Design & Photography: February 2008 Archives
Two weeks ago, I met with a client about my first real paying design gig -- putting together the program for a local event to be held in late March. They had contacted one of my former professors at UHCL, and he put them in touch with me. When we met, and they found out that I am not simply a student, but that I am working on a design degree and doing the odd job here and there on the side, they seemed a little thrown. But we talked about what they needed, and they gave me all the materials from last year including a sample and four CDs worth of files. They asked how much I charged, and I was honest with them: I told them that I I would talk with my professor to come up with a reasonable rate considering what they needed done and my experience level.
We communicated via email over the past two weeks, organizing the project and what needed to be done at what point. The event is in late March, and the printer requires 10 working days. That put our "to-printer" date sometime in the middle of the first week of March. Their deadline to the event participants to get their photos and other materials in was March 1.
That deadline would leave me exactly 3 days to put together an entire program for an event. Three days. Not nearly enough time to do quality work. So I expressed my concern that the timeline was too tight for me to do an acceptable job and asked if the deadline for participant submissions could be moved up to next weekend. They seemed amenable to that, and we were working towards that new date, which would leave me a full week to put together the program.
Last night I finally heard from my professor and sent the client an email with my hourly rate, along with an estimate of how many hours I expected the project to take.
This morning I checked my email before I left for work. The client emailed. They said nothing about my rate, but instead said that they were not going to be able to work with my schedule to get materials in next weekend. "Thanks anyway."
Am I wrong to be feeling a little put-off here? I spent two weeks talking with them, and while I had not started doing any design work for them, I had started putting significant thought into what I need to get together and what kind of schedule I needed to be on. It seems a little odd that they told me they no longer needed me after I gave them a quote on the cost of the job. Maybe they thought I was too expensive. On the contrary, my rate was reasonable and much cheaper than a professional would be.
Oh well. It's not a huge deal, and I think I'm mainly disappointed because I was looking forward to getting the experience of working for an actual client and doing some real-world work.
Moving on...
