price quotation for a new custom font
Comments
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Yes. In an agency it's not unusual for a designer getting paid an annual salary of ~$50,000 to be billed to the client at about $200 per hour.1
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I don’t charge quite as much as Bruno, but then, I don’t run a business in London.
Overheads must surely figure into pricing, it’s not like designers and clients have to congregate in hip city these days, what with the internet. I live in a small town where I pay half the mortgage for twice the house I used to have in Toronto.
Also, Western Europeans and the Anglosphere have to be aware that there is a competitive global market in play, with places that have high speed internet access and reeeeally low cost of living emerging with strong type culture. Ale Paul showed the way.
Now Google is nurturing a lot of South American designers.
I’m not saying that we don’t deserve handsome compensation for the awesome work we do, just pointing out that market forces are at work.
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OK, Jackson. So $25/hr billed at $200/hr means the total charge is 12.5% for the work and 87.5% for the other stuff. Awesome. I understand now. Sorry for misunderstanding your post earlier.1
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'But then again, society has always argued that the best artist is a starving artist. Well, screw that.'
Bruno, I hope that you realize that with this attitude you will never enter the league of the best type designers.
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Okay, inhale... take a deep breath... exhale. Better.
Wow—this pricing post is heating up. Why the back-and-forth?
Bruno was kind enough to offer his opinion and provide us all with an outline of suggested prices for professional custom type design work. It's only a guideline. I think we all appreciate that Bruno gave us an idea of what a professional type house charges for such services rendered. I wish others would chime in and divulge that type of information. That pricing range would help us all better bid for a particular job. Maybe some of us are shortchanging ourselves? Everyone has their own opinion on the matter. But, it is indeed helpful to know what others are charging. That said...
As Jackson says, it's not uncommon for professional agencies (in the USA) to charge $150-$350 per hour for professional services. I usually charge a minimum of $150 per hour on most freelance jobs. Heck, if I charged anything less I couldn't make ends meet. There is my computer equipment, software & updates, phone, printer (overhead expenses), taxes, rent, health care, insurance, etc. & etc. I guess if you live with your parents, or this is a sort of hobby, you can charge whatever. But, that is the reality. Heck, living in NYC is expensive. I guess if you live somewhere mid-west, or your expenses and overhead costs are less... so, charge accordingly.
Anyway, I'm emphasizing "professional services". When a client comes to you to provide a service, you need to be able to deliver. You should be responsible for the whole thing. No excuses. Something is not working, you have to figure it out. Your responsible for the work you produce.
I've often had a client contact me, after someone else did something for them, and it's not working correctly on a PC or whatever. The original guy did it for less, by the client calls me to troubleshot and provide a fix. I usually do it, but bang them for my time, times two. I hope the client has learned their lesson. In the future, hopefully, if they want it done right, they"ll come to me instead directly.
So, charge whatever you want, whatever you think is fair, whatever you think the job is worth. Just, please, do it right or don't do it at all. Professionally speaking that is.
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Bruno, in the nicest way possible, please stop insinuating that people who do not fully share your opinion are either starving artists or destroying the market. I’m a business person (my first degree was in business, actually) and I am working for a living wage. In Zürich, which as you surely know, is one of the most expensive places in the world.
All I’m saying is that your prices are not everybody’s prices, and your clients aren’t necessarily comparable to my clients. There’s no evidence behind the argument that people charging lower prices destroy the market. It’s just a side-effect of the custom type market serving an ever-larger, ever more diverse group of clients.
There’s a wide variety of needs in the custom type market – as you say, for example for alterations to existing designs –, and thus there is a wide variety of prices in the marketplace, too. That’s a great sign for a functioning, healthy, maturing industry.
Either way, again, thanks for sharing your view and pricing. I appreciate the time you take. I just don’t appreciate being told that my view is invalid with some non-argument.3 -
Frank, I'm not a moderator, but please change your profile from 'LetterModeller aka FEB' to 'Frank Blokland'
http://typedrawers.com/discussion/264/typedrawers-is-a-real-names-only-forum#latest explains -1 -
If they think that you're too expensive and argue that they can have lots of fonts for 'free' from other sources then tell them to go to hell.
Isn't that being redundant?2 -
I find Bruno's first post very valuable, and his second post even more valuable.
In the first post, Bruno writes "You will find that you're working at 46US$ per hour. If you are self employed that does not pay for the bills these days."
