Crush old American-made cars. Display them in a vast empty factory that formerly employed those Americans, on a property footprint that could house thousands of them. Charge them twice their minimum wage to view. Forbid them to take photographs of any of it. Position guards every 50 feet to monitor them. Wonder why people think art is elitist and disconnected from their lives.
– Photo and Words by Clayton Cubitt
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
This post is about business, so… you know, caveat emptor.
Probably the single most common thing I do in business is write estimates. If people are even vaguely interested in a project, I can tell them about how much it would cost to have me do the work. No charge for the estimate. And certainly they don’t all lead to paying work. But very few paying jobs proceed without them. The latest one — written today — was around number 550. That’s more than 1 a week, since I went into business for myself.
I dislike writing them. Or at least find it to be difficult, tedious work. I think people look at it as something you can just plug a few numbers into, and then send out. But those numbers don’t just come out of thin air. I have to understand the project. I have to wrap my head around every possible aspect of the project, and be able to approximate how much time and resources will be required for those steps. And if I’m working on 5 or 6 projects on any given day, (and I am), it takes a feat of concentration to be able to push it all aside mentally and focus enough to build this whole project in my mind.
So lets say I’m stupid enough to try. I’ve built myself a kind of formula, to make the calculations a bit simpler. I broke down the average job into phases.
And for web sites, you can add:
Research is the time I spend coming up with ideas. Looking through samples. Finding inspiration. Making sketches.
Cleanup involves taking all those sketches and ideas, and putting them into clean, digital proofs, so they client can look them over and start making choices. Usually after this stage, we have a design direction.
Populate comes into play for long pieces… books, reports, websites. My initial mockups only have a couple sample pages or spreads. So if it’s a long piece… then once a design direction is chosen, I apply to the remainder of the content.
1st and 2nd Author Alterations are the comprehensive sets of fine-detail edits that the client wants to make to the project. They go through and review the whole piece, collect every edit they want, and send it to me. I encourage/restrict my clients to use this “set of edits” method, rather than sending them over piecemeal. Piecemeal edits are a pain in the ass. Either you’re constantly jumping between jobs to make a repeated small edits, or you’re forced to collect and collate all the edits yourself, which can be difficult if they start overlapping. So my estimates include 2 ’rounds’ of edits. Anything significant beyond that gets billed hourly in addition.
On websites, once the design is set, I have to code a sample page with the design. This gives my the basis for the website and lets me work out any programming or interface bugs.(And occasionally to make sure I can actually accomplish some new, ambitious design element). Then I take and merge that sample page into the templates for whatever CMS I’m using.
And if I it appears as if I will have to spend a significant amount of time interacting with client… repeated meetings, or tutorial sessions for a new website, or such, I will add on some small amount of time for ‘Meetings’.
For everything listed so far, I figure out what number of hours, or percentage thereof, I will need.
Occasionally a project is a rush. Well… every project is rushed. But there’s a scale of rushes. Do you need this for your conference in a couple weeks. No problem. Do you need this add in 2 hours? Rush. And the rush is a percentage markup. Usually around 20%, although that can vary based on severity.
So total up the hours. Apply any rush markup. And then multiply by my hourly rate.
To further make my life easier, I have a spreadsheet. It includes the above calculations, already set up, for a variety of job types. So I already have a tri-fold brochure on there. And a 12 page report. And a logo. And a 10 page website. And…
And don’t forget to add in costs. Stock Imagery. Printing. Hosting. Special software. Programmers. Photographers. Copywriters. Editors…
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Did my taxes today. Took less time than expected. Only major issue was figuring out where to include my Franchise Tax payments. (Since TurboTax changes it every year). Turns out it just basically went under “taxes, misc”.
So I billed roughly the same this year as the previous year. But I had less expenses. So practically, I made more money. I have almost zero debt. (About $300 on my sole credit card). And while I am short on cash at the moment, somewhat due to awaiting payments from clients, I am relatively stable. Taxes paid. Almost no debt. Expected income. Work for the foreseeable future.
I can think of worse conditions to be in.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I’d like to thank Hecht’s for making my Saturday, by telling me, when my credit card wouldn’t swipe through the magnetic reader, that they’ll only manually punch in the cards for people with Hecht’s or Macy’s charge cards.
So after yesterday’s run-in with Hecht’s payment policies, I had an interesting, counter-example to the shopping experience. I found the ‘perfect gift’ at Eastern Market, but the vendor couldn’t take credit cards. I didn’t have cash or checks. So she handed it to me, and told me to mail her a check. It was the last one, and she was worried it would be gone if I came back some other time.
She had less reason to trust me, and more to proportionately lose. But she said I looked ‘nice and honest.’
These are the stories I think of when doing business.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I had another thought today.
*insert your own joke her*
It’s actually another thesis project, to go along with my previous possibilities. I was in Border’s reading the back cover blurb of the Illuminatus Trilogy. It promises to confront various issues, including the pyramid that shows up on the dollar bill.
Well… ignoring the conspiratorial overtones of that particular novel, it made me think about the appearance of money. Being a designer, and a lonely, lonely person, I spend most of my time thinking about the appearance of things. Initially I thought that it could be interesting to redo the paper cash of the US. Clean it up. Make it more in line with modern culture, rather than a collection of antiquated symbolism and archaic security features. Who doesn’t see the anachronism of paying for your re-writable compact discs with a piece of flaccid paper covered in imagery that hasn’t been contemporary since before FedEx was powered by the Pony Express?
But just as quickly as that thought came to me, I realized it wouldn’t work. It would be a pointless exercise, doomed to a miserable failure in even the most basic of focus groups or peer review. Cash–cold, harsh greenbacks–are one of those rare physical items that people consciously trust in the image of more than in the physical nature. It’s a comfort item… a security blanket. In a vain culture, this ugly, little, wrinkled thing inspires cult-like devotion.
So yeah… to cut the thought short, that was my thesis. To find out how and why people value the physical object that is a dollar bill. Why are people thrown into near revolt when a pale wash of color is added to the $20 bill. Why does a bigger picture of the president cause people to declare it to be play money?
Anyway… I call it a thesis project because I specifically don’t want to get into it here.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!