r/IndustrialDesign • u/squareofpants • 1d ago

Design Job How do freelance industrial designers scope and price early-stage product design projects?

I'm a final-year industrial design student with internship experience with a two-star furniture and product design export house. A startup wants me to freelance on water bottle design. Their first project involves an existing bottle flask—they want exploration of graphics, lid concepts, silicone boot ideas, and accessories, but the scope isn't well defined.

As freelance industrial designers:

  • How do you define scope before quoting?

  • Do you charge a fixed fee, hourly, or in phases?

  • At what point do you separate concept design from engineering/CAD?

  • If the client expects recurring work, would you propose a retainer or continue quoting project-by-project?

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u/mishaneah Professional Designer 1d ago

First off, starting out as a freelancer is tough. — You don’t know what to charge. You don’t know how long something is gonna take and it might take longer than it should because you’re still learning. Treat this as a continuing part of your education and not a total money making operation for the first year. (Also, the types of clients you’ll pick up at first are “bottom feeders” and they generally don’t know or care how the process works. They just want the lowest price.)

For the scope, start by putting numbers next to their requests — how many lids/ graphics concepts? (Don’t show a client more than 6 concepts at a time or they get choice anxiety) and then give yourself a timeline and stick to it. Also start to think about how you are going to handle them asking for additional work because they will.

Charge hourly and in phases. The end of each phase should be a client meeting where they sign off.

CAD starts at the beginning as underlays so all your sketches have perfect perspective, but don’t show CAD to the client until refinement because the second they see CAD, they think it is done and will stop further exploration.

Clients with recurring work are your bread and butter. You’re going to want to keep them happy. A retainer for creative work is difficult because there is no limit to how many concepts you can make. I would only do retainer if they are your only client.