I cannot tell you how many designers have told me that they want to create/license/sell products to go along with their core design business. They want to leverage their brand.
I am all for it. If someone wants to buy your lamp because you are a fabulous designer, fantastic. My issue is that we all have to start somewhere and if you are not in the habit of being paid as a designer, then how exactly are we going to value the intrinsic nature of your design when you personally are not involved?
Semiotics is the study of signaling and non-verbal communication. Many people much smarter than me have made semiotics their life’s work. For creative business though, there really cannot be a higher study. Oxymorons abound and semiotics are undone. You are the best ultra-luxury interior designer in your market, but are half the cost of your competition. You only do custom packages. You are a designer who does not charge a design fee. Mixed signals are no signals since we do not know what to think.
Signaling has always mattered because it is how we as a culture ascribe status and value and even purpose. What we wear, what we drive, how we talk, where we live. It all defines us, today more than ever.
When we are faced with an upheaval like the coronavirus, our usual signals go kablooey. Usually, a jammed pool on Memorial Day weekend is a sign of celebration and relaxation. This year it was a sign of protest to government and societal restriction that was met with heavy backlash by, you guessed it, the government. And do not get me started with wearing a mask.
What does it mean for your creative business? Your structure has to be representative of the story you want to tell tomorrow. Back to the designer who wants to leverage her brand. If she does not charge a material fee for the cost of creation, she is telling the world her creative talents have no value, only the product ultimately produced. Good luck with that since there is A LOT of amazing product out there. The brand is about design so the designer has to have value for being, ahem, a designer.
But you say, we have never done it that way. See world upheaval from the coronavirus epidemic. As you decide what is next for your creative business, you must set the stage by extracting value you most care about today. Cue the ironies.
Most creative businesses are actually two, possibly three businesses. Take a typical interior designer. She is like an architect and must get paid for the conceptualization of what is to come. She is like a contractor in that she must be responsible for the manifestation of the conceptualization and she is like a tradesperson (i.e., an electrician) responsible for supplying the actual materials and labor necessary to complete the work of manifesting the design. If the semiotics of any of these are off, the house implodes. If the design fee is too low, then the pressure will be to make up the margin with the overall size of the project (i.e., get as high a budget as possible), this, in turn, will drive down the value of in-house products since there might be more expensive alternative inventory outside of the in-house/custom pieces. And it all falls down…
The correction is in the signaling. If you want to make a truly custom design, then you charge appropriately for that design alone, then you make sure the client is indifferent to the selection of in-house or selected (or even owned) items in that the management fee is what it is for all products of the design, then you drive the value of true custom for the price of selected items with in-house products. Ergo the irony, you will sell more custom pieces the higher your design fee, not the other way around. Semiotics is everything.
As you seek to rewrite your script in this incredible time, you will have to own your own semiotics and moor them in a way your clients can understand. To do that, you really do need to know your underneath: why, exactly, are you paid to do what you do. If a client could choose anyone, as most of your clients can, then why are they choosing you? It has never had anything to do with the final product as all professionals deliver in the end. It is all about your story, that of your creative business and why clients are worth the investment in themselves by paying you and your creative business. The one thing that matters to you, your art and your creative business is eternal and never more necessary. From there you signal today’s value and earn the right to transpose that value into tomorrow’s adventure. The choice of semiotics is for you to decide, unless you want to leave it to the cool kids. Epic (or maybe not).
