Recession - driving you crazy?

[tricky]

This recession is driving me up the wall! Don't get me wrong, at least I still have my job, so for that I am thankful. But is it just me, or does every 'client' want a bloody discount these days? It's getting ridiculous. We've even started putting discounted costs in our proposals by default, but everyone still wants those discounted!

Is the tiny fraction of budget (and I mean 'tiny') that is set aside for visualisation really soooo small or are people just using the recession as an excuse to rip off their suppliers? Does an extra 10% off our (relatively) tiny fee really make a difference? I think not.

Rant over.

[Neilg]

It's driving me crazy because i'm trying to book a short holiday to barcelona and it's looking to cost me an extra £400 to do the same thing I did 2 years ago.

[tricky]

Ahhh. I went to Barcelona on my stag do a few years back. Lovely place...from what I can piece together from my memories at any rate!

[re:FORM]

Yea, that and getting clients to pay their bills ! I'm still waiting for a considerable payment from a sizeable architectural firm 6months after doing the work... they seem to think its acceptable to pay in small installments despite promising to complete the payments before christmas....
I'm very close to starting legal action, but given that they are paying up, albeit slowly, I'm loath to line the pockets of lawyers chasing a payment.

I blame the accountants ! morally corrupt parasites. (yes I know they have a job to do! )

Just out of interest (and OT), has anyone taken a client to court for copyright infringement?

[EricKlein]

Agreed. So far the recession means working harder for the same/less money. Looking at other industries however, I still count myself lucky~

e.

[re:FORM]

Too true, I know many architects that have been made redundant... and this before the downturn has really started to bite!
Grim times.

http://motionographer.com/2009/02/20...it-visualized/

Funny how lax government regulation hasn't been included as a cause of the crisis.

[EricKlein]

Too funny, I was looking at this yesterday~ It is a really nice video...

I've been facinated lately by so called "Info aesthelics":

http://infosthetics.com/

e.

[re:FORM]

Thanks Eric! That's bookmarked!
Great source of inspiration.

[EricKlein]

sure...that F1 animation is really cool....

[tricky]

Agreed. So far the recession means working harder for the same/less money. Looking at other industries however, I still count myself lucky~

e.

I'm not sure if being in the ArchVis industry is 'lucky'...

[judderman]

I love it when a client comes along, asks for a conceptual type rendering, not much detail, something to get through planning or whatever, and before you know it they're nit picking over details you shouldn't have been bothering about in the first place, getting more than what they paid for. The project drags on, they get x number of revisions. Cheap, tighta$$ idiots. God it winds me up, it makes my blood boil. I feel like telling them to drop dead rather than me do the work for them. Then it's not my company, that wouldn't be very smart.

Whilst it would be counter productive, I also feel like giving people exactly what you pay for - a sh1t rendering - if you're too damn tight to pay for the actual hours it takes me to complete an image you can stuff it. Instead I just grind my teeth and wish bad things upon them and get on with it.

Maybe it's a bit extreme saying that, but that's just how I've reacted to people totally ripping the situation for everything it's worth.

Which brings me to something I've just thought of - how do you guys prevent clients from taking the mick in terms of changes to an image? Do you have an agreement say, a preview image, and then 1 or 2 sets of changes and that's it? Stuff like this is hurting us - dragging things out for longer than they should be.

[re:FORM]

Well its funny you should raise this issue as I'm currently experiencing my worst client yet.

I think the problem is that clients will always want a number of changes. I try not to get to the stage where I have to charge them extra. If it's a new client, hitting them with costs above the original quote is likely to leave a bitter taste in their mouths. I just take their indecisiveness into account for future quotes. Hopefully if I've done a good enough job, and not complained about their changes, they will be a happy client that will return with more work. To me, that's more important than charging a few extra hundred for some changes.

But, yes, sometimes they overstep the mark and I have to start charging for changes at my hourly rate.

It also depends on the client. Architects seem to expect unlimited changes... and they are easily the least capable of making decisions (how ironic). Media/marketing agencies seem more able to decide on their requirements and stick to them. They also seem happy to accept extra costs for asking for too many changes.

[judderman]

I think you're right about the new clients, especially nowadays, it's best not to charge left right and centre, unless they start overstepping.

