Pricing Problem

[sitkan]

Has anyone heard of a Fingerprint mailer. I'm not sure if it is a variety of direct mail advertising or just the name of a particular promotional piece, and my boss wants me to find out!
:(

[publisher]

This is an interesting topic but how long is a piece of string?

There is no point in pricing yourself out of work.

Here is an example.

Two designers

Designer A quotes price of $300 a day
Designer B quotes price of $350 a day.

The publisher/editor meets both of them and says all he/she can afford to pay is $200 a day.

Designer B says thanks but no thanks.

Designer A says I'll take this but can we review after three months.

Job goes to Designer A who is employed three days a week and after three months rate is increased to $275.

Designer B meanwhile is either very successful at finding work at the higher rate or is getting little or no work.

If the latter is the case, should he/she reconsider the pricing structure.

Also don't forget that while designers factor in costs such as office space/equipment etc, this does not apply if they are working on site.

In some cases, publishers will also provide training, free of charge, in systems such as In Design, and will factor this into the money they pay.

It's different strokes for different folks but if you are looking for work, you need to compromise every now and then.

[skirklan]

Originally Posted by publisher

Two designers
Designer A quotes price of $300 a day
Designer B quotes price of $350 a day.
The publisher/editor meets both of them and says all he/she can afford to pay is $200 a day. Job goes to Designer A who is employed three days a week and after three months rate is increased to $275.

And of course, it never happens that the job takes longer or isn't done quite right; Cheap Joe takes longer because he's not sure of what he's doing; whereas if the publisher had been smart enough to realize that hiring the more expensive, more competent designer, he would have cut his losses in the long run.

As I said, base your price on your abilities. Higher priced designers know type, understand design and don't spend time looking for direction. Even in this business, you get what you pay for. If it makes you feel more comfortable to hire a person who charges $200 a day and takes 10 days, fine. But there are advantages to hiring an expert for 5 days at $350 and getting the job done, too. We're not making widgets; and experience counts more when producing creative solutions. No comparison of dollars can predict outcomes.

Then again, let's say the designer reduces his rate, works for three days and the job ends. Will you still be glad you reduced your rate? For every young designer reading this, keep in mind the "reduce your rate if want more work" can also be just another dangle of that carrot in front of the horse. I was offered a lower rate for some catalog work; I was young and looking for full time work. They couldn't afford to pay my freelance rate, so they offered me a full time job; guess what? My full time job ended before the 90 day probationary period; so they had successfully gotten me to work for less, unwilling to pay my higher freelance rate, and had no obligation for health benefits or unemployment benefits. How slick is that?

Danger, danger, Will Robinson.

[publisher]

Good point Susan and as a former freelance journalist I would always advocated that freelances get the best rate they can find.

But sometimes publishers are only looking for low-spec work and won't feel a high rate is justified.

I also know that if a freelance journalist is getting paid a daily rate of $200, the publisher/manager will feel justified in offering same to designer.

In a competitive marketplace, employers are always looking at the bottom line and my point remains that sometimes you should be prepared to compromise.

[skirklan]

Huh, I can do a journalists' job; but I don't know any journalists who can do my job.:p

[publisher]

The world is changing. I have fought long and hard with several publishers to stress the importance of design but multi-tasking, especially in business to business journals, is now a reality.
One of the best designers I worked with started out as a sub-editor straight out of college, learned her design skills on the job and then got mentored by one of our company's senior designers.
Let's also not forget that desktop publishing has changed the whole way the media works.
I'm not advocating a race to the bottom for designers but I know publishers who when faced with dwindling revenues will always want to cut the design budget before anything else.

[LJDesignUtah]

http://www.lisajackson.biz/freelancers

[leicam13]

Hello All,

I want to edit single pixels. I don't mind using the clone stamp, or even painting the color I want pixel by pixel. Anytime I set the size to 1 pix and the hardness to 100% which is what I think I need to do, it still feathers to adjoining pixels. Thanks in advance.

LeicaM13

[Trevor Somers]

Does what ever your working on LOOK "Jagged" (like little blocks)? If it does you are NOT zoomed at 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% in photoshop. you are zoomed in to just one pixel and based on how big the size of your image is you are looking at, you are zoomed in between 102 - 10000000%. Try zooming it back to 100%, 75%, 50% or 25% and see if that helps. It should. What you are doing (Zooming in and looking at the image) will NOT effect the output in anyway in Photoshop BTW regardless if your printing it or putting it on the web. It has to do with how YOU see things in Photoshop and the way Photoshop displays things.

I got this little tip from Alex Lindsey. Alex worked in the computer animation department - on the "Star Wars Episode 1 - Attack of the Clones" movie.

Hope that helps.

[leicam13]

Trevor,

Thanks for your reply. However, I didn't quite understand what you meant. So let me elaborate. I can zoom the view to 1600% in order to easily see what I thought were individual pixels or as you called them 'blocks'. I can then set a clone tool to 1 pix and 100% hardness (perhaps I am misinterpreting hardness for opacity) which I assumed meant I was working on 1 pixel. However, when I performed a clone procedure on what I thought was a single pixel, the surrounding pixels changed also.