Present the result, not the work to your clients

When you’re a professional designer, you only use Illustrator in the final hours of the design process. As many people think that using Illustrator equals designing, a beginning designer wants to inform the client on what he actually did to justify the price.

Fleshing out ideas with Illustrator is 5 percent of the game

Small and cheap clients don’t understand why we charge 4- or even 5-figures for a logo design. It takes only a couple of hours to create some illustrations using a vector graphics program, so why pay so much money for that?

Some designers think that they have to justify their prices to clients (and maybe themselves) by describing the whole design process to them: From the initial client brief evaluation, over research and brainstorming, until the actual creation of the vector graphic – all these steps cost hours, days, and sometimes weeks to lead to the results a big client needs. But all the client cares about is the logo itself and how it can benefit his business.

Steve Jobs paid 6-figures to Paul Rand for his Next logo in the 90s. And all he got was a simple logo, people might think.

A beginner would try to justify to Steve Jobs why the logo costs 6-figures by explaining how he researched the design, analysed the information the client gave him during the design interview, and created the vector graphic in multiple versions.

But in the end, Steve Jobs didn't really care what the designer did for all the money. Steve Jobs only cared about what he got for his money.

Clients don’t pay for a day of work with Illustrator, they pay for a lifetime of experience and knowledge in design

The result is the only thing that counts to your clients. Use your research, the client brief, your analyses, and everything else you did in the design process to sell the result, not your work.

During the final presentation, you should aim to explain why the design is the best fit for the client. Forget about justifying the price, forget about selling your value, forget about presenting the scope of work.

Here is how Paul Rand did it for Next:

Do it like him and make the logo the selling point, not your work.