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Heard a client say they "just need a logo" on a call - then watched them ask for 14 revisions
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thomas.river15d ago
The real cost is the time you spend becoming an expert in things you didn't want to learn.
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Got a buddy who runs a small bakery. He told me he needed a "quick logo" for his new menu boards. I warned him about that kind of talk. He found a designer online, paid like 200 bucks and told her it was simple. Three weeks later he's on revision number 11 because she kept changing the icing color on the cupcake icon. Then she hit him with a fee for every round after the first 5. He ended up paying almost 800 dollars for what he thought was a 15 minute job. Last time I saw him he'd just given up and used his own kid's crayon drawing as the logo. That "just a logo" mindset is a trap and it always costs more than people expect.
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The 800 bucks part really gets me, because that's actually cheaper than what most people end up paying when they fall into that trap. @ben_fisher, your buddy's story is basically the same thing that happens to half the small business owners I know who try to cheap out on design work. The problem is that "simple" doesn't mean "fast" in design work, it just means fewer elements to argue about (and boy do people argue about those elements). I've seen the same pattern with website design too where someone thinks a "simple five page site" will cost 500 bucks and then they're on revision number 20 six months later. The crayon drawing ending is actually kind of perfect though, because at least it was honest and done, which is more than you can say for that whole mess of a process. People need to understand that a logo is never just a logo, it's weeks of back and forth about font choices and colors and whether the cupcake should face left or right.
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