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This is not a terms and conditions document This is a guide for you to better understand the business of Graphic Design, illustration and video editing in order for us to have a great working relationship. I have written this from my perspective to you because it's easier to read about me and you and it's less like "legal-lingo" than using the terms Impasto, company, debtor, creditor and client.
Right, so you’re never used a design studio before. This is your first brochure, website or company logo. You’ve got an idea for some flags and banners outside your dealership, or quite simply have no clue. Fear not, I’ll hold your hand through the entire process.
Let me start by outlining the common design process and then cover specifics like payment, responsibilities, ownership and common practices.
Design is a service, not a product (even though you end up with a final product) and as such, is a very flexible process. Every designer has a different way of working. Some work methodically and while others need a caffeine-driven all-nighter 12 hours before deadline. I see design as more if an intellectual pursuit with proven rules and psychologies rather than a flash of inspiration driven by a “gut feeling”. I leave that to the painters and sculptures. Because of this, I can lay down general a general working process...
We sit down together and you tell me what you’re looking for. I have a brief form [download a sample here] I use as a guideline to make sure everything is covered.
I will put an estimate together. This not only avoids surprises at the end, but gives you an idea of whether I am understanding your brief correctly. If there are any disclaimer or special agreements they will pop up here. Think of the cost estimate as a “non-lawyers” contract. This must be signed off before moving on.
I go away and work on your job. Depending on what we agreed upon the earlier, I will present an initial design or several designs. I partly view this stage as the completion of the brief so don't feel shy about your feedback. All to often, clients sit in a situation of “how do I know what I want, until I see it?” This stage is also a landmark moment. When you are presented with initial designs, you need to commit to the job, or cancel it. Once we move on, it means you are happy with the direction, costs and that the designs are on track.
You liked one of the designs but not the colour/picture/fonts/orientation or something else in particular. At this stage, you need to supply me with the final copy, pictures, logos, info, etc... that I need so the design can use the real content as I'm now working towards the job being signed off. The number of changes you're entitled to will be outlined in the cost estimate. If you're getting rediculous with your changes (telephone number this week and then a minor colour change the next when they could heve been done at the same time, or it's going on 3 months and you're still faffing around with your logo placement) I will tell you that you're losing the plot and might be incurring additional charges soon. I'll never surprise you at the last minute with additional costs, but if I've quoted 10 hours on a job and you give me 6 months' worth of changes, I'd be a real doormat not to charge you.
Yiha, you’re happy with everything. I need this message in writing so either put your signature on the physical printout, or send me an email saying as much. Please understand that sometimes, sign-off is in the middle of the job and not right at the end in terms of a timeline. For example, you sign-off your 48 page brochure. Please don't think sign-off means it's it's now done and you can have it on CD on the spot. The odds are I still have hours of repro-ready still to do on it. This can easily add another day or two to the whole process, so please don't sign-off your job 10 minutes before a newspaper's material deadline and think you're still in time.
You’re happy, but your/my printer isn't. I now take your signed off artwork and make it ready for printing. Low quality, sample pictures are replaced with their high quality counterparts. Sometimes these HQ pictures need the editing/manipulation previously done on their LQ counterparts. I add bleed, crop marks, folding instructions and a bunch of other techinal things that printers need to ensure problem free printing. This often includes making up a sample mock-up to prevent any mistakes (and a 100 page catalogue can be a very big, time-consuming mockup).
Either I give you the repro-ready artwork for you to have printed by your mate down the road, or I send it to my printer and give you the final printed product. This would have been decided upon in the briefing session and reflected in my cost estimate.
This process was loosely based on a printed product like a brochure. Somethings need a different process. If you want a quicky business card, look over my shoulder, pick a template, dictate your contact details, give me your logo and leave with the artwork on a CD for your your nearest Minuteman to print. Chop-chop, no shlep
Websites need a different process. Once you’re happy with the design, I go straight to repro-ready because I have to make a fully functinal template from the approved design. Then we place the content and roll out all the pages. The site gets uploaded once you’re happy with the conent.
A video will also be different inn that what I deliver to you will probably be on a DVD disc. The concept of "just burn it to disc" doesn't really exist. Exporting, encoding and burning a disc works on the timing of about 4:1. Every 1 minute of video takes 4 minutes to make a disc. All very well for a 30 second advert, but it'll take 8 hours to make a DVD from a 2hr VHS. Don't underestimate how sloooooowwwww the video process can be.
no one likes to talk money, but some people seem to think graphic design is a hobby, not a business. After the cost estimate, but before we start on the initial design, we require a deposit of R500. This will serve as a rejection fee if you don't want me to proceed with the job (I'm not offended if you do. It's not always a reflection on my work. Some people just want to “test the waters” or have an unexpected cost that kills the budget and halts the project.). If you’re happy and do want me to proceed, you then need to pay 50% of the cost estimate as a deposit for me to proceed with the rest of the job. If you want to walk away I will keep the R500 as a rejection fee and everything I presented will remain the property of Impasto, so don't think you buy a concept for R500 and get your receptionist to roll it out.
The balance is payable, COD, upon final delivery. Once we've done a few jobs together and we've proven ourselves to each other, we can talk payment terms.
If you cancel the job half way through, I will invoice for the work done to date. I'm a time-based service provider, not a retailer.
