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Design Cost Calculator
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Section 1 - Base Cost of Design
In this section, we will calculate the cost of design, and we will together arrive at a likely estimate of how much it will cost to do the design task. Before calculating, you need to have in mind how much hours of work you might need for industrial design, architecture, graphics design, photography, creative consultancy or design strategy, and if you do not know the amount of work you might require for a new or bespoke project, the best strategy would be to indicate that your price quotation covers up to a specific number of work hours, and if the work would exceed the number of hours as you would indicate here, additional or extra work hours would be billed by the hourly rate you would specify. If you specify an additional hourly rate, remember to include your markup for that as well and also note that in some cases Client's would ask you to limit the number of extra hours you might ask by writing a clause in your design agreement. After calculating the base cost of design, you can use this cost to calculate a design price quote.
Section 1. Cost of Design
Step 1. Base Costs |
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The hourly cost of a designer or a creative worker. Euro / hour. This fee is different in each Country as well as region. If you do not know what to write to this field, try to search for minimum hourly wage in your country and multiply that value by three (3) and convert this to Euro. Type only number. If you do not know the hourly cost, consider the fact that a week has 40 working hours and a month has 4 weeks, which means a month has 160 working hours, and than divide a designers' salary by 160 ( 8 hours per 5 days for 4 weeks) to calculate the hourly fee. |
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Market Study, Material or Technology Studies, Drafting, Thinking, Inspiration and similar work done. In some cases, if you are very experienced you might not need this research done since you might have already done it, for something new or for a task that requires great attention, innovation, technical details etc, you can add about 20 hours. This depends actually if the client gives you a good brief, a very very good brief could already have a section of the design research done, for example the client, in the brief could already explain or demonstrate available products or offerings, and could also explain available technologies and methods. If your client provides you a good brief, you can decrease this to 10 hours. |
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3D Drawing, Rendering, Technical Drawing or Illustration of Concepts, and other Modeling work. This is a technical part of the job where you would provide deliverable items to help the work being realized, such as providing blueprints, guidelines and other material. This section can take many hours depending on the complexity of project, even the simplest projects would take many hours since providing guidelines and correct technical drawings are indeed very important, the work must be very carefully done. We suggest you add at least 40 hours for this. It is important that in your design contract you define what the deliverable is, define for example formats and if clients ask different formats, charge either by the hour or by commissioning third parties with markup over such costs. |
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Redrawing, Modifying or Updating Concepts based on Client Input. This depends on the number of agreed revisions with the client, but each major revision means you need to do everything all over again, while minor revisions could be very simple such as trivial modifications of the design project. For each minor revision that you foresee add 2 hours, for each revision 8 hours, for each major revision add 20 hours. Usually, a client would have 2-3 revisions, and this should be indicated in the contract, i.e. you are getting in advance cost of revisions from the client up to 3 revisions, modifications and updates, as in almost all cases, they all ask revisions. Then in the contract, add a note that if client asks more revisions, these would be charged extra by the hour. |
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Market Study, Material or Technology Studies, Drafting, Thinking, Inspiration and similar work done. In some cases, if you are very experienced you might not need this research done since you might have already done it, for something new or for a task that requires great attention, innovation, technical details etc, you can add about 20 hours. This depends actually if the client gives you a good brief, a very very good brief could already have a section of the design research done, for example the client, in the brief could already explain or demonstrate available products or offerings, and could also explain available technologies and methods. If your client provides you a good brief, you can decrease this to 10 hours. |
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Step 2. Meetings |
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Some clients will ask you to meet and discuss often, for them it is not your working time – they think it is talking time, but in truth, these meetings could sometimes last many hours and even days and that is a lot of time spent for discussion. When you do not bill your clients for meetings, they will take all their time to discuss, revise, update and modify your work as much as possible. Most clients will ask for a face to face meeting, and some of them can invite you to their premises, studio, shop, factory or institution, remember to add these costs to your price quote and ensure that you indicate these costs in your design service contract, also for the contract mention any extras for meetings, if you need to travel for example, let the client pay your transportation and accommodation. It is a good idea to include already three (3) meetings with the Client in your contract, in most cases, the meetings would be one (1) meeting at their premises nearby, and two (2) meetings at your own premise, your studio or office. Note in your contract that additional meetings or long distance, remote meetings will be charged with a special rate, and also note that the Client should pay for travel and hosting in the case of long distance, remote or abroad meetings. Usually, it takes 3 hours for a meeting if the meeting is at your office, add three (3) hours per each day of meeting. When the Client premises are nearby, add at least one (1) hour more for travel, so it would be four (4) hours per meeting. When the Client premises, is far away such as in another city, add at least eight (8) hours, as we guarantee all your day will be gone since you will also spend time traveling, add also travel extras at Step 3 later. If you are going to meet Client in another country, Add twelve (12) additional hours per meeting (even if the meeting would be just two or three hours, you will lose all your day, as well as partially from the next days due to traveling abroad), we guarantee all your day will be gone, plus add extras for travel and lodging should be added at the Step 3. |
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Step 3. Extra Costs |