Let's look at the annual average wage by country list, based on OECD statistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage
(The average wage may not be the best indicator for type designers, since they're typically self-employed, but is still a good indicator of relative differences between countries, especially since it's PPP-adjusted).
The differences in disposable annual salary are quite large, ranging from $42K in the U.S., $33K in the U.K., through $24K in Germany and $14K in Poland. So the value of any "hard figure" differs greatly across countries.
BUT: if you're self-employed, YOU MUST NOT use the salary or wages averages for any calculations. You need to roughly double them!
Bruno's second post is absolutely great. I agree wholeheartedly that an essential part of developing pricing is to make a detailed cost analysis yourself.
There's a few things I might add to his list.
First of all, the actual net time in which you develop a font is important, but not the key factor. The equally important factor is "cost of living" or "cost of operation". Not just cost of operating the business but cost of your full existence.
Let's take a musician as an example. A stage musician may play two concerts a month, or perhaps may be on a tour for two months in the year. The income from those gigs, which may, in the end, be no more than 20-30 working days in the year, has to cover the living throughout the entire year.
So for a type designer, the money you make while designing has to cover not only the time while you're designing but ALSO, very importantly, the time while you're NOT designing. The more independent, self-employed you are, the more important this is. It's perfectly fair that one big project in the year that by itself takes two months to complete has to finance the other ten months of the year. Simply because you may not have five big project in a year every year.
When a musician is not playing, he's often rehearsing, practicing, doing maintenance of his instruments etc. etc. The same is true for type designers. Looking at type specimens or even talking to others here on TypeDrawers is *work time*, and your clients (whether one big client or many smaller ones) have to pay for that time, too.
Always factor in education. The reason why a doctor or a lawyer charges a high hourly rate is not because that one hour of his work is so costly, but because that hourly rate also has to pay for the unpaid time he spent while studying at university, the unpaid time he spends reading the daily newspapers or professional literature, and also the time he'll have to pay for when he is no longer able to work (retirement). The same goes for cost of going to professional conferences such as TypeCon or ATypI, or your children's tuition.
Your WORK has to finance your LIFE. Your "total" amount of work in your lifetime has to finance your entire lifetime. There are about 230 working days in a year, which is about 63% of the year. Very roughly speaking, if you went to college, you typically work for about 40 years out of the average 80 (50%). This means that, roughly speaking, each day of your work needs to provide financing for about three days of your life. (In reality, your parents financed the first 20 years of your life, but you'll have to finance the first 20 years of your own children, and while working, you're paying for the today's pensioners but others will pay for your pension when you're old -- so it evens out).
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(Continued)
I'll repeat this, because this is important:
One WORKING day (i.e. about 8 hours) needs to provide financing for about three FULL days (i.e. 72 hours) of your life. That's if you work 8 hours every single working day.
So if you take your current monthly budget of "your own" expenses, you actually need to generate the income to cover that budget in ten working days, i.e. two weeks. Because the other two weeks need to generate income to cover your retirement, raising your children etc. etc.
If you work half-time, then each working day needs to provide financing for about six full days, so you need to cover your monthly expenses in five working days, i.e. a week.
The 1:3 is a useful multiplier to keep in mind. Let's say you only have one big project per year where your client pays you an hourly rate for three months of full-time work. This means that you work "quarter time", so each working day needs to provide financing of about two weeks of your life.
That just gets your "private" expenses covered. But then, there's also cost of business operation: office space, buying software, buying a new computer every now and then, paying other people if needed etc. That comes extra. Fortunately, operating the type design business is relatively cheap, compared to many other professions.
And on top of all that, there's "profit" that can go into "extra consumption", i.e. money for things that you don't necessarily need but would enjoy, or into "savings" i.e. money you'd like to leave your children and so on. (Savings for retirement are not "real" savings.)
The U.S. minimum wage is about $10/hour, or $80/day or $1,600/month. That's roughly equivalent to what you minimally need per month to survive. But that's for wages, assuming full-time employment. But that's useful data. It's roughly equivalent to saying that you need about $27 every single day of your life as a bare minimum to survive in the U.S., on average. Which, I think, is realistic.
If the U.S. minimum wage is $10/hour, but you as a self-employed person only have a project that pays you three months in a year, then it means that you need to absolutely charge no less than $40/hour *net*. But as you have to pay various expenses which can be up to 50%, you should absolutely charge no less than $60/hour.
