[JLD]

I'm quoting on designing an 80 page magazine and I'm not sure how to price it. I run my own graphic design business but this is the first chance I've had to become an art director for a magazine. How do you come up with a price on something so big when you're competing against other designers?

[steveb]

Assuming you've already established an hourly rate for yourself, say 70€, and your customer has given you a decent brief - i.e. space available for advertising, space for editorial content, space for photography & illustrations, you can estimate 30 mins per page. Does your brief include actually doing the magazine on InDesign? In that case, on top of the layout design, factor in another 20 mins per page. Assuming that there will only be one round of corrections and alterations, for which add another 15 minutes per page, you're looking at 75 mins times 80 pages at 70€ = 7000€ + tax. Total time is 100 hours, or two week's fulltime work, which is pretty realistic unless it's a weekly production!

Sounds lucrative to me. And cheap compared with an independent ad agency or whatever.

[Mitch]

30 minutes a page! HA!

[cocknose]

30 mins is fine ... most mags are produced in spreads anyway and not independent which is faster ... If you are talking about a normal lifestyles/etc mag. If you are talking about Maxim/FHM then 4/5 hours per spread is acceptable for a page designer. But i don't think a single designer would be producing anything like that. You need a team of Art workers and a couple of page designers. . .

I find choosing and editing down photos and making clipping paths the most time consuming..
The last mag i did (which was two weeks ago) it took me one day to choose typefaces, grid, set up mastersheets and stylesheets and create any graphic element needed. Then Three days to lay it out and edit photos... 52 pg and one-fifth of that was ads

oh finally.... a days worth of copy editing and fault fixing!! (who ever is gonna do that..)

[Mitch]

Originally Posted by cocknose

30 mins is fine ... most mags are produced in spreads anyway and not independent which is faster ... If you are talking about a normal lifestyles/etc mag. If you are talking about Maxim/FHM then 4/5 hours per spread is acceptable for a page designer. But i don't think a single designer would be producing anything like that. You need a team of Art workers and a couple of page designers. . .

I find choosing and editing down photos and making clipping paths the most time consuming..
The last mag i did (which was two weeks ago) it took me one day to choose typefaces, grid, set up mastersheets and stylesheets and create any graphic element needed. Then Three days to lay it out and edit photos... 52 pg and one-fifth of that was ads

oh finally.... a days worth of copy editing and fault fixing!! (who ever is gonna do that..)

Would love to see it, as just setting the grid and spacing would take me ages.

[JLD]

Thanks for you input, my hourly rate is $65/hr (Can) and I worked it out to approx 1 hr / page x 80 pgs with approx 8 hrs pre-press and another 8 hrs for incidentals. This is approx where you estimated... I'm feeling much better about what to quote. I'll let you know if I get it!

[Herr Kurm]

Anyone can add something? I´m going to have to do a magazine design and I´m kinda clueless. Apart from the obvious things ofcourse....

[Mitch]

Talk to your pre-pressman, and if you have no experience, then I would say start crapping it.

It's not just the design you have to worry about, it is the files, and the last minute editing.

Good luck.

[microdesign]

30 min a page.. i think its tough!!

[steveb]

Look, you have a grid to put your stuff into, right? That takes a while to work out before you start, but once the grid on the master pages is set for each publication, you don't have to keep redoing it every week/month. Assume your copy arrives as proofread .txt files. Your customer has specified headlines, shoutboxes etc. Illustrations are colour-corrected cmyk tiffs. You have preset text styles and sizes for headlines and body copy etc. All these things exist before you start up Quark or InDesign.

How on EARTH are you going to spend over 30 minutes placing a few elements on one page?!

Of course, this assumes you know what you're doing, how the software works and what to do when things go wrong.

[Herr Kurm]

I was referring to starting from absolute 0. No presets, no predefined grids, no typeface regulations, nothing. I guess 2 hours per spread should be enough

[steveb]

Personally, I regard them as two entirely different jobs. Set up the master grid and bill for whatever time that takes. 4 hours? After that, assembling the magazine each time is a different kind of process.

[hawken]

tell you what JLD, give me the client and I'll let you charge me 5%

[Mitch]

Originally Posted by steveb

How on EARTH are you going to spend over 30 minutes placing a few elements on one page?!

I'll say it again - 30 minutes or under... If you are not used to the style that is set, and have not much experience, you will make 16 pages of pure unadulterated proportionally designed shit in one day. Good job.

Remember these are one offs, not something that has been a continual learning curvre with help from others more experienced.

