infographic studio idea. The other really awesome idea of a coach being on a working team I thought was brilliant. Would love to see how this can be implemented.

Collective_Lisa

The collective was by far my favourite model. I would love to work for Lovers if I could. To me as a designer this is the most exciting type of model and I never really thought a design business could be a collective. This was new to me. I like that this type of arrangement could be implemented remotely and that it becmes this community you belong to. And the idea that they work on only projects they love is the most fulfilling part of such an arrangement to me. 

Freelance_Theo

Freelancer is the method which I am most familiar with as I myself am one. One thing I found interesting was that the UK uses DAY RATES that concept is very new to me. Here in Canada we only use project based amounts or hourly rates to bill. A day rate sounds like an interesting idea. It would be so much better to quote a day rate. I will try thid out with future clients. 

Panel Discussion

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The panel discussion was a good listen. Most of the questions and answers were more or less something I've heard before or can anticipate as part of being in a design business. There wasn't much extra here that added much value for me. 

Workshop Challenge

CHALLENGE: Map a resourcing model for budget and staff allocation to deliver a project or creative initiative of your choice. As the last week of this project brief requires you to write a more substantive strategic plan, please ensure you choose a topic or client that is most suited to your own practice interests.

At the start of this challenge I pretty much just went about it as I would quote a client. I chose a client I currently work with and made the brief and project based on a speculative requirement by the kind of studio I'm creating. 

When it came to costing, our webinar this week was more focused on next week's content and not week 2. So I used the 'Creative Earners' yearly report from last year to estimate how to cost stuff. This survey is done in Canada by the RGD every year and covers not only salaries but also how business bill hourly for these services and also how much freelancers charge hourly for these types of services. So this was my basis for the actual challenge this week. 

As week 3 came around Ben's webinar focused on costing, and gave me a new way to look at this. So while I didn't redo Week 2 challenge I am goign to take what I have from the 'Creative Earners' report and what I learned from Ben and use it to do calculations again for the Business Plan assignment. I will come back here and add more stuff once that is done.

This was the proposal I created for the workshop challenge:

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Costing 

For the costing part of this week's challenge I relied the numbers presented in the 'Creative Earners' report for 2021. I highlight the relevant pages and figures that factored into how I costed the projects. First I looked at salaries for a creative director which I am, and also senior, intermediate and junior graphic designers. I also looked at copywriters and front-end web developers because of the kind of products my speculative agency would charge for. Next I looked into freelance hourly rates as day rates are not a thing in Canada. I also looked at comparable data of what graphic design businesses charge for such areas as design, illustration, data viz/infographics, copywriting, and web development.

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I use these and Ben's costing sheet and calculations to then calculate rates for different creatives on the team and also an estimate of how to cost for different projects. This shows up inside my Business Plan assignment in Week 4. 

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After researching salaries and rates in Toronto, Canada from various sources. I applied Ben's costing method to create a chart of the costs for the roles I anticipate for my speculative studio. Here is the table where I have done my calculations:

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Final thoughts and reflection

I'm not a numbers person, but I have costed for freelance projects in the past. Going through the lectures and also the webinar really got me present to the fact that there is a proper way to cost and figure out how much to charge for design services and deliverables. This is learning I will take forth into my practice.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. 

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Week 1: Planning, Strategy and Management
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Week 3: Legal and IP Frameworks

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