How to estimate labor costs for a designer?

Question

Design

Good afternoon!
We are talking about the design of websites and mobile applications (but in principle it is applicable to other industries).
Actually, the question is not "how much does a particular work cost", but how to systematize the assessment of the cost of a designer's work?
What are the evaluation options:
1. The designer evaluates himself - apparently the numbers are taken from the ceiling, because how can you evaluate a creative work?!
2. Art director + designer - i.e. sitting above the designer is an art director, who (ideally) fumbles in design and is a manager. But in fact, the assessment also comes down to numbers from the ceiling or experience (but still the projects are different, and how can you evaluate a work ... well, you understand).
3. Formula- a specific formula that includes risk assessment and plus / minus works.
The first 2 options are not interesting, because. it's a frank hat (although it likely works in a lot of places).
According to option 3, what the assessment might actually look like:

Designer salary = Rate * Labor * CP

Timing = Labor * CP * CT

where
Rate is the cost of hourly work;
Labor costs - time to complete the work;
CT - the coefficient of creativity (in fact, the risks of missing the deadlines).
KP - coefficient of edits. If the client cannot change anything at all, then it is equal to 1. Otherwise, I think it makes sense to discuss the number of edits (for example, 5 edits per 1 layout are allowed, then the coefficient is 1.5 - a figure from the ceiling).
According to this formula, I think there are no questions, let's move on to labor costs.
Labor costs are calculated for each screen/page separately, and summed up as a result, so below is the formula for calculating labor costs for 1 screen:

Labor = Basic Labor * K

where
Basic Labor is a fixed amount of time to create a design for ANY page/screen (in fact, from experience, I think this figure is easy to determine).
K - layout complexity factor. But here, too, you shouldn’t take numbers from the ceiling, I think it’s more correct to tie them to some metric (for example, the number of interface elements).
THE QUESTION ITSELF: how to calculate the WORK COSTS for the implementation (not the cost, but the labor costs of the designer)?
FOR THOSE WHO THINK I AM A CLIENT: I'm not a client, and this is not a question about how to evaluate a SPECIFIC work of a designer. It's about how to systematize it! If for you the answer to this question is "as agreed", then you are most likely a freelance designer, and you can not write anything, I understand your point of view.
Actually, the risovaks themselves, I think, will now run to yell "No way! This is creativity, etc.", but I call for a constructive dialogue.

Answer 1

There is no formula. As agreed, so be it.

Answer 2

Friends, everything was invented a long time ago.
There are no creative coefficients and edit coefficients, no need to fence the gag.
There is a task - "to make design".
It is decomposed into smaller and more understandable ones - "draw a logo", "design the main page", etc.
Further, for each of the tasks, it is selected which is more priority - resources or results.
If the result is a classic Time & Material - the designer works until the customer is satisfied with the result, then the invoice is issued after the fact.
If it is more important to meet the resources, an assessment is made in the style of "well, in 40 hours I will definitely draw a logo", multiplied by the number of design options under the contract, multiplied by legal and other risks.
As a rule, settlements between the studio and the designer are still T&M, but if the studio correctly took into account all the risks, there is no problem in this.
The presence or absence of art directors, managers, etc. does not directly affect these approaches in any way, but gives additional levels of internal quality control / deadlines hidden from the client.
PS + What should be the pricing for IT services (development)?

Answer 3

My advice to you, come up with any formula that is comfortable for you and look for a person who will agree to work this way. It’s just that with your approach, you won’t be able to find a normal employee for a long time anyway. So all these surveys and research are unnecessary kipish.
Let's say I worked as a janitor and I was appointed HR director for some reason and given the task of forming a budget for the design department, how would I do it.
1) I searched the Internet for companies with a profile similar to mine.
2) I would look at their vacancies for designers.
3) I would look at how much they offer and the list of requirements for specialists of different levels. Designer June and Designer Senior receive different money and the list of requirements for them is different.
4) If I want to make a flexible payment system, I would single out the differences in the requirements for Jun and Senior, and tie the coefficients specifically to the performance of tasks that go beyond the scope of authority.
5) You will not pay a specialist below the market anyway, so I would manipulate the list of requirements and not the amount of payment if you want to find a normal specialist.
Well, and most importantly, employees must be respected, otherwise only rice cooks will come to work for you.

