There's a few graphic artists on here, would any of you be able to help my brother with a problem he has?

My brother's has been a qualified graphic designer for a few years (he qualified about 8 years ago) but he's only recently started to do a few bits of freelance work in the past couple of years, mostly just for free to build up his portfolio. He's now been offered one of his first 'proper' professional contracts, but they're asking for a quote for his charge and the problem is that he has absolutely no idea what's a realistic amount of money. Too much and he'll get refused, too little and he's both selling himself short and risks them thinking of him as an utter amateur.

This is the job, expected to take 3-4 weeks:

Design and layout of Business Cards
Design and layout of Company Letterheads.
Design and Layout of a Company Residential Landlord Guide - In the form of a brochure that can be emailed and posted to prospective Landlords/Investors.
Design and Layout of several Tenant Letting Forms (i.e Tenant Application Form’s).
Design and layout of the Landlord Management Agreement.
Email signature strips - Standard Company Design.

The most he's earned for a single job is the past has been about £350 in total, but that was in smaller amounts over 6 months.

Personally I have absolutely no idea (my suggestion of 'over 9000' didn't go down well), would anyone be able to help?

This is his portfolio to give an idea of the standard: http://www.rscreativedesign.co.uk/

Probably sounds a bit cheeky, but phone a few competitors and get them to quote for similar jobs.

I suggest working out what he thinks he's worth per hour and scaling that up. So if £20/hour sounds about right and this is going to be 4 weeks work for 5 hours a day that's £100/day, £500/week, £2000 in total. If its '4 weeks work' but its really only half an hour every other evening, adjust the quote accordingly.

The problem with design work like this is the client has a tendency to take the piss going back a forth, so much more important than overall price is to specify in the contract exactly how much work is required, how many iterations of the design will be included in the price etc.

I havent really done much print work, as most work I do is web design. Web varies, ive had jobs before which are basic and have been paid rather well ($1000aud), then ive done sites which ended up to be extremely time consuming and quoted less. Just comes down to how he makes the deal and who he's dealing with. For a big company who rely on an important and strong image, you can get away with charging more as long as they are satisfied, where a small business or etc may be frightened with an expensive quote when they can go elsewhere for something half as good and cheap snd still be happy with the result.

You'll see massive businesses charged tens of thousands just for a poster, but it pays off for yhem because they rely on a very solid design and something that plays with peoples heads.

Also very true what pb32000 said. Exactly that

For a business card design and layout for a two sided design ive charged $250AUD. Like i said, I've not done much of print, just stsrting to get clients now. I'll post more info when I can, im currently working

Please elaborate for what you mean by "qualified graphic designer", as there is no official qualification needed for graphic design.

As for the money I suggest he set himself a $/hour benchmark, me myself won't do anything for less than 50 euro per hour. and it should cost more if the job is urgent/requires a lot of back and forth communication with different departments.

If you don't mind me being frank, his work is somewhere just above diploma level and it would be tough to ask for anything more than 15 euro per hour of work, given the scope of the project it should be done within 40 man hours, 600 euros would be a pretty reasonable price point.

Quote from pb32000 :

I suggest working out what he thinks he's worth per hour and scaling that up. So if £20/hour sounds about right and this is going to be 4 weeks work for 5 hours a day that's £100/day, £500/week, £2000 in total. If its '4 weeks work' but its really only half an hour every other evening, adjust the quote accordingly.

Agreed on all your concepts but if he indeed spend a month full on for such workload he better come up with at least 20 solutions for each task....else it is unacceptable for someone who claims to be professional.

Quote from JJ72 :

Agreed on all your concepts but if he indeed spend a month full on for such workload he better come up with at least 20 solutions for each task....else it is unacceptable for someone who claims to be professional.

I agree, it definitely shouldn't take a month full time for this amount of work.

Quote from JJ72 :

Please elaborate for what you mean by "qualified graphic designer"

Quote :

If you don't mind me being frank, his work is somewhere just above diploma level

This is, I imagine, pretty much how he'd describe himself. He's done a 2 (or 3? I'm not sure myself) year full-time college course, but then not really done much with it after that until a couple of years ago.

Quote from pb32000 :

I agree, it definitely shouldn't take a month full time for this amount of work.

He's not full-time, he has another job too (although as far as the client is concerned, I would think this should be irrelevant).

Thanks for all the comment guys

Quote from Crashgate3 :

He's not full-time, he has another job too (although as far as the client is concerned, I would think this should be irrelevant).

I though he might, in which case a month sounds like a good estimate

btw remember to tell your brother to set some rules about how many times they can alter the design, and to have some prepayment before even starting working.

As someone whose full time job title is "Graphic Designer", I'd say your brother's work is of a good standard - like JJ72 said it's not spectacular and around degree level, but mine isn't massively better tbh - so he can charge a fairly decent rate. Don't know exactly what as I don't do freelance stuff (in the same way a car mechanic doesn't want to spend his evenings working on cars). As long as he charges more than the monkeys who call themselves a "freelance graphic designer" cos they downloaded Photoshop and made a poster, and less than the agencies, he should be fine.

The portfolio on his website is very limited though (I've been working for a year and mine is 20ish pages of varied stuff). Also the motorsport pics seem a bit unrelated?

EDIT: That "limiting the amount of changes" bit is a very good idea btw. I know from experience that if the amount of changes allowed is unlimited, the client will just **** about endlessly shifting copy and images around for no good reason, then blame you when the job is finished late.