Graphic designers - what's fair?

amother

Thu, Aug 20 2009, 8:49 am

When you design flyers, how many flyer options do you give your client to choose from.

I designed a flyer for a client, and they seemed happy with the design at first just telling me to do a few changes like size of text and to include some things. Then they decided they wanted a different background image. This background image is not something I can just pull out of a hat easily, I'm going to have to create a graphic and that's what I told them. It's basicaly like an illustration.
Now I get an email confirming I should try the new image and if that doesn't work we'll go back to the original.
um...it's extra work for me, is that acceptable? Do I have to accept that or can I tell them that I would have charged for the extra labour but I wasn't going to but now that they tell me they are still choosing.....I don't want to put in the extra work only to have them decide they'll go with the original one.

What do other designers do when designing flyers.
Most of my clients are happy with the first design I give them and on the odd occasion that it's not what they expected I'll redo it without comment and by the second shot they are happy. The difference here is that I need to provide a graphic that needs to actually be made from scratch, not just found on a stock photo place off the internet.

cityofgold

Mon, Aug 24 2009, 4:57 am

You may have already decided what to do, but I would definitely charge them extra.
I charge by the hour--I do a lot of pre-sketching with the client to make sure they know what they want, and I warn them before a step that will cost them a lot if I think they're short on money.
I think you have to charge--if you're not a designer, you don't know what goes into these things, and then clients end up stepping all over you (even if they don't mean to).