A design project is a journey – but how much should you charge for it?

Emily Penny looks at the thorny issue of working out how much to charge.

Source: Phillip Southgate

Recently a new app has been rocking the boat on the London taxi scene. Black cab drivers are protesting over a new mobile service that they say acts like a meter, a method of charging that only they are entitled to use.
Charging by the meter is a premium model. Solicitors and plumbers are known for charging by the clock, perhaps because they’re needed in a crisis and they can. For most products and services, we expect a price upfront. Upfront ‘packages’ put the customer in control as there’s less risk and they can better manage their budget.
But compare the set menu to the ‘a la carte’ – it’s also a budget model. Whenever marketing focuses on price as a selling point, you’re probably at the value end of the market.  
As designers (I’m thinking of graphic design and branding), we’re in a crowded and competitive market, and buyers tend to hold the power. For this reason, we’re often asked to take part in beauty parades and jump through hoops to win work – and the service we provide is usually quoted for upfront. So just like the minicab drivers who must deal with the traffic and the diversions and honour the quoted price, we take a risk on how demanding the journey might be.
Changing that dynamic with clients is the subject of Blair Enns’ inspiring The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. Enns recommends that we specialise and become experts (just like black cabs). As in most other sectors, if you can build a reputation and a brand that reassures your customers, then you can change the relationship in your favour and charge a premium.
But ironic as it may, there’s a tendency for design businesses to shy away from applying the principles of branding to themselves. It’s easier, in the short-term anyway, to avoid sticking your neck out with a point of view and to blend in and compete as a commodity, chasing volume rather than margin.  
But, if you did call the shots, if you could choose exactly how to charge, how would you do it? Whatever the client can afford? An upfront quote based on estimated time? Or charge as-you-go, guaranteeing that your cover your time and that of your staff to the penny?
Or would you dispense with the hourly model altogether, maybe think about a fee that’s relative to the value of your work to the client?
The DBA Effectiveness Awards help both clients and agencies to think about the real value of design. Could you charge a fee dependent on the result? I hear stories (or are they myths?) about royalties or stakes as payment for graphic design, but it’s not at all common and usually sounds like a high-risk gamble for the designer, perhaps working with a start-up client.
The reality is that we have to think about cash-flow. The reason designers like an hourly model is that many are small businesses, and we tend to think about the short term: monthly salaries, monthly billing, and trying to balance the books. This short-term mentality makes charging by the hour feel more tangible and manageable, so quoting upfront is what we’ve come to accept.
Getting that estimate right however can be more art than science. Clients come in all shapes and sizes and what might sound like the same project for one is likely to be a very different experience for another. For this reason it’s unwise to have a set price list for particular deliverables. The more strategic or creative the project is, the less quantifiable it’s likely to be.
Being aware of what to look out for and what to ask your client at the outset is critical.
Three things contribute to the time needed for a project: the complexity of the problem, the complexity of the journey, and the complexity of the deliverables. And while we tend to focus more on the latter, it can be easy to overlook the first two – which is where you’re more likely to run into problems.

The complexity of the journey is probably where things most often go awry. There’s a complicated factor in there, and it’s called ‘people’. For many projects it’s as much about engaging the client team as it is about delivering a final ‘thing’. The design process is often a journey of discovery, enabling the client to clearly think through where they are and what they want.
You need to know who the decision-maker is and, if it’s a group, whether they have a shared vision and objectives, and how defined that vision is.
Some years ago I worked with a client team of mixed stakeholders, with different objectives. We sat them down and used exercises to help them share exactly what they thought about the current market, and where they thought the opportunities for the new brand were. They later revealed that despite going into partnership this was something they had never done. We couldn’t have answered the brief without first defining it and bringing this large group with us.
Recently I worked with a client team comprising four directors with different ideas about what success looked like. We ended up sitting them down with the design concepts and some scissors, and involving them in the design process and decisions. They didn’t want us to reveal ‘the answer’, they needed us to help them find it and believe in it themselves.
At the other end of a project, the downfall can be the lack of broader staff engagement. A wonderful experience and connection with the immediate project team throughout the creative process counts for little if staff are not on board to nurture and sustain a brand or design concept, bringing it to life.
The point is that as a design company, it’s good to aspire to being a ‘black cab’, building a trusted brand and making sure you’ve done ‘the knowledge’ to set yourself apart as an expert. And if you are required to commit to the fees upfront, so be it, but be sure to be reimbursed for the journey, not just the destination. It’s all part of what you’re delivering and how you’re adding value. Design consultancy is a service, not a one-size-fits-all product off the shelf.
Emily Penny is co-founder of Colourful Design Strategy.

(Fri, 27 Jun 2014 | By Emily Penny)

Is this the future of office design?

Today’s definition of the ‘working environment’ is a slippery concept. While traditional office spaces remain the norm – individual desks, meeting rooms, ‘breakout areas’, kitchens – the needs of most workers have changed in the past few decades in ways that leave these settings somewhat lacking.

