Creative people like to see the world upside down, but it doesn’t mean they are any less of a person and doesn’t demand appreciation, encouragement and a pay scale that they truly deserve. From ho-hum of emulating someone else’s design to ha-ha of performing a task that you are not even entitled to, being a graphic designer is not an easy feat. Paying attention to intricate details, innumerable revisions, meeting the expectations of clients, there are scores of things that take immense effort and care. Despite all these effort and hard work, graphic designers do not get paid what they deserve.

This issue seems to be more prevalent among SMB owners and startups. They like to allocate budget to every field, but feel a little reluctant to shell out a few bucks to honor the work of a graphic designer. The design area always occupies less importance than other fields. Indeed, pricing is one of the biggest dilemmas for graphic designers. It’s one sensitive issue that design community highlights from time to time. But, the real question is who actually undervalues the design field: designers themselves by accepting a low price or clients. Here, we scope underpayment and how different aspects affect this major factor.

• A Free Hand To Design = $150

A creative designer becomes through the roof excited when his clients gives him a free hand. Having full command over designing aspect means unleashing your creativity without any bound. The only thing that the clients ask for is affordability. Yes, it’s a situation where you end up banging your head against the wall, when you are actually supposed to jump with cheer delight. Wanting something creative and original without paying what it worth is akin to covering 1000 miles without moving an inch. Nothing is as galling as getting merely $150 for your creativity.

• Never-Ending Revisions = $150 + $20

It all starts with a ‘oh, I just want a few minor changes’ and leads to a position where the original design undergoes complete transformation by the innocent desires of clients. On one hand, a designer painstakingly addresses each and every alterations; on the other hand, it is equally annoying for him to kill his ideas with his own hands. Dear client also realizes how gruesome this situation is for a designer, so he pays extra 20 bucks to the designer. They can even pay more, only if they realize that a designer can make ten new designs in the time he spent on the revisions which they call minor changes.

• Golden Words By Clients With Brief = $150 – $20

The difference between a lemon and a client’s advice is that a graphic designer asks for a lemon! But, generous clients like to give advices as a bonus. As they give advices as a bonus point, seems like, it ultimately gives them the right to pay less to the designer. This is a sort of a situation where a graphic designer gets to hear a lot of ‘ifs’ from the clients such as: if we change the color, if we tweak it a little bit, if we do it with a new angle and this list of ‘ifs’ go on and on. After all, these free advices are the most important ingredients of a design process, rest is just a game about a few buttons and clicks, so why pay more to the designer? Consequently, the-all-too-knowing client charges designers for their extra value advice (read unwanted) and tries to snap bucks from the already miserable design wage.

• When Client Wants You To Micromanage = $150 + $20

That moment when a designer’s job suddenly shifts from designing to spotting grammatical errors, from pointing out errors to editing and from editing to writing. It’s irritating for a designer when his client assumes that you have a hidden talent of writing. With this package of designing and writing, $150 + $20 (for extra work) is enough in the eyes of client. Now, designers can decide the percentage of these 170 bucks at your own convenience. Let’s make it 50% for writing and 50% for designing. Fair enough, isn’t it?

• Copycat Brief = $150 – $50

You’re ready to meet your client with your creative arsenals ready so that you can display your artistic magic just after receiving a brief from client. But, all your desires and wishes goes to vein, when client brings up their own design and wants you to play around it (read: copy it). Ask any client and they will tell you the real worth of such a design in no less than $800 to $1000, after all, the design is theirs! Scouring internet, getting inspired, copy it and giving explanation about what needs to be changed is more work than just making the changes or creating a new design. But the designer still gets paid lesser than the original or gloomy standard price. Because hey, you did not design the design!

• Who’s The Culprit?

Just like any other profession, a graphic designer also faces many challenges while dealing with different clients. The above described scenarios paint a picture of how designers face the issue of being undervalued, but it of course, raises the question if a client sets a low price, why do designers settle for that? It is argued that it’s usually new designers who want to carve out a career in this field set for low prices to get a few clients on board. Also, there are other underlying factors that make this field a little indecisive when it comes to pay scale and being valued. Who do you think is the real culprit? Is it clients who never agrees to pay a reasonable amount or is it designers who easily settle on something less than they really deserve?