We deal with some difficult architects also. We create their visual, they realise it looks crap (the design) and then use our visual as a means to create any number of variations on the design they see fit to reach a design that looks good. If they were a half good architect they would have a decent design in the first place, surely that's what all the training is about?

This isn't the case with all architects we deal with, some are really easy to work with.

My favourite though, is the multi-millionaire property developer who looks for a bar interior based on the connaught bar in the connaught hotel in london for 250 pounds. Oh my good God. Joe Pesci - Goodfellas. Remember how he punches some guy, over and over - doesn't know where to stop. That's what I'm thinking of this guy when he insults me with a statement like that.

[tricky]

I love it when a client comes along, asks for a conceptual type rendering, not much detail, something to get through planning or whatever, and before you know it they're nit picking over details you shouldn't have been bothering about in the first place, getting more than what they paid for. The project drags on, they get x number of revisions. Cheap, tighta$$ idiots. God it winds me up, it makes my blood boil. I feel like telling them to drop dead rather than me do the work for them. Then it's not my company, that wouldn't be very smart.

Whilst it would be counter productive, I also feel like giving people exactly what you pay for - a sh1t rendering - if you're too damn tight to pay for the actual hours it takes me to complete an image you can stuff it. Instead I just grind my teeth and wish bad things upon them and get on with it.

Maybe it's a bit extreme saying that, but that's just how I've reacted to people totally ripping the situation for everything it's worth.

Which brings me to something I've just thought of - how do you guys prevent clients from taking the mick in terms of changes to an image? Do you have an agreement say, a preview image, and then 1 or 2 sets of changes and that's it? Stuff like this is hurting us - dragging things out for longer than they should be.

Totally agree. In our book, a 'conceptual' image should really be charged higher than a photoreal image: at least with a photoreal image, everybody roughly knows what something 'should' look like. Conceptual images just drag on forever and you end up with a crap image.

In terms of charging for ammendments, we try to accommodate as much as possible with a view to possibly getting future jobs and then bear in mind the indecisiveness of that particular client by either charging more or working in a slightly different way.

Part of the problem we have in this industry is that it is increasingly getting more competetive. In effect, this means some companies charge far too little for what a job might be worth, either because they are operating from a bedroom, using hooky software, farming out to China or any other number of reasons. This approach undermines the entire industry and means that clients demand more for less. Architectural Visualisation is a critical element in selling an apartment, an office suite, a mixed-use complex etc and should be charged for accordingly (example: a £650k apartment in a complex of 20 should have more than £500 spent on producing an aspirational interior marketing image!).

Architects charge differently and can, in some cases, afford to charge less to get a project through the planning process: a kind of loss-leader. The reason being that if they are successful at this stage, they are likely to be rewarded with a percentage of the total project value when it is finally built. An archvis company doesn't and can't price in this way. What we do 'allows/aids' a project to get through the planning/marketing process but we get a fixed price for it: we can't then get an extra, say, 2% of the final project value when it is finally complete. Wouldn't it be nice if we could? I'd be a millionaire!

It would be great if there was a central 'body' which governed how things are charged in the ArchVis sector to prevent this undermining of what is a very important (critical?) componant of the building process.

[stevesideas]

This recession is driving me up the wall! Don't get me wrong, at least I still have my job, so for that I am thankful. But is it just me, or does every 'client' want a bloody discount these days? It's getting ridiculous. We've even started putting discounted costs in our proposals by default, but everyone still wants those discounted!

Is the tiny fraction of budget (and I mean 'tiny') that is set aside for visualisation really soooo small or are people just using the recession as an excuse to rip off their suppliers? Does an extra 10% off our (relatively) tiny fee really make a difference? I think not.

Rant over.

I do get the feeling that clients/companies, not all, but some, are taking advantage of the "recession". To ask for discounts just because we are in recession is quite cheeky to be frank. Maybe some of them are legitimate, but I do think they are using todays financial situation to reduce costs..Maybe Im completely wrong and every company is just trying to reduce outgoing costs with a "just in case" kind of attitude...who knows what will happen to that company 1 year down the line.

At the same time though...you dont want to burn any bridges. Keep those clients happy and your work future will be more secure.