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What’s A Designer Worth

By: Simon
Updated:
Nov 30, 2011
Posted: Oct 31, 2009

A Penny Wise Is A Pound Foolish

I heard an ad on the radio that Intuit was getting into the web design business. It wasn’t the fact that there was already a saturated market that bothered me. I love competing albeit winning while competing. It’s more complicated than that.

So here’s a huge company with unlimited funds charging $4 per website. Understand that there is no possible way to template-ize your way to success and I do not really consider them my competition anyway. I prefer quality to quantity with regards to clients.

What bothers me is that this company will not deliver what’s promised leading to further devaluing of the web design market and the marginalization of web designers in general.

So Intuit says they’ll deliver a professional website for $4. I think anybody in the biz would kind of overlook this and laugh if this was brought up, but I believe this has more con than pro and shouldn’t be just overlooked. The pro is that intuit getting in the biz is competition which is good for the market. However, the obvious con is driving down the price for a decent living.

I don’t know if Intuit is outsourcing their work to India, but if they are it’s all types of wrong. Yet, how can they charge that fee?

A designer’s responsibility is to do the best work for the client at a fair price. On the client side it’s to pay what the designer is worth and that design fee is not $4. So when you hear that ad narrated by that very credible American voice on your local radio station, remember that you get what you pay for and a good designer is worth every dime.

Simon Urbina

Simon Urbina

Simon is a Product Designer and Front End Dev with over 20 years of experience. He started as a graphic designer and illustrator coding his first website in 1996. He has worked with brands like Publix, Microsoft, and Discovery Channel.