by Teresa Thomas (@themamateresa), Sisarina
If you’re having a website built, chances are that the design is the most expensive part. Why is that? Isn’t functionality more complicated? Isn’t the content the key for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
The short answer is:
Because it takes so long.
The long answer is why this is a blog post and not a tweet:
Design takes time. While designers do have some pretty fun tools and some quasi-magical skills, so far they haven’t found a way to plug their brain into the computer and render a design straight from their minds (I think that’s due out next year). While their tools do make things easier and their training and experience (and artistic eye) means that they spend less time “trying things out” and finding that they don’t work, there is still much to be done to create the perfect website or logo or book cover or whatever.
A very, very short list includes:
- Getting to know the client and his/her/their color preferences, personality, etc.
- Researching the client’s field. (What do bank sites usually look like? How do most breast cancer sites present themselves?)
- Color and layout experimentation. (Have you ever spent an hour trying to get your picture into JUST the right spot on your blog? Designers do this more quickly, but they still have to do it.)
- Image research. (Anyone who’s slogged through iStockPhoto.com knows what a time suck this can be.)
- Font searches.
- Revisions. (Trying to correctly translate a client’s verbal descriptions of the picture of what’s in their head into a physical design is tricky at best.)
You can check out Melanie’s post on “HOW TO: Write Your Own Design Scope” for a detailed list of the things a designer needs just to BEGIN a project to get an idea of how much time they spend on a project.
How is your cost determined?
By how much time your project is likely take the designer to complete.
A quick refresh of an old logo is going to cost you less than a complete Identity Package because the refresh will take far less time. Instead of thinking of your new website design or logo or pamphlet layout as an item you pull off of a shelf at Brookstone, who’s price is determined by how fancy it looks or how well it is constructed, think of it as a person sitting at a desk, who’s price is determined by how long he or she will be sitting there.
While your logo can be put on almost anything, a design itself is not a physical product. If you see a logo, try it on and decide it doesn’t fit, the designer can’t put that logo up on a shelf and re-sell it to the next client that comes along. The time he or she spent on that project is gone. Even if you completely love the design and put it on absolutely everything, that time is spent.
Because your designer chooses to spend all that time designing something amazing instead of…I don’t know, riding elephants in a circus or something… you pay him or her. You pay for each hour that they are working for you and not for the circus. Those hours are many. And you are grateful. Because riding elephants would be amazing, but wouldn’t give you a logo or websites or business cards or anything other than elephant poo.
What about development? Isn’t it more important than elephant poo too? Why does it cost less than design? I’ll tell you later in another post.
Promise.
