Wednesday, March 16, 2011

please make a decision for me

Hello friends. I need some advice. Here is the situation:

I am just finishing a freelance job designing those kind of Christmas cards that go online and people put their own picture in them. I didn't love this job because they pay a fixed amount per card and I wasn't expecting to do millions of changes on something they weren't paying me very much for. Lesson learned. Or is it?

The next thing I am thinking of working on is a collaboration with a friend of mine who has a letterpress. She says she will pay me $75/card design, which is like half the amount of the above job that I hated. The difference with this one is I'm pretty sure I have full creative control, I am getting props on the back of the cards, and I think she is taking them to the Stationary show in NYC, which is cool. She says the usage would be a standard-seat license up to 499,999 impressions for cards. Is this a good idea or am I just giving away my work? Would it be a better idea to design my own cards and then pay a letterpress to print them and sell them myself? I just don't want to get into something I'm going to hate again. What would you do?

3 comments:

  1. Ashley

    Sounds like you will be giving away your designs for nothing. If she is going to print 499,999 of one of your designs and charge $3–$5 a card, she is going to make a lot of money. Try to work out some kind of deal where you get paid upfront some money and take a percentage of every card sold or print them yourself. When you say you have creative control does that mean that you make 10 designs and she pays you $750 or is she going to choose out of the 10 designs?

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  2. i've never really dealt with anything like this so I can't speak from experience to the specifics, BUT, the initial thought that came to my mind was…
    if you're busy or otherwise occupied and/or not interested in doing what it takes to have success with the cards then it would seem like it would be a good idea to team up with someone ambitious and who (maybe) has some connections or insight into the business. Still, $75/design seems like a joke. at least, AT LEAST make sure you're getting a decent hourly out of it.
    if you're not too busy and you're feeling ambitious, dive in on your own. learn the business side of it and use it to your benefit down the road—this kind of work does seem to be what suits you best.

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  3. Thanks for your comments. I think I will try to do it on my own.

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