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I know there are some graphical designers lurking on TL but also posting. I am a graphical design/motion graphics student in my second year and i get approached with offers of doing some work from time to time. The thing is i dont know what sort of deadlines and pay is considered "reasonable" and i constantly hear about people screwing designers over in this business.
So i'm wondering about this project, some guy wants a design for a board game, but not just a tiny thing he wants the entire board game to be designed. Board game box, 120 cards with different motive on each, 5 game pieces, a manual and the gameboard itself. In other words, he wants the entire thing designed and the things he has come up with himself are a few sloppy concept sketches. For this job i'd be paid 400 euros, and i'd have until Jan 11, which due to holidays i would say is a 14 day deadline.
My gripe with this: This sounds like tons of work and the pay sounds terrible, not to mention a 14 day deadline seems short for such a huge job. So im asking what would you charge for this, and how much time would be considered "normal" for someone to need for something like this?
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try to negotiate a better price with him. it really depends on how much he is willing to spend as much as how much your willing to do it for,
best advice i can give you is never sell yourself short.
if u think u can spend the time on something else more profitable do it,
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Austin10831 Posts
That sounds like a horrible wage for what you'd be doing. From your description, the client seems pretty unprofessional. Is he a student hiring you to do a school project for him or something? I can't imagine someone designing a board game and then just asking someone to whip the whole thing up in two weeks.
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Don't think of your work in terms of 'What do others get paid for this same kind of thing?', think of it in terms of 'What is my time worth?, What is the amount of work needed for this?, How hard will I have to work to complete this? , What is the cost of my supplies?' etc. Then you can give yourself some kind of mental idea even before you get offers and confidently argue pay when opportunities arise. Also what Coag said about how much they are willing to spend, usually they give you the low end estimate, sell your product (yourself) as well as you can.
Do a little mental exercise, think of some random shit around your house imagine the questions I gave above, give a dollar value on what it would take for you to re/create that design.
BoT, 400$ sounds really skimp for such a daunting task, but I think it also depends how much you need money and how much free time you have. If you don't need much money and have not much free time, then i'd say $500-600 would be more realistic for me.
PS- I'm not a graphic designer but I took some classes in college to be one, and I've done a few things here and there for people. Also, keep a time of how much you work. Then when the job is done you can see your hourly rate and decide if that sounds good/bad for you for next time.
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Croatia9491 Posts
I bet that guy is one of those "customer is always right" people with no respect whatsoever at people working for him. I suggest cranking up the price which will either make him curse at you and leave (win) or it will make him curse at you and accept (win).
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Graphics design is not a cheap job. It can be anywhere between $1-$100 a pixel. Since you are just starting out, you probably wouldn't charge very much since it's the experience that counts, but try to get somewhere between 15-20 euros per hour of work.
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Also, if you haven't done that much stuff this will help you launch your career better. If the pay is not that good it can still pay off other ways, keep this guy as a reference for your portfolio, just tell him to say he paid you more ^_- .
Just having experience might net you more pay later on as well as giving you a better frame of reference on your self worth.
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That is a total rip. Atleast $1000 and atleast 3-4 week deadline (business days).
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I think the client needs to lay out exactly what he's looking for on the 120 cards before you can make any semi-accurate assessment.
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
In general, it is always better to have a face-to-face meeting with potential clients. If that's not possible, then second best is to do a phone call. There's a good reason why business-people travel to see their clients even in this high-tech day-and-age: Because you can learn so much about the person you're dealing with.
If you strongly believe that client will not pay, then ask for a 100% forward payment or the deal is no-go. In normal circumstances consider charging 50% upfront for new clients.
You may wish to consider outsourcing parts of the project to another artist (many artists in other countries will work cheap). So you could develop a "card" template and have minions do variations for the 140 cards.
Another thing. Be careful when considering what established artists ask for because they already have a client base, established reputation and portfolio; whereas you are just starting out.
