Sometimes, bridges must be burnt

I occassionally troll the DeviantART job offers forum, not really looking for a job because 90% of them are way under market value. Someone had written, "If you see a cheap job, stay way from it, its clearly not for us, and dont cheapen our profession by picking at a client for their own mistakes". Well the reason why I approach the client and tell them they are offering much too low ($35 for a logo in this case) is because I actually care about the success of the person. How any designer can effectively understand market, audience, association, etc with just $35 is beyond me. The software to make design is expensive. We have to keep everything up to date. Professionals have overhead and have to adjust their prices accordingly in order to make a profit. Those who don't are selling themselves short and are undermining the industry and really I don't see how someone can do a $35 logo and call themselves a professional as they can in no way make a living from it. Not only that, but the people who do a $35 logo are 99% of the time making it in a proprietary format, only delivering a jpg, and working with no contract (which means the client would have no say for copyright use). Then the client will probably have to hire another designer to fix the mistakes. I made a little list of helping curb the waste when getting design work done in my blog. You can check it out here: http://blog.studio.aibrean.com/2008/04/diet-and-exercise.html

You have to realize most of the people on DeviantART are kids and untrained. It hurts me to see someone hire a kid because they don't know how to properly brainstorm and design. There was a survey that pretty much speaks for itself on DA.



I do have a tendency to be blunt and rash and I apologize, it's my nature (inherited from my dad). There is a good heart behind it.