Public Office Landscape collection, by Yves Behar and fuseproject

With the advent of new technology – in particular the ability to communicate with one another and see our co-workers pretty much wherever we are – the traditional office set-up is in many ways becoming redundant.
However, for all the Skypeing, emailing and Facetime, we often need to physically be with others to truly collaborate, but the traditional office set-up isn’t usually geared toward this.
This morning, we saw the results of a four-year investigation into the idea of the Living Office by design research company Herman Miller. The company showed a number of innovative office design solutions by Industrial Facility and Yves Behar’s fuseproject.
The designs look to solve the problems of traditional office furniture and special arrangements, setting out what Herman Miller terms a ‘vision and a framework’ that looks to help companies attract and retain talent through a more desirable workplace.
Research began in 2010, and focused on the changes in the needs of a workplace, which now exists as much in the virtual as the physical space.
This has, in part, democratised the space: for many workers, the facilities of the office space and their means of communicating with colleagues can be achieved just as easily at home. As such, the modern office needs to focus on what makes the office space necessary in the first place: easy and democratic collaboration with others.

Locale, by Industrial Facility

It’s this idea of enhancing collaboration, ease and productivity that Industrial Facility’s Locale furniture collection, created by the consultancy’s founders Sam Hecht and Kim Colin, aims to facilitate.
Hecht says, ‘We started off by having a conversation about what work meant. The idea that work is attached to a specific place is a historic concept. Previously, we needed to “go to work” to use equipment and be face to face with people – but with technology, what’s the reason to go there now?
‘We still need face-to-face conversation – so with Locale, we wanted a place for spontaneous, quick collaboration’.
‘The ideas are all based on proximity’, Colin adds. ‘Creativity happens where there’s movement. We have to learn to move more’.
The designs are in part inspired by the pair’s travels in Scandinavia, a region where office design looks to create adjustable spaces, both for ergonomic and social reasons through an ease of movement that creates a more dynamic, democratic feel.

Locale, by Industrial Facility

As such, every design in Locale is adjustable. When a colleague comes to speak to another, rather than hovering over them or perching on their desk in an almost patronising, domineering gesture, desks easily move up and down, so two people can stand around them in a more convivial arrangement.
During the development of the collection, Industrial Facility created a number of prototypes, working in each for a period of around three months before making the relevant tweaks. The final collection includes the D Desk and L Desk – both circular-shaped modular workspaces that are height-adjustable.
They also have adjustable screens at the back, meaning that for all the collaborative working they encourage, workers can also close themselves in for privacy.

Locale, by Industrial Facility

The other solutions to emerge from the Herman Miller research are the Public Office Landscape designs, created by Yves Behar and fuseproject. According to Herman Miller, the concept is the ‘first office system to support causal work and provide comfort, at the desk, in circulation space, and in group areas – all within a consistent design vocabulary’.
The concept is based around the Social Chair piece – a soft seat that promises to be able to accommodate ‘a range of people and postures’.

Public Office Landscape collection, by Yves Behar and fuseproject

Behar says, ‘Collaboration is everything. There’s no real reason to go to the office any more – the only reason is to collaborate with other people.
‘But in the [traditional office set-up] collaboration isn’t intuitive’.
He points out that meeting rooms are usually separate entities from the main workspace, and often hard to book through a series of request forms, diaries and office managers. Bypassing this, his Public Office Landscape concept allows collaboration and meetings anywhere, at any time, using pieces such as seats with bi-directional movement; moveable screens and AV facilities in open spaces.

Public Office Landscape collection, by Yves Behar and fuseproject

While all these designs are beautiful, and promise a very seductive and utopian way of working, it’s hard to imagine companies investing en-masse in these sort of design-led solutions any time soon. While this is, of course, a shame for workers – surely almost everyone wants to work in beautiful environment, supported by ergonomically savvy furniture – it’s also a shame for businesses too.
A Design Council report entitled Leading Business by Design was published in November last year, investigating how physically embedding design thinking into workspaces could affect productivity.  It showed case-study-based evidence that improving the ‘employee journey’ was as vital as improving the ‘customer journey’.
The report was followed by a conference of the same name this year, which saw many companies speak of how significant improvements to employee and brand performance can be brought about through redesigned office spaces.
So we have to agree with Herman Miller’s assertion that it’s time to rethink office design: the space itself, as the company says, has the power to ‘drive innovation and execution and bring an organisation’s strategy to life’.

(Tue, 24 Jun 2014 | By Emily Gosling, Design Week) 

'clockwork knife'

Seymourpowell has designed the branding for Heston Blumenthal’s new venture The Perfectionists’ Café, basing the identity around a ‘clockwork knife’ brand mark which ‘came out of thin air’.

The clockwork knife kinetic sculpture

(Tue, 10 Jun 2014 | By Emily Gosling, Design Week) 

Summer 2014

What's in store this Summer?

We've been analysing what trends the major retailers are responding to for the Summer season, as part of our Summer 2014 trend report. “It was really interesting to see a single trend have such dominance and presence across a broad spectrum of stores. A strong aquatic trend, which we have called ‘Calm Ocean’, was visible in nearly every summer collection both in the UK and USA.” - Anri Hamilton, Home Trends Editor. It was also great to see evidence of our Spring Summer 2014 Nature Prescription story in both London and New York stores including Habitat, Heals, SCP, West Elm and Crate and Barrel. (Trend Bible)