Answer 4

• Increases - a suspended tongue, first of all , experience (language comes with it), charisma, artistic taste, when there is something to show (portfolio), diligence.
  What you output in the formula is not a labor assessment, it is payroll . If the designer agrees to this formula.

Answer 5

Not from the ceiling, but based on the cost of an hour of the designer’s work (or all persons involved, if the art director is still working there, for example) and the estimated time that will have to be spent on work, including the time for communicating on the project and making changes.

Answer 6

The designer works by the clock. How much time it will take to work (hours) you need to ask him himself and the rate he wants per hour. Further, it may not meet, then it is necessary to correct the data. As a result, you will have time and price. And that's it, further or you are satisfied and you work with this person. Or not and you don't work))
If the designer is strongly driven in time, he will suck.
Good design should ideally lie down.

Answer 7

Distribution of work cost shares:
100% - "base" (usually - this is the main page)
to 25% - another layout (new type of ONE ADDITIONAL page) based on the finished "base".
Budget quality - from 4000 rubles.
Average quality - from 8000 rubles.
Good quality - from 12,000 rubles.
Quality is not only a SINGLE and CORRECT (for the desired theme and direction of the site) concept of colors, fonts, styling and design of elements, but also a thoughtful arrangement for further layout in various resolutions and grouping of views and objects by layers in a file project.
1. General labor formula: here
2. About layout (calculation of labor costs): here

Answer 8

If I understood the question correctly (very interesting by the way), then I would consider the labor costs based on the reference work.
Suppose we enter such a value as P - popularity or acceptability - that is, what is now on the hype. P can be calculated from the number of audience * professional rating (number of likes) on design resources - bihans / dribble, etc. Next, you just need to take a list of the 1000 richest companies in the world and let's assign the index Q = P * V to the logos. (Q) Quality = (P) Popularity * (V) Value. The value must be calculated for each category separately, for a logo it can be
1) attitude towards the company (to what extent the logo reflects the activity / brand / spirit of the company) - is determined by the reference tables of metaphors and images by industry + by the community diagrams of the initial input about the company and images in the logo itself (the company is based in the Himalayas, it was founded by Kotov - in the logo can be indirectly stuck with a cat, his mustache or mountains or an eagle or esoteric ...),
2) Compliance with brand values ​​- light, heaped, etc.
3) Readability
4) Uniqueness
5) ...
As a result, we assign Q to each of the 1000 reference companies each design element (logo, advertising campaign 1, 2, 3, illustration 1 from advertising campaign 1, retouching 3 photos from advertising campaign 666)
Further, each designer can be assigned his own QD - the quality of the designer - how much his work in the portfolio corresponds to the reference. This will be done by the intergalactic council for assessing the quality of the work of the union of designers of the galaxy. Or artificial intelligence. If this is not yet the case, you need to evaluate the quality of the designer's portfolio yourself.
The labor costs themselves are chipped off from 1) Experience in the necessary field - how many hours of Google and digestion of information on a new task will go away (icons of gas equipment). 2) Time to achieve quality requirements from the customer = QD-QT where QT - Quality Task. It can be assessed by the detail of the TOR and the presence of examples. 3) Time for the tasks themselves from sketching and sketching ideas to production itself. The time for the sketch and brainstorm is calculated from the experience of the designer in this field, a beginner needs 2-3 days to get into the topic of gas equipment, but an experienced one already knows. 4) Providing different styles and options - negotiated separately, here you can add time to google the latest popular styles in the required area.

Answer 9

After all, how can you evaluate creative work?

in hours spent on its implementation
of course to experience, only whitewash falls from the ceiling
It is necessary to take for hours, and not for things that cannot be measured.

Answer 10

Count in rubles - zashkvar)
There is no base. You need to do only the highest quality. Send all those who ask for medium or low quality "no more money", then with such requests "make shit for 3 kopecks" you will have all your life.
The rate per hour is calculated based on the best quality. See point #2.

Answer 11

In fact, the work of a programmer is evaluated in the same way. Estimates are almost always invented, invented either by experience or by estimation if the work is new. Non-invented estimates can only be when someone makes template projects for themselves (ie, consisting of blocks well known to the evaluator).
Whether you like it or not, nobody is interested. I'm silent that the approach to creating a design is very different. The main one can be drawn in 4 hours and 4 months, it all depends on the requirements, not only for the design, but also for its production methods.