Hourly rate is always a big topic on design forums and tends to get a bit of a negative reaction due to the ethics involved with discussing your hourly rate. Personally, I never understood why designers felt the need to guard this information so closely when among peers. It seems especially odd to me when, on a forum, these peers are from all over the country and possibly the world. It’s not like the person is your neighbor looking to beat you out on that next project.

I tend to think that if designers were a little more open about their pricing policies and procedures, maybe clients would have a better understanding of our worth. In most cases, clients have no idea what the going rate is for a designer in the area. Some of this is from the lack of information out there and part of it comes from the reluctance of designers to share this information. Does it really need to be so secretive?

I personally feel discussions about pricing and rates are not a bad thing. It would allow newer designers and clients to better understand where we are coming from as professionals.

Earlier this month HOW magazine posted an interesting article / survey on Designers’ Hourly Rates. I found my rates to be below average but well above the low end of the spectrum. This was nice to see.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Printing, Graphic Design, Industry News, Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.