Pricing your work (or value as a designer) seems to be the divisive topic for a lot of freelancers. On the one hand, it’s simply easier to price by the hour because it’s easier for clients to grasp what exactly they’re paying for. Pricing Creativity- The Futur Podcast. In some ways it’s not wrong: as experts in our trade, pricing by the hour (especially based on an arbitrary or even market number) discredits the experience we bring to the table. Based on this logic, if I can whip up a brand identity in one hour, I’m basically charging $125 an hour for all of that work.
That doesn’t seem right. All that work and I still have bills to pay.
Despite these people advocating for value-based pricing, studios like Sanctu Computer are vocal about a starting hourly rate. I need into it further to make sense of it. Just seems like they’re not afraid of charging by the hour. Maybe in some way this is their way of balancing their cost of living without feeling guilty about charging clients a 20%+ margin — ie, not looking to charge outside of what they actually need and not… sticking it to the [man].