Yes. We will charge the price quoted when the order is placed. There are a couple of good reasons for this.

 The first reason is best illustrated through a legend of something that is said to have happened to the famous  artist Picasso. The story goes like this:

 Picasso was sitting at a table outside a Paris cafe. A woman came up to him and asked him to draw something for her on a napkin. “It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.  

“B-but, w-what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

While we are certainly not in the same class as Picasso, this still happens to us from time to time.  People watch us work and it seems to them very easy. That is because design is what we do. We live and breath design work. And still many many times jobs do not go as quickly as  planned, when that happens we do not charge more than quoted. If we get lucky once in a while and actually finish a job quickly without any hiccups, we still charge what was quoted.

Another factor to keep in mind is the overhead that is involved in even a "quick job".  The reason we can do a "quick job" at times is because use the best tools available.  The best computers, the best software, and the best materials.  For instance one design station alone includes:

• A top of the line Quad Core MacPro computer
• Dual large screen monitors
• 16gb Ram\
• 4 terabytes of  hard disk drive
• Hundreds of HIGH QUALITY licensed fonts. We use fonts from type foundries such as:  Adobe, Linotype,  ITC, Sign DNA and many more.  These fonts are not the cheap True Type fonts found for free online. Many of the OpenType fonts we use cost several hundred dollars each. 
• Color Munki-color spectrophotometer for accurate color matching
• Wacom Intuos  4 with a full line of plugins 
• Backup server and storage
• A considerable investment not only in software but  also years spent becoming proficient using it.
• A very large library of design research, elements, textures, logos and scale drawings.
• Membership to trade only sites that provide special tools as well as training.

 While it may seem like that is a lot of overhead for one design station, the fact is that having the best equipment helps us to turn your job around faster, with better quality and less errors.  Actually not having the correct equipment-software-knowledge-experience can lead to a job taking MUCH longer and costing much more than it should.

Here is another way to look at it.  Say you need someone to dig a basement and you get 3 bids:

1. Bidder 1 charges $75 per hour for a Caterpillar loader and a driver.  
2. Bidder 2 has a little Kubota and he will do it for only $30 per hour.
3. Bidder 3 is  just starting out, he has a new pick, and a new shovel and he bids your job for only $10 per hour.  

Who will cost you more, the experienced grader with the proper equipment or one of the other two?

The BOTTOM LINE is this: At Image Graphics we do professional quality work, with top of the line training and equipment, and while we do not work for free we do give our clients an excellent value for their advertising dollar.