10. Working With Designers

Since so much of the material described above has a heavy design element, it is worth saying a thing or two at this point regarding designers.

The first thing to know about design is that, compared with copywriting, it is not cheap. Designers charge by the hour and will often work on rates of £700 to £1,000 a day. Furthermore, they effectively have a monopoly over work after it reaches their studios, as only they can make changes to text, images and layout once it is on the page.

What this means in practice is that, for the sake of your client and their budget, you need to ensure as far as possible that all changes to your copy are made before it goes off to design. You may well have to educate your clients on this point; many naively assume they can carry on making changes to copy once page layouts start coming through, and then get a nasty shock when the design bill arrives. Clearly, worrying about design budgets should not be a major concern for you unless you are managing the entire project, but avoiding excess design bills can prevent headaches all round and help keep the client happy – a good way of ensuring repeat business.