Authors is the time that pops up unexpectedly and is not included in the cost estimate. Authors are completely in your hands. Authors happen when you change the brief after I’ve started the job or give me changes after sign-off. I can't charge authors because I underestimated the job - that's not fair on you. Conversly, its unfair on me if you have approved the job and the I have to go back three steps and redo already approved work because you’ve given me the wrong contact details or you misunderstood the term “half page advert” (hmm, I really thought they meant a horizontal, not vertical advert)
I'm responsible to make all my deadlines, however, I can't meet my deadlines if you haven't paid your deposit or not supplied all the content I need. This door swings both ways. I also don't ask for full payment upfront (a growing practice due to an increase in fraud), so please don't drag out final payment with he-said-she-said stories.
In order for a delivery deadline to be met, Impasto will need a timeline to follow... you give us your deadline and we'll give you our timeline. What needs watching out for is missing information. We need all the info, up front so we can make a realistic timeline for the real deadline. We recently designed a range of naughty T-shirts for a Saturday event. No problem, printers need 5 days so we have a 10am deadline on the Monday for the printers to deliver on Friday. However... mid week a precious bit of information is revealed... the event is in CapeTown and so their courier needs the T-Shirts at 9am Friday morning so "I need them for Friday" actually meant "I need them in my hands by 3pm on Thursday so I can sort, price and pack them for a Friday 9am collection". (for the record, our printer managed to meet the revised deadline and we were very lucky they didn't charge for any overtime)
Graphic design, video editing, illustration and just about everything else we do here at Impasto is a service and as such takes time. Some things can be rushed and some just can't. Our office hours are 9am to 5pm (give or take an hour or two). As much as we love what we do, we, like most other people, have lives to get back to in the evennings and weekends. If we've managed our time badly and have to pull an all-nighter, that's our problem. However... if you come to us this afternoon and your advert's deadline is tomorrow lunchtime, well then you're in for overtime. Impasto will bill you at twice our regular hourly rate. The same applies if you pitch up in the morning and insist on your job being done the same day. We won't be working on your job at night, but we will be doing that day's planned workload that night. Effectively, you're still responsible for the staff of Impasto working overtime and it's just not fair for us to charge those other clients our overtime rates. Please understand that we're not benefiting by charging double because who ever worked through the night has to take the next day off to catch up of sleep and will probably still operate at lower productivity levels for a few days.
This is a sticky situation that even the industry, as a whole, hasn't quite sorted out. It used to be very simple, but with everything going digital, we have a lot of grey areas that can be argued in both directions. This is Impasto’s position... You own what your brief requests and/or you own what your invoice lists. Everything else remains the property of Impasto. For example: You want a business card with a photo of you on it. I design the card, take 3 photos of you (but only use 1 of them), trace your logo because you can't supply me an electronic one, and send it off for printing. My policy is that you own all the final printed cards and the repro-ready digital file from which the cards are printed. Everything else leading up to the final print-ready file remains mine. I would own all the source files: the original photos, mockups, sketches, the layered master files, the redrawn digital version of your logo, the fonts used in the layout etc. If I invoiced you for a stockphoto, then you'd own this photo as I've passed on ownership of it by charging you for it. To use a restaurant analogy, if you order a salad, you don't get the rest of the head of lettuce to take home with you. This doesn't really affect you too much anyway as it's very unlikely you'd be able to read my master files anyway... we don't design in Word or Powerpoint or edit video in Pinnacle. To take it from the other end... if we gave you everything, where do we stop? Must Impasto give you illegal copies of my legally purchased fonts and software to read our master files? Our software only runs on Apple Macs so, hey, let's throw in a computer as well. (yes, I'm being very sarcastic, but the point is made.)
On the topic of copyright... there is another issue that needs clearing up at the offset. Sometimes a job may have certain use restrictions attached to it. Let's say we've done an illustration for you for use in your next newsletter, but now you want to use this illustration in every print advert, TV advert, billboard, brochure, delivery vehicle for the next 3 years. It all depends on what the agreement was upfront on this. This agreement will be discussed at the briefing/quoting stage and outlined in the invoice. If nothing is meantioned, then you own the the illustration and can do what you like with it. If I specified in Impasto's invoice that the illustration commissioned is for use in your newsletter, then sorry for you... you can only use it in said newsletter because that's what the job was. You're going to need Impasto's written permission to use that illustration all over the place (written permission will usually appear in the form of another invoice). This might seem unfair, but very often the price of a job is not always based on the time it took, but rather on its perceived value and the availible budget.
In the brief, I will ask if you want me to archive your job when it's finished. This is a free service as I have no way to structure costs (per month? per MB? Per disc? Per file?). Instead, I will charge an archival retrieval fee equal to about half an hour. This way, you only pay when you get value from the service and it's a lot cheaper than remaking the artwork from scratch, especially if it's just to update a telephone number.
Please bear in mind that all of this is open to discussion so if you want my working files or need payment terms, please mention it at the briefing stage. We are a service company after all, so please feel free to discuss any of this document with us. Nothing is truly set in stone, as long as it's agreed upon upfront – it's just not up for debate at the end.
Whether it's a design, illustration, DVD, logo or whatevah, at the end of the day we want happy satisfied customers who get what they want, more than artistic integrity, industry accolades and winning awards. Lourie awards don't pay our rent – you do.
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