Why experience costs more (and why that’s a good thing)

Money doesn’t get talked about enough, especially in creative work. Rates. Fees. Pricing. They’re often treated as awkward footnotes rather than fundamental parts of how work actually functions. So I’ll say it plainly.

My rates are going up in 2026.

I’ve been freelancing full-time for a couple of years now, but I’ve been working in this industry for well over a decade. The work I’m doing today isn’t the same work I was doing years ago, even if the deliverables sometimes look similar on the surface. The thinking runs deeper. The decisions carry more weight. The responsibility is bigger. That shift matters.

Clients aren’t just paying for output. They’re paying for judgement. Knowing what to push, what to simplify, and what not to touch at all. Knowing when to explore further and when to stop. Knowing how to balance ambition with constraints, and clarity with speed. That kind of judgement doesn’t come from templates or tools. It comes from time spent doing the work, seeing what fails, learning what lasts, and carrying that experience forward.

Experience vs output

It’s easy to price creative work based on visible output. Pages, screens, logos, assets, deliverables. But that framing misses the point. Two designers can produce the same thing on paper, but the thinking behind it, and the outcomes it leads to, can be wildly different.

Experience changes how problems are approached. It reduces unnecessary exploration. It avoids dead ends before they become expensive ones. It helps spot risks early, rather than after a launch or rebrand has already gone out into the world.

That’s why experience costs more. Not because of ego, and not because time alone deserves a premium, but because responsibility increases as well. When decisions have broader implications for a business, the value sits in getting them right, not just getting them done.

This is especially true in brand work, where early decisions tend to ripple outwards. A clearer strategy, a better-defined identity, or a more thoughtful system often saves time and money later by reducing revisions, pivots, and rework.

Pricing as a reflection of responsibility

As a freelance graphic designer, my role isn’t just to execute instructions. It’s to help guide decisions, challenge assumptions when needed, and bring clarity where things feel unclear. That responsibility grows as trust grows, and trust usually comes through longer-term working relationships. That’s why I’m increasingly focused on long-term creative partnerships rather than one-off output. When there’s space to understand a business properly, the work improves. Decisions become more confident. The process becomes calmer. And over time, that tends to be more cost-effective for everyone involved.

Pricing needs to reflect that reality. Staying static while experience stacks and responsibility increases doesn’t make sense, especially when the cost of running a business continues to rise around it.

Sustainable work benefits everyone

Raising rates isn’t about sudden jumps or arbitrary increases. It’s about sustainability. For me, and for the people I work with. Sustainable pricing allows me to spend the right amount of time on the right problems. It creates space for thinking, not just production. It reduces the pressure to rush, overwork, or pad projects with unnecessary deliverables just to justify a number. For clients, that usually means better outcomes. Fewer revisions. Clearer direction. Less waste. Work that holds up over time rather than needing constant fixes or refreshes.

That’s why my rates will be changing in 2026. Not dramatically, and not for the sake of it, but as a more honest reflection of where I’m at now and what the work actually asks of me.

Uncomfortable to say out loud? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely.

If you’re interested in how this way of working shows up in practice, you can explore selected work from recent projects, read more about my approach in the How I work series, or look at how I structure brand identity projects to support longer-term thinking rather than short-term fixes.

This isn’t about charging more for the same thing. It’s about valuing experience, judgement, and responsibility for what they actually are.