Beginning Work—

Gathering information is essential for preparing a project proposal for you. We will want to know about your schedule, budget and job specifications. On acceptance of our proposal, we will continue gathering information in order to better understand you and your needs—your preferences, target audience and communication objectives. And, most importantly, we will want to know the details of the story you need to tell.

This process is somewhat time consuming; however, it is crucial to the success of your project. It helps ensure that our work is both creative and effective. In addition, it may also help you to refine the focus and clarify the objectives of your project.

Project Development—

Good creative work doesn't magically appear in a flash of inspiration. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, creativity is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration. We will need time to research the subject, consider several approaches (concepts), refine them, evaluate them and revise them. And whenever practical, we will involve you (or your project manager) in this evaluation process. In addition, it may take some time to arrange sub-contractors, vendor estimates and the like.

We also will need to schedule our workflow in a sound, businesslike manner. This means that the early development of a project may take from one to three weeks before we can contact you with preliminary concepts or rough sketches. If you are up against a hard deadline or are in the middle of a rush situation, we will of course try to adjust our workflow and schedule accordingly.

Typically, we will provide you or your project manager with preliminary concepts or rough sketches to review. The more objective and specific you can be in your evaluation, the better we will be able to respond. Guided by your feedback, we will prepare refined concepts or sketches. In some cases clients request additional sets of sketches or other preliminary materials. We are happy to provide these, but they may entail additional fees. In any case, our concepts and sketches will give you a fair representation of content, composition and style. However, they will not be so detailed or well-developed as to have wasted time and budget if we need to change direction substantially.

Once you have approved these refined concepts or sketches, we will proceed to production of the final work. We will not go forward without your written approval. We strongly recommend that the refined version be circulated to the appropriate decision-makers for fact and detail checking only, and that stylistic and subjective decisions be reserved to you or a single project manager. To avoid costly confusion, we request that all communications with us come through just one individual.

Our Charges—

We make our living by selling our time, expertise and experience. We prefer to provide flat-fee estimates based on a combination of project scope and complexity, media and market use, and copyrights conveyed. We will provide you with a detailed proposal and estimate before starting. It will include the minimum projection of professional and creative fees plus expenses for the proposed project. However, every project is unique, often evolving as it progresses. Client changes in project specifications and revisions will result in extra charges.

Our minimum fee is $250. Though we prefer to offer flat-fee pricing, there will be times when it is necessary to bill by the hour, for instance in the event of client changes. Our current studio rate is $125 per hour. These rates are quite competitive with those of other businesses with similar background, expertise and experience.

We expect to be reimbursed for all direct expenses arising from your project. Via the project proposal, we will endeavor to advise you beforehand of any necessary expenses, and in no case will we incur any expense valued at more than $75 without your prior approval.

Fulfilling Your Needs—

As the project evolves we will keep the project manager informed of our progress. Likewise, we will notify the project manager of anything that affects the schedule or budget. Our goal is your satisfaction. We will do our best to keep your project moving forward on schedule, on budget and on target. We hope to exceed your expectations. For more detailed information on how we operate, please visit our Trade & Custom page.

Sincerely,
Bill Andrews, President

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