In today's episode, we want to ask a question about some of the creative industries and the best way to charge for graphic design creativity, like designing logos. This is a question that somebody asked us recently, so we want to explore it today.   We asked this question essentially, a question that a lot of people ask us how do we charge for a particular service or our products? Often the debate goes “ Oh, should we use a cost plus, especially for all time and materials billings, especially for professional services?" for things like design, logos, websites, all that stuff. Or should we make the bold move and try and charge based on value-based principles? And often, we, being from a value-based pricing firm, would strongly advocate choosing that particular method or methodology. But listening to the feedback from designers and practitioners, we'd like to explore how sometimes value-based pricing may not be feasible, and how sometimes cost-plus pricing, if cut and sliced differently, can deliver profitability.   Do you think you want a new logo for your website? I think there are a few concepts and issues we need to discuss here. So say you want a new logo for your website and someone decides how are they going to charge you. Are they going to charge you based on time and effort? Or is it based on the value this logo will provide? It's very difficult to work out what value a logo would provide in advance, certainly, especially if you're a graphic designer, you probably don't know anything about the company you're dealing with. You don't know how big it is if it's a startup, so there's a real issue. And also, as a graphic designer, are you dealing directly with the person or are you going through a website? So if people have all the materials and that's how they bill it, you've got real issues there. Because in the new Internet era, you're competing against people. If you're based in a high-cost environment, like Manhattan or Central London etc. People in cheaper areas would have a much lower sale price potentially than you would. So are you dragging yourself down to that level? The other thing, of course, you're saying is, if you get quicker like how do you price the fact that you're getting better at your artwork you're getting more experience, your quality is for increasing. Even if you could do the artwork quicker, does that mean that you charge less for it? It really, logically doesn't make an awful lot of sense. The only way I think that would work is if you're using a fake method. So to some extent, you're just you're doing a fake medical notice, five hours on average, just as a justification methodology, but the reality of it is the person who's buying it from you. It's not like you're a lawyer in a big firm who can talk about their hours and how many hours they're working like the person buying the product has no concept or idea or realistically doesn't care how much time you spend spent on this or not.   It's funny, you should say that because even lawyers use time materials as the basis for their price calculations with customers and customers don't care. There is a little bit of scepticism about how time is calculated in that regard, hasn't been overinflated because both sides of the equation don't think that the price is justified. Maybe on one side, the lawyers are thinking we should have gotten a higher price for this. The problem is more complex than we scoped out, etc. And the customers refuse to sort of listen to that, and they just want the outcome. Regardless, the same things happen in design. And when I think about it and the feedback from designers, a lot of them, especially the new designers, are saying, "Ah, cost plus might be better for us because we are not really that familiar and comfortable." sort of justifying the value of our offer to customers. Maybe selling is not their skill set. They haven't thought about the value that they provide. And some even argue that we don't have a hug