- The first thing I really need to get to the bottom of is how much do I need to be charging - Ive been told told a million times to charge a flat rate or daily and to not undersell my self but everyone seems to avoid the topic of how much to actually charge !! I've been told in the range of £10-35 an hour, which isn't massively helpful. - so I've been charging 15-20
- I had a commission to do 8 pages of illustrations in a broacher and we agreed 15 hour. But when I sent my rate for each one estimating that each would take me 8 hours she said that I shouldn't spend more than 3/4 hours on each one because (her budget was obviously 45-60 per illustration). However, for the first one for example, she wanted a gut inside a person with a garden inside (all drawn in illustrator). I had to decline because it wasn't possible and the woman got really upset by this. I think it can be difficult for non creatives to understand how long a piece of art takes to make. In the future I need to be more clear in my response on the timings of the different parts of the process so they can more clearly understand how long things take.
- Another struggle that I had was a woman who wanted me to do 6 spot illustrations for her website. We were in contact a lot and we had spent a long time discussing what she wanted. She initially set me a quite a strict deadline of a week do do them. I had plans that week but I wanted the money and experience so I moved them. When I sent her the final conformation she then took a month to reply to then try to set another really strict deadline. In the end I told her it wan't possible. However, reflecting on it I'm now questioning weather I should have charged her for all the time I spent emailing her and speaking on the phone.. this is something I need to ask about.
- The last question that I need to get an answer to is do I send a client the full illustrator file (for a logo) or just the p,ng so they can't edit my artwork - or is this something I need to agree in a contract? I designed a logo for a client and wrote that commission off as finished. However she then got back in contact with me to ask for 8 varitions of it for her to put on her instagram and website, before realizing she had the translation wrong 3 times and changing the brand name, so I had to do 32 variations !! This is not what I wanted to be doing with my time at all and not worth the money. However I felt like I needed to or she would be unable to use her logo. Should I have just handed over the original artwork and told her to change it herself? - I'm not sure what the standard is on this. But I also didn't want to change parts of my logo so that it didn't look how I designed it but was still under my name i.e. unaligned text, altered typefface.
All in all the whole process of commissioned work had been quite difficult and frustrating but I am definitely getting much clearer and stricter and it is getting easier. However, generally I haven't really enjoyed the process at all and I do not think it is what I want to do as a career.