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While in most cases, these extras would seem trivial, in the end, you will notice that they are not, when you sum up every and each of these extras, they might as well cost more than the design fees combined. Some clients would argue that it is the cost of doing business, and that these costs shall not be reflected to the Clients, and they are right, until the point that their requests for additional meetings, communication, mockups, shipments and further requirements reach an unsustainable point. For instance a client could ask you to integrate third party licensing which could be really expensive, and you need to ensure that the client either pays these costs in advance or that it is written in the agreement that the client would pay these costs directly to these parties or that the client pay these costs in advance to you later right before the costs are incurred. Regardless, we list you some possible extras to help you reflect and help you remember that there will be some additional costs on top of design costs. The best practice, is as follows: For large clients, instead of indicating or adding these costs to your estimate right away, add it to contract and ask for approval beforehand. For small clients, ask these costs in advance. A) Telephone calls, postage, communication and video conferencing - These fees could be indicated in the design contract, but we advise to especially ask these additional fees from Client when the Client is abroad or in a different time zone. B) Shipping, overnight courier, delivery and packaging - Indicate that the costs of shipping, overnight courier, delivery and packaging or preparation of shipments is included up to the amount you write here in your design contract, and if the amount of Shipping, overnight courier, delivery and packaging would exceed what you wrote in the contact, note in your agreement that the Client should pay for any extras. C) Fuel, parking fees and tolls, taxis - Normally, cost of Fuel, parking fees and tolls, taxis are asked from Client only and only when you visit the Client premises, and they should not be added as extras otherwise. If you intend to add them, the design contract should indicate that these fees shall be paid by Client when Client requires or asks meetings abroad. D) Transportation, travel, visa application - These should be indicated in the design contract, and should especially be asked from Client when the Client is abroad or in a different time zone. E) Meals, lunch, dinners and food - Normally, cost of Meals, lunch, dinners and food are asked from Client only and only when you visit the Client premises, and they should not be added as extras otherwise. If you intend to add them, the design contract should indicate that these fees shall be paid by Client when Client requires or asks meetings abroad. F) Lodging, accommodation, hotels - Normally, cost of lodging, accommodation and hotels are asked from Client only and only when you visit the Client premises, and they should not be added as extras otherwise. If you intend to add them, the design contract should indicate that these fees shall be paid by Client when Client requires or asks meetings abroad. G) Service bureaus, legal fees, registration fees - These fees must be indicated in the design contract and we advise to especially ask these additional fees from Client because these fees can be really high sometimes. H) Third party design services such as typesetting, blueprints, coding - These fees must be indicated in the design contract and we advise to especially ask these additional fees from Client because these fees can be really high sometimes. I) Prototypes, models, and mockups - These fees must be indicated in the design contract and we advise to especially ask these additional fees from Client because Prototyping, model making and mockup fees can be really high sometimes. J) Presentation materials, handouts and photocopies - These fees could be indicated in the design contract, but they are not usually high, unless the project is especially about creating presentation materials in mass. K) Computer expenses, hosting fees, software costs - These fees could be indicated in the design contract only if the project requires new software, new hardware or new hosting or other digital services, otherwise you should already have these yourself as a designer, but if the project needs these extras, indicate in your design contract. L) Third party licensing, stock photography, sound, video or data - These fees must definetely be included in your design contract, to be paid extra by the Client. Depending on project, the licensing fees could be really, really high and you do not want to sign an agreement that forces you to pay them. M) Design equipment rental, design machinery, design equipment - These fees could be indicated in the design contract only if the design project requires new equipment, new hardware or new machinery for design but not for realization. Normally, you would have these machinery or equipment unless the project is specific. N) Expected unexpected incidental and out-of- pocket expenses - These fees, that you might not be able to calculate will always happen. Include a clause in your design contract that the Client agrees to pay up to a certain amount of additional, otherwise not stated fees or costs to ensure that these extras are also covered. |
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Step 4. Markup |
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When you add your markup you need to remember that you need to pay Income Tax (Up to 40%), Value Added Tax (Up to 25%), as well as Social Security and Insurance (Up to 25%) of your design team. Therefore simply adding a small percentage will result in your loss. It is normal to ask for 100% or even more markup, considering all the tax you are going to pay. Do not type the % sign to this field, only enter the number. If you enter 100, it means we will double the costs to calculate the base fee, i.e. the formula is Prior Costs * (1 + Markup/100). |
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Step 5. Design Fee |
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The number displayed on the left is the sum, total amount of your costs. It also includes your markup. This is a starting point for your price quote and bargaining with the Client. However in the next page we have also created Modifiers. Using these base costs, you can now calculate: Modified Design Fee Cost, Royalty Fees, Licensing Fees. We advise that you continue with Modified Fee Calculation, to have even a better understanding of your price quote. Please note that the design fee is automatically calculated at each step, you do not need to click any button to have it updated/ |
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 Good to Know: Above we have entered some numbers in Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 and Step 4, just as a base reference, replace these numbers with your own numbers and the design fee at Step 5 will be dynamically updated as you modify the numbers, any change is dynamic and you do not need to press the red botton at the bottom. After seeing the Design Fee at Step 5, you might want to calculate a modified fee that takes into consideration other realities to give you an even more realistic price quote. To calculate the Modified Fee, first make some little changes at the numbers above and the Design Fee in Step 5. will be updated, afterwards click the red button above "CALCULATE MODIFIED FEE" to see how this initial fees would be effected by other factors. |
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| TIP: If you wish you can directly calculate a design quote. We also have several more tools available for you: Design Licensing Fee Calculator, Design Royalty Fee Calculator and Design Price Quote Calculator. Learn more about the Design Fee Calculators. | |||||||||||||||
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