The most common way a creative technologist loses money is not being underpaid per hour. It is quoting a number before understanding the shape of the job — and installation work has a shape that design and software work do not.
We have a guide to pricing prints and online sales already. This is the other thing: someone has asked you to build an interactive piece, for a venue, by a date.
The Futur on why hourly billing misprices creative work. The argument generalises, with one caveat covered below.
Why hourly is the wrong unit here
The standard argument against hourly billing is that it penalises expertise — get faster and earn less. True, and for installation work there is a second, more concrete problem:
Most of the cost is not your hours. It is hardware you buy before you are paid, a van, a week on site, a rigger, a spare of everything, and a phone that rings in month four. An hourly rate prices your labour and silently absorbs all of that into your margin.
So quote a project fee, built from a breakdown you do not necessarily show the client.
The breakdown
Build every quote from these lines. Put numbers against all of them even when the answer is zero.
1. Design and development time. Your actual working days, at your day rate. If you do not have a day rate, derive it: take the annual salary you want, divide by ~130 billable days (not 260 — half your year is admin, pitching, learning and gaps), then add 30% for employer costs you now pay yourself. A €60,000 target becomes roughly €600/day.
2. Hardware, at cost plus a handling margin. Everything: computers, sensors, projectors, screens, cabling, mounts, enclosures, power distribution, the fixings. Then add 15–20% for handling, shipping, failed parts and the things you forgot. Pricing hardware at cost means you are financing the client’s equipment purchase for free.
3. Spares. At least one of every failure-prone or long-lead item. A projector lamp, a sensor, a Pi, a PSU, a cable of every type. This is not padding — it is the difference between a twenty-minute fix and a dark installation for three weeks while a part ships.
4. Fabrication. Laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC, metalwork, paint, a joiner. Quote these from actual quotes, not estimates.
5. Install. Days on site, travel, accommodation, subsistence, and any specialist you need — rigger, electrician, scaffolder. Install always takes longer than you think, because the wall is not where the drawing said and the power is on the wrong side of the room. Add a contingency day.
6. Testing and commissioning. Separate from install. The piece working once is not the piece working.
7. Documentation. Photography, video, and a written operations manual for the venue. Charge for it — and do it, because it is also your portfolio.
8. Maintenance and support. The line everyone omits. Decide what you are providing, for how long, and price it. Thirty days of remote support, then an optional annual contract is a reasonable default. Without this clause you have accidentally agreed to unlimited lifetime support.
9. Contingency. 10–20% of the total. Not optional. Something will go wrong.
10. Licence. See below.
The licence line is the one people never charge for
You are not just building an object. You are granting rights to use it. Those are separable, and separating them is both fairer and more lucrative.
Ask:
- How long is it installed? A three-month show and a permanent installation are different licences.
- Where? One venue, or does it tour? A touring licence should cost more per venue, and you should know before you quote whether touring is intended.
- Can they modify it? Change the content, rebrand it, extend it?
- Who owns the code and the design? Default position: you retain copyright and grant a licence for the agreed use. Clients will often ask for full assignment. Full assignment should cost substantially more, because you are giving up the ability to reuse your own toolkit.
That last point matters enormously for creative technologists specifically, because your value compounds through reusable code. Assigning copyright on a project that used your own framework can mean assigning the framework.
The five clauses that decide whether this is survivable
Payment schedule. Never 100% on completion. 40% on signature, 30% at an agreed milestone, 30% on handover is a normal structure. The first payment should cover your hardware purchase — otherwise you are lending the client thousands of euros.
Scope and change control. Write down what is included. Then write: changes to scope will be quoted separately before work proceeds. Scope creep in installation work is not a few extra revisions; it is a second sensor system and three more weeks.
Site conditions and dependencies. Specify what the venue must provide: power (how many circuits, where), network, wall construction, ceiling height, rigging points, lighting conditions, access times, storage. Then state that delays or costs arising from these not being as specified are chargeable. This is the clause that saves you when you arrive and the wall is glass.
Liability and insurance. Know what you are on the hook for if the piece fails during an opening, or if something falls. Get public liability insurance before you quote work in a public venue — many venues require it and will ask for the certificate. Cap your liability in the contract at the contract value.
Force majeure and cancellation. If the show is cancelled, what have you earned? Non-refundable deposits and payment for work completed to date should both be explicit.
Three practical notes
Quote a range early, a number late. When someone asks “roughly what would this cost”, a range — “something in this scope is typically €25–40k depending on the hardware” — qualifies the project without committing you. A precise number given before you understand the brief becomes the ceiling.
Ask their budget, and ask early. It is not rude and it is not weakness. “What budget are you working to?” is the single most useful question in the conversation, and it prevents a month of designing something nobody can afford.
And bill the pitch when it becomes work. A conversation is free. A detailed technical proposal with drawings and a hardware spec is a deliverable. Paid concept phases are normal in architecture and should be normal here.