So there, we're actually in agreement to what Bruno said about $46/hour. Because a $60/hour is a hourly rate still under the assumption that you'll have actual paid full-time occupation three months in a year every year of your professional active time. And that's really calculated only to cover your "personal existence" on the level equivalent to U.S. minimum wage!
Very very roughly speaking, as a self-employed person in Western Europe or North America, you need to be making >$90K gross a year at the very least to have a reasonable though modest way of living throughout your entire life. In Central and Eastern Europe, that figure is closer to $50K. If it's below that, you're DANGEROUSLY in the red, and you should seriously think about finding a different source of income. Because you'll end up in debt or poverty.
If you're based in Western Europe or North America, and calculate anywhere below $60/hours for client work, you're actually hurting yourself in the longer term, because you're not actually making less money than what you need in order to just survive. (If you're in other parts of the world, that figure may be lower, closer to $40 or $30, but not much less.)
Bruno's example of $46/hour translates to some $7K per month or $95K (gross) per year if you're making $46/hour EVERY WORKING DAY, "full-time". Then you're within the said recommendations. But, depending on your setup, it may not be at all realistic that you're making $46/hour EVERY DAY.
More realistically, as a self-employed type designer, you'll have PAID "full-time" work for about 3-4 months a year. Maybe 6. So to get to the $90K a year, you need to be charging two-three times the $46/hour, i.e. more like $90-120. And you're still not really "rich".
I agree with Bruno that one working month is actually a minimum to complete one style of a family with a relatively small character set. And if it's four styles, it's perhaps three months rather than four, but not much less. Time savings only start with more weights because of interpolation. But clients are demanding, back-and-forth, corrections etc. consume a lot of time as well.
Remember the 1:3 multiplier: if you have PAID work 8 hours a day EVERY single day, then one working day needs to provide financing for about three full days of your life. That's the absolute bare minimum.
So, make your calculations wisely!
Best,
Adam10 -
Twardoch—I love this guy! He's a walking, taking calculator. Wow.
Enough said. Thank you, Bruno. The actuary has confirmed your calculation. Kudos!1 -
@ Berlow... only if you told them to eat "Sh**" and then go to Hell.
That would be redundant! ;-)0 -
Okay we need to let off some steam and LOL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10&list=PLSTz8jpJdr5pn9LFw-pXbg0IOFy2Z_td_ 0 -
At current exchange rates £33K is $54K. A 1,750 hour billable year (I've seen firms get absurdly aggressive when doing audited contracts and argue for a 1,333 work year for multiplier purposes, but 1,750 feels about average for the US) means $200/hr is roughly a 6.5 multiplier. I expect the more generous holiday benefits in Europe probably push that down some.
I worked in NY for 15 years and I never saw anyone get those sorts of numbers (mostly because of wage pressure more than rate pressure) outside of law firms or subsidiaries of the major ad networks (and those rules were brutal and unsustainable).
I always felt like if I could get a clean 3.0x from my staff I was doing okay. This is all very curious to me now because I'm faced with having to think about whether or not having staff is a good plan, and I don't think it's worth it in the 2.5-3.0x territory -- not worth the downside risk.0 -
Adam: ‘So, make your calculations wisely! ’
If you want to become richer, make sure that at the end you earn more than you spend.1 -
(Continued)
I'll elaborate on this, because this is important:
Adam: ‘One WORKING day (i.e. about 8 hours) […]’
I can’t recall any WORKING day that was limited to (about) 8 hours since I graduated from the KABK in 1983. Nor can I recall a WORKING week that was limited to five days. My adage is 'Late to bed and early to rise makes a type designer healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ But then, I LOVE my profession. Gosh, I'm getting so lyrical about type that I WANT to sing about it, and SHARE this with you:
Night and day, you are the one
Only you 'neath the moon or under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It's no matter, darling, where you are
I think of you day and night1 -
Frank,
you're right, of course. I don't do 8-hours, 5 days a week work either. My calculation examples were more about the principles than about the exact figures. Also, I made them about "billable hours" when working on projects for clients. It all becomes more complex if you, for example, are working on a retail library of fonts, where you don't get paid straight away but instead are betting or receiving royalties in the future. There are also other ways to supplement your income, for example by having a teaching position at an academy etc. It all comes down to the mix.
But my main point was about the fact that, while you may be working productively right now, at a great speed, it's not enough to earn "right now" what you're spending "right now".
