Why We Quote Fixed Price
Hourly billing charges the client for our inefficiency and makes budgeting impossible.
We have quoted whole projects rather than hours since 2024, and the main beneficiary is the client, though it took us a while to be sure of that.
Hourly Punishes the Wrong Party
Under hourly billing, a studio that takes twice as long earns twice as much. Nobody sets out to exploit that, and it still shapes behaviour at the margin. Fixed price puts efficiency on our side of the ledger, where it belongs.
Budgeting Becomes Possible
A client can take a fixed number to a board. “Somewhere between fifteen and forty thousand depending on how it goes” is not a number anybody can approve, and it makes the studio look uncertain about its own process.
What Makes It Work
Quoting after the brief stage rather than before it. The first stage is small, separately priced and cheap, and its output is a written brief. Only then do we quote the rest, and by then we know what we are quoting for.
What Happens When We Misjudge
We absorb it. That has been genuinely painful twice, both on projects where the scope was clear and our estimate was simply wrong. Building the occasional overrun into the pricing is more honest than surprising a client with a variation.
The Exception
Open-ended work with no definable end — ongoing retainers, or a client who genuinely wants an art director on call. That is a day rate, agreed monthly, and it is a different kind of relationship.