I logged onto deviantART today and found a very inter­est­ing blog entry by an awe­some artist by the name of mani­cho [ :+devwatch: him if you’re on dA ] where he expressed his con­cerns about design­ers out there mak­ing the rest of us look “cheap”. Here are some of my favorite points :

Let’s say for exam­ple, if I charge $400 for a logo or $800 to build a stan­dard web­site, or $250 for a sin­gle icon… do you think a client would pick me for my pric­ing if they have another one charg­ing them less than $500 for the whole package?

I’ve seen peo­ple sell­ing them­selves for $20 to do a logo. $200 to do a web­site. What kind of atti­tude is that?

Have you seen those cheap “comic sans” logos? Or those default-layer-styled signs? They are invad­ing slowly the mar­ket lately, and the cur­rent cri­sis around the globe is not help­ing at all, since all the peo­ple that needs “pro­fes­sional” graphic work is now look­ing for the cheap­est options available.

Capa­ble and pro­fes­sional design­ers do not work for free, and request­ing work for free demon­strates a lack of under­stand­ing and respect. There is an appro­pri­ate way to explore the work of var­i­ous design­ers, and request­ing drafts or open­ing con­tests to see if “there is an option we like” is just plain un-ethical.

This is basi­cally how I’ve been feel­ing for the past cou­ple of months. Undoubt­edly, this isn’t the ideal time to come out as a free­lancer due to the global eco­nomic cri­sis [ forc­ing me to actu­ally have a day job ]. How­ever, I hate the fact that com­pa­nies make up “logo con­tests” and the like just so they can sit back and have their pick of the lit­ter. I was nearly involved in one of these con­tests for a Cana­dian telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pany a cou­ple months back until I stum­bled across an arti­cle sim­i­lar to manicho’s blog post.

By no means are my prices ultra-high or any­thing, because while I am con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ties, I know that I still have much to learn and I need to get a feel for the free­lance life first and fore­most. At the same token, I know that many com­pa­nies have down­sized and such but that doesn’t make it a rea­son to get a fantab­u­lous logo or web­site for a half-assed price. Just my 2 cents to add to manicho’s.

manicho’s jour­nal entry : [ clicky ] / dA account : [ clicky ]

EDIT : Just got a lit­tle note from mani­cho telling me not to give up on free­lanc­ing because he set up his stu­dio a mere 3 months before the crap hit the prover­bial fan and is still man­ag­ing to keep it aloft. So, yeah. Def­i­nitely made some moves today. On the note, check out manicho’s stu­dio! For­got to add this link before, lol. I’d like to brush up my skills ten-fold so I can join the “col­lec­tive”. The site is pretty cool too.

Ban­icci | Imag­i­neers Col­lec­tive : [ clicky ].