AIGA: Weathering the Storm

Recently, the AIGA sponsored a webinar entitled, “Good Advice for Bad Times.” This webinar was led by Shel Perkins, of Shel Perkins & Associates. While the main purpose of the online conference provided designers insights into how to weather the economy as principals of design firms, the webinar gave great insights into designers looking to market themselves in today’s economy.

One of the most interesting things Shel talked about was not lowering one’s hourly rate just because budgets are tight. Shel talked instead about adjusting the scope of work rather than nickel-and-diming your hourly rate.

Another topic Shel discussed was setting up contracts with your clients to protect yourself and I wondered: with such competition especially for gigs in the print arena are contracts really suitable for designers representing themselves? I’m not talking about principals of design firms, by all means they should have contracts, but as an individual graphic designer do you feel like contracts make you more appealing to your clients or less? To get a gig would you shelve a contract you typically would present to your prospective clients?

Tags: webinar

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Artisan Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.