Grrr

Even as I type this, I'm umming and ahhing as to whether this is wise. Surely a blog that's linked to my work website should be all sweetness and light – here! look at the lovely work I've done! how wonderful my clients are! how great this job is! But as any fool know, it ain't all like that.

Graphic design is regarded as one of those 'cool' jobs. I don't know if it is, but I do know that the skills required are a balanced marriage of creativity and geekdom. Drawing pretty pictures is all very well but an ability to grasp software quickly and fix the occasional hardware breakdown, a thorough knowledge of art and design history, an intuitive understanding of how to play to various audience demographics and a practical grounding in print processes and the limits of what is possible are all vital, too. When you're freelance, you can add reasonable people skills, discipline and opportunism to that list too.

It's also one of those industries where, on the most part, people charge for their time. Macs and software must be purchased, electricity bills paid, but in comparison to other industries, overheads are fairly low - especially for those of us who work from home.

Because of this, some potential clients seem to think that you should 'do them a favour' and slash your prices. I wonder if a builder gave them a quote for a wall that was £1500, would they turn around and say, I'm sure you could do it for £300 if you really thought about it. They don't consider the time spent amassing skills, developing styles, the time spent sitting and thinking and problem solving, and they certainly don't seem to understand that I have a mortgage to pay. It's akin to moaning about the rates that lawyers charge for sending a letter, without taking into account the years of training, abilities and expenses incurred. Lawyers, like graphic designers, solve specialised problems, and although my rates are nowhere near that of a lawyer (and my abilities at warping the truth are, to be frank, abysmal), the principles are the same.

What's prompted these thoughts is a phone-call from a one-off client. I created a cheap flyer for him in January on the understanding (but not the promise with contract – a lesson I have learned) that there would be more work in the shape of a website and a brochure. I had quoted him a page rate for a brochure and agreed to charge the same for this flyer, even though it would take me longer.

After creating a beautiful flyer for very little money, he then took an aeon to pay me, and sent me no file copies, which were part of the deal. The brochure and website work never materialised – I didn't hear from him after receiving that cheque, until I received repeated phone calls from him last week asking for the artwork again as he'd lost the disc I sent him. I told him I hadn't archived it (I didn't bother, having no intention of working with him again) and that the recreation of the flyer would cost a lot more this time. He couldn't quite believe it when I said 'no' to offering him the same deal I'd offered him before.

It's a common theme. I have some wonderful clients who have knowledge of marketing and the media and the skills required to do my job, and they know that I quote honestly, I stick to those prices, and on occasion when they ask me if it's possible to reduce a price in some way I'll do my best to do that.  I assume – from the fact that they come back again and again – that they consider me good value. In my six years as a freelancer I've only lost two clients, and those were large businesses who grew big enough to employ their own designers in-house. I'm really lucky to have clients I love working with – there is no-one to whom I answer the phone with a heavy heart. But it's those who want the one-off jobs – "I've knocked up this logo in Word – can you make it look nice? I can pay you £25!" – often business start-ups, people with little knowledge of how vital the visual impact of your business is – who seem to think that this is minimum-wage work, and that they are doing you a favour when they ask for the moon on a stick for a fiver. You know that when you email over the quote you won't hear from them again, that you're wasting your time and also, inevitably, dashing their hopes of having a quality brand created for the cost of a KFC family bucket. I'm not heartless: I know what it is to start out on your own without a penny to spare, and often I genuinely want to help. But commonly, when I do hear back from them, their attitude is that I am ripping them off, taking advantage and generally being a scumbag. Such is life, I suppose – you have to shrug and carry on regardless – but it doesn't make a person feel particularly 'cool'.