$17 an hour? Seriously?
I was perusing the latest HOW Design Annual and came across an article on pricing trends. It was a report on the data HOW collected via their pricing survey. Two numbers popped out at me. The first was the low range of hourly graphic design work in the Midwest: $17. Wow. That person must have some insanely small overhead. Or perhaps only works 1 hour a week while outsourcing the rest to India.
Or, more likely, it can be explained via the second interesting number: 28%. That’s the number of people that reported that they’ve calculated their hourly rate via an actual formula. The rest appeared to either ‘guess randomly’ or based it on the rest of the folks out there (which is a bad idea when a majority seem to guess randomly).
This is scary. Graphic Design is a business, and, ultimately, while we all may want to change the world, we’re really doing it to make a living. And if we ever hope to change the world via graphic design, we better stay in business long enough to do it.
Many years ago, I volunteered for the AIGA’s Portfolio One-on-One event as one of the event planners. During the actual event where students got to ask a panel of professional designers questions (a group of people I either knew personally, or had great respect for), we ended up with the inevitable nervous lull as the students ran out of questions. I figured I’d help things move along by tossing out a question about salaries. I was immediately rebuffed by the panel for being so uncouth as to mention things like ‘getting paid’ as being a concern that recent grads should be worried about.
Which was a bit of a shock.
Ultimately, there seems to be a huge gap in design education these days. I don’t recall having one single business class requirement. Which is a bit ironic, as graphic design, for the most part, is about serving business.
So, if you are a new graduate, or even a long term professional that just hasn’t gotten around to it…be SURE to site down for a half hour with a cup of coffee and run the numbers to find your hourly rate. Until you do so, you really have no idea if you’re making living at it. ;o)
3 Comments
Erin and I just moved to Omaha from Claifornia. I hear you on the money thing…. seems like there is none to be had down here hight now. Speaking of biz classes, I asked Erin how many classes were required at California College of the Arts (formerly know as CCaC), for graphic design degree. Oh, the answer… is none.
Creatives who are trying to live off of their creativity can enhance their chances of success and growth by writing a simple business plan. The process of writing the plan will help them better identify their market, their competition, their expenses,and thus their appropriate fees/rates for their region. It may seem painful at first, but running a business is running a business, even if it’s art-based. There are lots of books out there to help.
The reality is that Midwest pay is notoriously low. For instance, a major automative finance corporation in Waterloo, Iowa (I won’t mention the name, but we all know who it is) only pays around $15-$20/hr for IT staff. There aren’t too many places in the midwest who take IT seriously, and with web convergence, too many Graphic Artists are being abused as Web Developers — thus lumping them in with the IT guys.
I’ve had my feet in both worlds. It seems that most companies want to push the “idea” that they’re paying too much for IT, too much for Graphic Artists, too much for cleaning, etc. etc. At the same time, they have no problem outsourcing four or five jobs per week at $250/hr, yet they’ll always scoff at paying an internal employee $50K.
It really makes no good business sense but for one thing: with outsourcing, Management can abscond from responsibility if an outside contractor screws up a job. There’s also the side issue that they can treat an outside contractor a lot worse than they can treat an employee — not paying bills, cussing them out for missing a deadline, etc. etc.
I don’t think any amount of business school will get people around those hurdles. But, hey, I could be wrong…