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artists_beware2015-10-30 12:23 am
Unsure about Pricing Logos and Children's Book Illustrations
Hello!
Recently, I have been asked for two commissions, and I'm not sure how to handle pricing them. I purchased the Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook, but I can't seem to find a case that relates to the first one. I could be overlooking something, though!
1) Someone has asked for me to draw a logo, a mascot, and 4 pieces of art relating to their business. The 4 pieces are just going to be various electronics on transparent backgrounds. I'm not sure what to quote for a price, so I looked it up online, but I could only find prices just for logos and not for the mascot or the 4 extra pieces. I thought that mascots would fall under logos, but I'm not completely sure about that. All of the art will be used in signs and on their website. What do you think I should charge for this amount of work (logo, mascot, and 4 pictures of art)?
2) I have been asked by an author to draw illustrations for their children's book. I saw something pertaining to this in the handbook, but I'm at a loss because they want 40-50 pictures. I have no idea what to charge for that amount. I received advice that said I should charge a different amount per a page in case the author wants more detailed pictures for some of the pages. I'm going to meet with the client Sunday, so I will update the post with any new information. What would be a good price for a commission this size or what should I charge per a page?
Thank you for your help!
EDIT: Case #1 went through. Case #2 is in limbo. The client decided on 5-6 illustrations and wanted to pay $250 + royalties for the book. I was not sure if that would be a good price for that ammount of art.
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I've been in a variety of professional circles and the quotes you should give depend on a variety of factors. You'll have to use formulas to calculate the prices you'll have to ask.
If you want to you can shove me a PM with a few samples to give a better feel for what your art ranking would be, but the formula applies to pretty much all sold stuff of these types.
So to start off, both cases are distribution requests. This is a problem if you're used to consumer markets, because release/publishing rights are expensive and people with no experience can easily be exploited. Case #2 is actually easier in this since it's basically the same as most literary publishing. Case #1 is where things get tricky.
It's also worth noting that you need to specify your down payments, and say which part of them is refundable in writing, before they sign. The amount is yours to decide: full price, speculative quote, percentage, fixed price ..your call! Also offer a warranty and a refund guarantee.
So let's get started then!
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You're dealing with not one but 6 commissions under one contract (you do have one, right?) ..it doesn't stop there, though; you're doing stuff over three distinct disciplines of creative release, a logo is a PR/PI design project, which are pretty damn expensive normally, the mascot is a marketing campaign, which is normally very rigorous to work on, and the four pieces of art are pretty much illustrative advertisements, which may or may not cost a lot depending on what you're delivering.
Now then, all six of them will fall under the creative-for-profit grouping, so that automatically includes your bonus and release rights.. this means contracts, big money, legal stuff, lawyers if there's a fuss and all that jazz. Fun times!
The formula I used to apply to logo design is based on files, file size and intent; will it be on just a site? Will they use it on letterheads, cards, printed media, billboards, or even the building? That all increases the scale of what you're doing. Will you design it in pixels or vectors? Will it be in colour, how many versions do they need, does it need to be optimised for certain media, etc. etc. ..there's a lot to keep in mind — however, the price to me was simply set to a specific amount I thought fair per file size or printed dimensions, or per hours if it was hand made (pixels/paint = drawing/painting). Public display cost more because of release rights and PR/PI campaign work (letterheads, business cards, etc.) was another bonus altogether. In essence a logo can bring you a couple hundred bucks easily!
The formula for the creative work (drawings/paintings) is usually: your personal value (time spent x effort taken[including frustrations, dealing with client, etc. if you want]) x your creative bonus (ego = is this my best work ever? or quality = how good of a job did you do? ..in percents of course) + release rights bonus (any sum that you agree will be worth their profit in your eyes — remember this is a one-time payment, don't cheat yourself!) ..if this is all too arbitrary for you, see surface area guidelines in Case #2 :P
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As far as I know, the image will be used on cards, signs, and the website. I will make sure to verify this. I also like that you provided a formula as a guideline, I'll be sure to utilize it!
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This one is fairly easy because it relates to another version; comic books. There are more correct guidelines there but I'll not cite those here..
If you work per page, you might be biting yourself because that is a ton of pages, dammit! Here's where you negotiate with yourself: do you want to earn fair? Or do you want to get paid no questions? — in the former case, you're looking at at least a couple hundred bucks (potentially well into the thousand), in the latter case, you're looking at overtime slave labour :P
So, in this case the process is based only on the finished product. You can't look at anything before that stage, but you need to set yourself some rules to add to your contract: how many revisions per image/page/theme, how many modifications per stage, etc. etc. You're also working for peanuts compared to workload regardless the case, and the work isn't fair. As for procedure; you don't release anything until you have your concepts solid, you don't show the (raw) product before full payment, etc. (guess your guidebook tells you that already)
But, anyhow, to prices: take their maximum amount of pictures (not pages), page size and pages, then calculate how much surface area you're going to be drawing and calculate that base to a regular piece of your work at the same type and quality demand (say you usually do A4 illustrated works, or something), or go by comic guidelines per page for the quality required. Add to that the release rights bonus and you're done.
Now then, all that said, you're still left negotiating with yourself. Do you want to "get noticed", or do you want to get paid? That one's up to you.
For both cases, divide the final amount by any setbacks from your side (unwarranted delays etc — make sure to state when you have off days and such!) and keep a late fee at the side that you add on top per X-amount of days or so. So if all goes well you're looking at a nice amount of funds — usually somewhere in the hundreds for a logo design and somewhere in the thousands for the creative work.
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