You need to make sure you have money (through the public system or private savings) left for the time you won't be able to work as productively. You need to take into account that if, for example, you're single right now working 16 hours a day every day, this may not be the rate you can sustain if you decide to start a family. Etc. etc.
Better be safe than sorry
Sorry for taking the liberty of allowing myself to conduct "life counselling" here. My father has just retired after many years of being self-employed, and I talked to him about this for some time. I guess this is why I'm currently in the mindset of thinking about this.
Cheers,
Adam3 -
No Adam, your thoughtful contributions are very welcome!0
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Hello Adam,
‘But my main point was about the fact that, while you may be working productively right now, at a great speed, it's not enough to earn “right now” what you're spending “right now”. ’
Every one of this forum will agree with you on this, I reckon.
‘[…] I’m currently in the mindset of thinking about this.’
That was quite obvious from your juggling with figures. I would not be surprised if your statement ‘If it’s below that, you're DANGEROUSLY in the red, and you should seriously think about finding a different source of income’ scared some folks on this list, because they don’t manage to generate a $90K (‘Western Europe or North America’) or $50K (‘Central and Eastern Europe’) income.
Although, as mentioned, I agree with you on the long-term planning (invest your money wisely and hire the best accountant you can afford [this is like shoes, you know]), it’s difficult to translate this in hard figures still. It all very much depends on your way of living and where you’re living. Also a (type) designer doesn’t have to retire at 65. That being said, it’s far from sure that one can make a living from designing type in the future as one can make today.
Running one’s own business is far from easy anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNZ-AWLyDoA
And my apologies for behaving a little bit as Mr. Muckle in this discussion.
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I am retiring in a month. I never got far in type design, and started too late in life too. Thanks to all those who brought humour and kindness to this place, and thanks to the brave people who posted their opinion no matter what. I think it's great that Bruno posted his opinion.
I admire your work ethic, Frank, but you are not alone working long hours and more than five days a week. So what?1 -
The great thing about this business is that there is always the possiblility, however remote, that the next typeface one designs will become the new Gotham. Or that might even be something one designed some time ago. I’m talking about financial ROI, not success as measured in pages served at GF.
So that possibility renders all this talk of dollars-per-hour redundant, because some typefaces make crazy money. Never mind that, I would be quite happy if my next release does as well as two or three I designed in the last century, that continue to earn their keep.
Retail fonts are Valuable Intellectual Property with long-term worth.
Custom fonts may be, but they are Money in the Bank first.
GF are a Sell-Off for hard cash, surrendering the income possibility that, for instance, the typeface libre-ated might one day be licensed from the designer as an Enterprise type by a global corporation. Nothing wrong with the sell-off (not a sell-out). As Andres notes, we all make our choices, our business decisions, based on the contingencies at hand. And no doubt success as a GF font can be leveraged commercially in several ways.
As someone who makes his living primarily off retail, I disagree with the statement and analysis Gerry Leonidas made in a recent Typographica thread:It is wrong to refer to typefaces as “product”. The retail market for nearly-ephemeral type use is quite different from the “type for publications” business, from the “type for branding” business, from the “type for embedded uses” business, from the OEM business. Most of the people I know who pay their mortgages as type professionals use retail to build awareness of their own brand, but aim for the other categories.
I make retail products (with custom providing a little gravy), my philosophy is developing Long Tail software products—and I think that the longevity and market scope of fonts as retail products is quite unusual, to be compared with songs and movies perhaps, but those are not tools that are used across the board from professional to amateur, and worldwide without translation (at least as far as one develops the encoding), and with a built-in anti-obselesence, being relevant to every new generation of media.
The museum is the warehouse, the library is the department store.4 -
The museum is the warehouse, the library is the department store.
Haha! Love it! 0 -
Nick—I couldn't have said it better myself.
My daughter just sent me this... (lol funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE -2 -
Hi everyone,
Sorry for not responding until now. Too many other things to do like worrying how I can make the hours pay. :-)
I think it's worth responding to a few points:
In no way I am telling anyone what to do. If you want to create functional fonts for clients for $7000 then that is your business. Agreed, the cost also depends where you are located. This is a reason why Egyptian agriculture is still fairly void of machinery. Humans cost less than machines... What I am saying is that once you work for a low fee it is incredibly difficult to raise your prices. I am speaking of experience, over 20 years of it.
