The Ongoing Conversation: Design vs ROI

By idfive \ May 18, 2006

There’s an interesting article on Apple’s site about the folks at MetaDesign discussing an age old problem designers face… Value.

Having experienced this myself, it really hits home. After the hundreds of freelance projects, years of working for a large advertising agency, then owning a small agency, I learned that what we do has a price, and that price varies and is usually all over the place from the clients’ perspective when they go shopping around, especially on the web. I think everyone knows at this point that a creative deliverable is going to be expensive from a large agency, more affordable from a small shop, and (we’ve all heard it before) “My brother-in-law said he’d do it for free.”

So as a designer, assigning an accurate dollar amount on the cost of creative is hard enough. But there is a larger question looming which creatives will be sure to love. How much is design worth? As CEOs and decision makers ask these questions, it’s important for designers to see it coming and be able to respond, or even better, proactively address the issue.

I think what I find reassuring is that at idfive, our methodology of Informed Design ensures we ask the tough questions up front and address these concerns. We want to know from the start what the metrics for success are, because in the end we seek to build things that aren’t just pretty, they have to work.