Also, this client (like many) may only need passable-quality art. So consider how long the project could take you if you were to do low-quality designs
On December 07 2010 02:18 BroOd wrote:
That sounds like a horrible wage for what you'd be doing. From your description, the client seems pretty unprofessional. Is he a student hiring you to do a school project for him or something? I can't imagine someone designing a board game and then just asking someone to whip the whole thing up in two weeks.
Could be a prototype for a marketing or investor presentation. Or the client could be an indy board-game developer who just isn't on-top of things. If the project is being "rushed" he should be charging a premium.
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You are a student, so you will rightfully get less pay because you lack experience... but that sounds low no matter how you cut it.
But, while the pay seems to blow and the timeline short, having something like this under you belt as a student would be pretty nice. I'd try to get a little more, but keep that in mind and don't do anything forceful to bone yourself.
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Austin10831 Posts
On December 07 2010 02:55 TossFloss wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2010 02:18 BroOd wrote:
That sounds like a horrible wage for what you'd be doing. From your description, the client seems pretty unprofessional. Is he a student hiring you to do a school project for him or something? I can't imagine someone designing a board game and then just asking someone to whip the whole thing up in two weeks. Could be a prototype for a marketing or investor presentation. Or the client could be an indy board-game developer who just isn't on-top of things. If the project is being "rushed" he should be charging a premium.
You're right, but asking a student to do a rush job on something like that seems strange considering he apparently gave him little to no actual detailed instruction. I find it hard to believe an indie game designer would be so "hands-off" with regard to such an important aspect of the game, and while it may be someone putting together a proposal, I'm just having a hard time imagining feasible real-world scenarios where a game would be produced in such a slipshod manner.
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that's a terrible deal. unless you're desperate you should spend time looking for other clients. frankly it's also a terrible deal for the client since with that deadline and that price he'd likely be getting one crappy board game.
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9070 Posts
isnt 400 euros worth 2 McDonalds meals or smth like that in Sweden ?
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On December 07 2010 03:29 disciple wrote:
isnt 400 euros worth 2 McDonalds meals or smth like that in Sweden ?
Not quite a McDonalds meal is about 5 euros in Sweden. And 400 euros would be like.. 500 USD or so with a rough guesstimate.
And the board game is for a prototype to be presented for potential investors the email i got says. I understand i have to sell myself a bit short when im starting out, just to get the experience and i have no problems with that. It just seemed that in order to be happy with the project myself, i'd have to work my ass of for those two weeks to get it up to the standards i'd want. And the Deadline isn't 14 days in a sense, its more a month but all students have finals now and then theres the holidays so efectively the deadline becomes about 14 days since thats how much time i have available. But considering that and that i have my finals in about 10 days i'm not going to take the job, i simply wont have the time.
The insight people left me here is good however and i thank you for that, i was pretty much just wanting to know if i was wrong in thinking that this was a pretty crappy deal on my end, i can work around the money and swallow a turd there since the experience is good, but the deadline being so damn short for such a big job is something i can't really accept for such low pay.
If the people in this thread themselves would decide, how much time would you say you'd need for a project like this, and if you were a student - how much would you charge?
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On December 07 2010 02:23 SpoR wrote:
Don't think of your work in terms of 'What do others get paid for this same kind of thing?', think of it in terms of 'What is my time worth?, What is the amount of work needed for this?, How hard will I have to work to complete this? , What is the cost of my supplies?' etc. Then you can give yourself some kind of mental idea even before you get offers and confidently argue pay when opportunities arise. Also what Coag said about how much they are willing to spend, usually they give you the low end estimate, sell your product (yourself) as well as you can.
Good advice, thanks. I'd say to get the job done i'd need to work atleast 10 hours every day for those 14 days, i cant be sure since i've never done a boardgame before but from the things he wants done i know its alot of work. So thats 140 hours of work at the very minimum, which would translate to 2,8 euros an hour. My current part time job in a sport store nets me 12,5 euros an hour.
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EPT