Frank, your argument of shifting your income from hour to day is self-defeating. Surely, the ambition should be to spend fewer hours on paid work, and earn vastly more in the process, so you can spend the other hours following your other interests that make you happy. That may even be more type design, but your own fancies, not those of a client. So again, you need to get your hours paid, not your days. The more you earn per hour, the fewer hours you have to work. Simple.
I also noticed that library fonts have been mentioned. It is of course possible that you hit gold with a design and it pays and pays. Those are few and far between. At Dalton Maag we have five font families that earn 97% of all the income from the library. The problem with library development is that the designer takes all the risk upfront with no guarantee that they will ever see a return from their efforts. When it hits, it can hit big, though. It's also worth remembering that only a handful of fonts will have lasting income potential. By lasting I mean at least ten years.
So, to make a good living with pension potential you probably need to have a mix of custom work and library fonts going. The custom work should give you the funds to pay for itself, of course, for your library developments, your holidays, and eventually your retirement. You cannot bank on having a successful library. This will be a bonus and give you that extra holiday.
In conclusion, yes my calculations are based on London prices. And yes, other people have other cost bases, and yes, I am fully aware of supply and demand, and that people will start off with lower pricing to get into the business. I can live with that; I am merely pointing out the dangers of doing so, and perpetuating the myth of low hourly income and long working days.
Bruno10 -
Very interesting thread.
I have a question:
In your opinions what would/should be the difference in price between designing something from scratch i.e. something that is bespoke/original and a plain revival or digitisation of a historical typeface that does not exist as Postscript? Full 256 Latin case.
I can see both have similar amounts of work in terms of drawing, production, hinting etc. but the revival font doesn't have the same depth of creativity or conceptual development as an original font although there could be similar levels of skill involved.
I can see from this thread that design fees for fonts are wildly, so maybe as a percentage.
For example: Bespoke is 100%, revival has a value of X%.
I welcome your opinions.0 -
Reviving this thread a bit: I'm curious, when talking about doing a custom font design for a client and considering the rights... what are we talking about in terms of licensing?
@Thomas Phinney shared some numbers (I know it was a few years ago but still helpful, thank you) that a client might be able to get a font (one style) from a lesser known designer for "around $5K per style, or $20K USD for a four-member family, including CE support, and buying all rights."
I was reading "all rights" in the context of this thread as just talking about exclusivity terms (that the client gets exclusivity), not talking about licensing/usage scope.
Would the pricing referenced just be for a Desktop license, or does "all rights" also mean the client gets all licensing types too: Desktop, Web, Apps with unlimited use?
What is generally assumed with a custom font project in terms of licensing (aside from rights): is it that the client would get all licensing types for the basic price quote provided, or is it generally assumed/known that the quote only includes a Desktop license and the price would increase for the other licensing types accordingly?
Thanks!1 -
I like the idea of separating the cost of making the font from the cost of licensing it (which could mean assignment of rights or not). If you did it this way, you would have at least two line items to your price. I'm sure there are other ways of being fair but every time someone has tried to explain one to me I got confused.
The reason I like this way is that a big part of why the client might think a price is "fair" or not is dependent on how they intend to use the font.
There really are clients who want to commission a font that has extremely low cost use (on our model that would be desktop only to generate rasterized images installed on under 20 CPUs) but that use is very important to them so they are comfortable paying for the labor, just not licensing they aren't gonna use. If I charged them what I would charge the client who wants to give the fonts to a large employee base, a large team of contractors, web embedding on a high traffic sites and embedding in apps with a lot of users there's just no way that client would hire us!3 -
Thanks very much for your reply and breakdown @JoyceKetterer ! That is really helpful. What you shared is what I was hoping was the case (as a lower-end $5k price for a single, custom font with a Desktop license included can make sense, but $5k for that custom font with all licensing types—Desktop, Web, App, etc.—included does not). As noted elsewhere, just licensing a single, existing font for all uses/unlimited can quickly get above $10k.
I think it makes sense to break them out as separate line items—item 1 being the design work; item 2 being the licensing type(s).
The base price quote for a custom font project would typically include a standard Desktop license with the design work. But as you described in your last paragraph, it would increase the more licensing type needs there are.
And the non-exclusive vs. exclusive rights aspect would need factored in from the start as well.1 -
@Adam Ladd exactly. To do it this way you have a minimum of two line items but you really can have as many as make it easy to read for the client. You could have one for each type of licensing. You can have one for the exclusivity period or for assignment of rights. The list goes on. I usually have a line item for discounts if there are any so that someone looking at the invoice years later remembers that we gave them a discount.
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