Monday 28th November, 2016
Project Costs
Project costs covers a large web of finances that either an individual or a company require to move forwards in their prospective areas. For instance, a basic project cost for a brief could withhold costs such as; paper, inks, pencils/pens/markers, rubbers, CD's/data storage, images and travel. Costs can go to different outlets/inlets, as there are costs that go to your client, and also to sub-contractors for printing and so on. With all this in consideration, and including general running costs of the facility that pushes the designs out, the total costs of a project should be the only figure that a client sees on their invoice, as there are no questions and you get paid.
That was a big focus of this lecture, making sure that you get paid for the work that you're actually doing. An example of a table of costs was given in the lecture, and is shown in the below figure;
As clients will naturally expect you to run a project through properly and smoothly without their involvement where it isn't necessary, such costs shouldn't be displayed to them. They don't need to know! Everything else in a project costs overview should be kept by the designer for their own referral and as Norris said, to help with anything to do with accounting - it can get sticky.
After you have organised the costs for anything relating to the individual or the company, you come onto the different types of insurance that a company needs to cover. General liability insurance, professional indemnity insurance are both things that are a must for the design company. The first covering any visits in the company location. The second is about people suing you for doing something wrong, meaning that its very important we as designers introduce the problems with a design before they do, as it then becomes their problem and no longer makes the designer liable.
But before all things relating to costs, the almighty contract must be overcome first. There are only two sides to a contract, unless the situation is very particular, there is the client side and the employee side. On the client side, it states that the designs must provide what the client asks for, determine what the client actually asks for and from that, ensure that proper client parameters are put into place. A broader aspect of the client side is the duty of care, and how its the designers job to make sure that the clients concerns relating to their project are heard and dealt with. So, it is important to know what the clients business is about and very good to know where the clients current financial environment is. And even before contracts there is also professional opinion, designers reserve the right to decline a clients request for a logo, as they may not actually need to change anything if it already works.
Moving over to the employee side, there is a lot to move through in terms of employment legislation, but the general aim of this side of the contract is to make sure employees are protected from unfair practices. The duty of care changes for an employer when looking at this side as its required that they make sure they're looked after, mental & physical care is considered, safe working environment, procedures to resolve issues, and having clear job understanding.
To finish, there are many remedies to make sure that a company remains strong, efficient and functional. But it is important to know that things will go wrong in running a company. You as a company owner/manager need to know how to talk through the issue, find the problem and develop a plan to combat it. Or, if its required, seek a remedy from legal counsel. There are always ways out of an issue, its just important you know how to get out of them. Which is the idea process that can be directly applied to just working on a brief, let alone a whole company.
