Stop calling design a service
A designer who presents themselves as a service provider lets the client set the rules of the game from the first meeting. One who presents an expertise keeps control of the brief and the fee. This is not a habit of speech, it is a strategic difference.
Service or expertise, a question of control
Driving a client to the airport, cooking a meal, taking out the bins, these are services. Diagnosing a complex problem and building a recommendation from that diagnosis, this is expertise. Design belongs to the second category, even though habit still pushes many designers to place themselves in the first.
That habit is not neutral. A service is ordered, negotiated, executed. An expertise is chosen. You will find a few definitions clarifying this distinction in the box below.
The sketch formalizes the expertise
A sketch, a draft, or a preliminary concept is not just another deliverable. It formalizes the first step of an intellectual process: the diagnosis the designer makes of the client’s problem, followed by the strategy proposed to solve it. A sketch is not an image, it is a decision that already commits the designer to the project.
This is precisely why it earns a fee proportional to that of the final project. Quality expertise has a price, and that price varies with how rare the expertise is on the market: the more specific it is, the less negotiable it becomes.
Resist the free sketch
During a competitive pitch, a client sometimes asks one or several designers to provide a sketch for free, on the pretext of testing their skills before any commitment. This practice pushes the designer to give away their expertise without compensation, in the hope of winning the project. It creates unfair competition, devalues the work of the whole profession, and runs against its code of ethics. Above all, it reveals the client’s lack of understanding of what design actually is.
A designer can be selected without giving up their expertise for free, either by agreeing on fair payment from the first work undertaken, or by relying on selection criteria other than a preliminary sketch.
Positioning as an expertise changes the relationship
Training gives designers their skills, professional commitment defines their values. Together, these build a legitimacy that makes early conversations with prospects easier.
Some worry that highlighting professional values might turn prospects away. That is possible, and it is also worth asking the question differently: does a designer benefit from working with everyone? Selectivity is not reserved for clients. A commercial positioning built on high quality expertise and clearly stated values is what allows client and designer to choose each other, rather than simply put up with each other.
Treating design as an expertise, not a service, is therefore not a stance. It is a concrete way of taking back control over the value of one’s work, starting with the sketch.
Two words, two definitions
Service, according to Larousse: “A body of work carried out for someone.” In French official statistics, this notion falls under tertiary activities, market based or not, a deliberately broad category.
Expertise, according to cnrtl.fr: “An analysis carried out by a mandated specialist.” Wikipedia describes it as a decision support mechanism, used when a decision maker faces questions beyond their direct reach. Its synonyms (assessment, evaluation, examination) give value to skills that the word service leaves in the shadow.
This text updates two articles I authored, which still stand today, previously published by Alliance France design: L’esquisse, c’est l’expertise and Le design est-il un service ou une expertise ?
••• To put a figure on that expertise rather than a rough estimate, Copryce B2B offers a base of 675 pricing examples, built for ten design disciplines.
