- Years ago, someone brilliant told me,
"Every client has no time and no money to spend."
And this has proven to be true.
Nobody has ever called me and said,
"I've got way too much money and all the time in the world."
Without getting too deep into the business issues,
when approached by a client, we ask plainly,
"What is your budget for this project?"
It may seem awkward,
but this isn't the same as asking,
"How much do you make?" at a party.
It's business and it helps you do your job better.
If I know the overall budget for a project,
I can plan accordingly.
I had a client who was opening a new restaurant.
He told us right away,
"I have no budget set for the marketing materials.
I have to do this as cheaply as possible."
From this, I found a multitude of ways to save money.
I used it as a guide and designed it
to take advantage of cheap color copies,
off the shelf materials and the bottom of the barrel paper.
There are so many ways to work with a set budget.
If I have a $5,000 budget for printing
and the printing estimates come in at $7,000,
I can do several things,
change the quantity, use less expensive paper,
discard any special techniques like die cutting,
search for existing off the shelf folders.
What I won't do is accept lower quality
with a cheaper printer.
In this instance, you get what you pay for.
Since you've already put the suite of materials
into a rollout plan,
you can decide to eliminate an item or add it to the list
if the estimates are under budget.
Now this is important.
Don't ever cheat yourself to fix a budget problem.
Lowering your rates devalues you
and sends a message that they were arbitrary originally.
Your talents have value, and there is no reason
why the designer should be the only person underpaid
in the chain.
Instead delete some of the items to be produced,
lowering the hours to do the work.
Just make sure you produce the best product possible.
If someone has a budget that's too low to do the job well,
nobody will be happy if it looks cheap and terrible,
regardless of how much they save.