Always estimate then add at least a 1/6 of the predicted time on top, especially if it is a fairly new area for you. You need to allow for mistakes. It is always easier to let them barter the price down, than you doing the impossible and asking for more when it runs well over you ETA.

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To Klumm: After looking at your invoice thread, I personally feel unless it is a bog standard unstyled newsletter, you will have a hard job in front of you. Get researching other similar products, it will help loads with the subtleties of using space, margins and point sizes.

Good luck.

[cocknose]

Originally Posted by Mitch

I'll say it again - 30 minutes or under... If you are not used to the style that is set, and have not much experience, you will make 16 pages of pure unadulterated proportionally designed shit in one day. Good job.

ah ah ah... you never said that before!!

If you have designed the template yourself obviously you are using your own Style of design. You are fully aware of running design elements, how pull outs are gonna look like, head and sub-head size and style, you will have your own style sheets and library to pull from. Its all about formatting..the design comes mostly in the form of the template design.

also, there is no mention on how experience this person is!! This person may have designed 100 1000pg'd brochures in the past and is fully aware of how to put together a good looking spread.

it seems like you are asked to do dummy work alot and do other peoples design. so it seems that you are constantly having to think about other peoples design styles... thats why it takes you so long!!

are you an Art Worker MITCH???

[Herr Kurm]

First of all "Mitch", learn to write my name right. And perhaps we could see your invoice, perhaps the actual format and infos that must be present on the invoice dont fit on the most basic grid layouts and oh... fuck you. And you did not print it so you are basically barking at the wrong three.

Secondly go fuck yourself.

Thirdly die of hemorroids.

Lastly the biggest issue I´m concerned with is the type choice, setting up a couple of flexible master grids should take a few easy days. The images arent such a problem, I can hire a photo retoucher just to give the raw photos nice finish. Oh dear, I hope that the texts are atleast proofread...

[Mitch]

I read the thread properly, not like you. They are inexperienced. They mention asking how much to charge on a public forum. Use your head.

Did you not see my first attempt at designing a mag last year here? I haven't seen much of your work, apart from this > Please Rip Into Me.

Don't try and knock me, when I am just trying to give some insight to something I have done a few times before - from scratch, with shit images with no other help or guidelines, apart from my own. And am actually working on again this year due to its success last year.

[Mitch]

Originally Posted by Herr Kurm

First of all "Mitch", learn to write my name right. And perhaps we could see your invoice, perhaps the actual format and infos that must be present on the invoice dont fit on the most basic grid layouts and oh... fuck you. And you did not print it so you are basically barking at the wrong three.

Secondly go fuck yourself.

Thirdly die of hemorroids.

Lastly the biggest issue I´m concerned with is the type choice, setting up a couple of flexible master grids should take a few easy days. The images arent such a problem, I can hire a photo retoucher just to give the raw photos nice finish. Oh dear, I hope that the texts are atleast proofread...

Firstly please do not large it to me, you wouldn't in the flesh, so don't do it here behind the safety of a monitor. You have just prooved you imaturity.

If you wanna see some work, search my name for threads I made in the showcase.

I only tried to give some insight of the pitfalls of doing a job like this, glad you appreciated me wasting my time typing it out.

x Keep it real.

[Herr Kurm]

Originally Posted by Mitch

Firstly please do not large it to me, you wouldn't in the flesh, so don't do it here behind the safety of a monitor. You have just prooved you imaturity.

how can you be so sure about that? I certainly would, I´m from up north and we dont usually sit on our cocks and "be polite" if there isnt a dreadful need for it.

Your "insights" are the only ones in this thread that raise the temperature on my anus above the boiling point, all the fuss about crappy pictures et cetera hasnt got to do anything with the actual design aspects of magazine layout. I will break a few noses and get the RAW images even if its going to kill someone so I´m not worried about that.

The only reason I asked everyone to elaborate was because it is the biggest work prestige wise I have done and I wanted to have all the reasonable insights available.

[cocknose]

2005 my friend and i was an artist before i was a designer. . . I am not a LOGO designer as you can plainly see. I graduated university in 2004 with a fine art degree. But since then i have trained and worked as a designer.

And just because i don't feel the need to show my work to a crowd of 15 good designers and 100 10 yr old muppets with stolen copies of photoshop means nothing.

I actually work for a publishing house and i have produced in the past 2 yrs in total 7 fully designed magazines 2 art directed by myself and everyweek i am laying out magazines, newspapers, travels guides and so on...

I wasn't trying to knock you i was just saying that if you make people think that they should spend hours doin something that shouldn't take them that long to do they will fail in the real world.

and you are dissing this!!! i still love it...