Cosmic Creations: Graphic Design in Pinetown, KwaZulu Natal

Cosmic Creations Terms and Conditions

Nobody likes wading through these, but I’ve tried to make mine a bit more interesting to read and understand so please take the time to read through them to make sure that you really want to do business with me. I’m quite fussy about getting things done properly, making sure you are happy, and securing payment for work done. If there is anything that doesn’t make sense or you need clarification on, please email or phone me.These Terms and Conditions are between Jo Petzer, Trading as Cosmic Creations and any client who orders work from Cosmic Creations.1. Working Hours Let’s start right at the beginning. My working hours are 9am to 6pm, Monday to Thursday and 9am to 4pm on Fridays. Sometimes I work on a Saturday morning. So if you phone me out of those hours I won’t answer the phone, unless you’re lucky and catch me off guard. I might chat but I certainly won’t be starting up my system to make your changes, unless they’re urgent and/or I’ve told you that I’ll have them ready. My me-time and family-time is what keeps me sane and the creative juices flowing. If I have temporary or permanent staff helping out, then you’ll be able to get hold of someone in my office from 8am. Unfortunately I have had to put an end to my daily excursions of calling on clients at their premises as it just takes up too much precious working time and my daily hours end up becoming insanely long. From past experience, just about all work can be done via telephonic or electronic communication, except in cases where a client needs to supply a physical product, colour swatch, to collect work or hand over cash payment for a job. If you’re on the other side of the country and will require printed work to be posted or couriered to you, please remember to let me know so that I can add packing and postage to your invoice.If you really have to make an appointment to see me in person, please phone to set one up. Every hour of my working day is booked for a different client. Wouldn’t you be irritated if I spent half of your daily designated hour chatting to a client who pitched without making an appointment? Because of this, if I’m not expecting you, I won’t let you in. This is why my physical address is not advertised. So please be considerate of my time schedules and the booked work-schedules of other clients.To save time, I prefer to communicate with clients via email. It is so much easier and that way everything is recorded in writing for everyone’s convenience. Even if you do make an appointment to see me,I’m still going to ask you to confirm everything in writing via email. So, unless you have to drop off printed samples or products to photograph, or are collecting printing from me and bringing me cash, let’s try to keep our communication strictly electronic.2. Commission of Work When you email me to commission a job, no matter how big or small, please make sure that you supply as much information as you can so that I can quote you as promptly and accurately as possible. I honestly won’t be taking responsibility for having to re-create your work because you don’t like the designs generated by me, based on my extensive creative experience, and that turn out differently than you expected because your initial brief was vague and incomplete. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often but, if it does, I will have to charge you to redo work. All information needs to be submitted via email. Orders made via telephone can’t be processed.Please be patient. A lot of the time I am really busy and I probably won’t be able to do your work straight away. You might only receive a proof in 3-4 working days from authorising my quote. If you’re lucky and I have some extra time before then (because of extra speedy working on other jobs) I’ll make a plan to squeeze it in.If I really feel that I can’t meet your deadline, I’ll let you know as I don’t take on work I know my staff or I won’t be able to finish in time. So, sorry if I turn your job down. It’s only because I don’t want to you to have to pay for something you won’t be able to use in time.When I receive your formal request for work, I will consider all factors carefully before sending you a quotation. This is to ensure you get the best price I can give you. This can take a minute, an hour or even day or two, depending on how involved the work is. When I’ve calculated the approximate amount of time it will take to do your work, I’ll send you an estimate quotation, based on my hourly rate of R280. Please understand that, except for my advertised package deals, this is just an estimate. The final invoice could be more or less, depending on any number of factors. Remember the more changes you make to your job, the longer the work will take and so the more expensive. This is why earlier on I insisted on you supplying me with as much info as you possibly can before I start your work. Sometimes I will award consistent clients a discounted hourly rate or some complimentary work. This is entirely at my discretion.3. Proofing Too many customers think that proof-reading is the job of the designer. Unfortunately this is not the case. Proof-reading is a whole separate occupation. Because of this, many clients often don’t take their proofs seriously and end up printing mistakes. Please, please, please, check your proofs. Double-check them. Triple-check them. Get someone else to check them after you have in case you’ve missed something. Even though I have a pretty sharp eye for incorrect spelling and faulty grammar, I am only human and also miss these things sometimes. I definitely won’t be taking responsibility for money that you lose if your final printed job has mistakes on it that you didn’t pick up at proof stage. So please, take your proof-reading seriously. If you want, I can proof read your work for you at my standard hourly rate.The best way to make changes to your proof is to email me the changes you want in point form. If you phone me and ask me to make changes over the phone while I’m busy with someone else’s work, it won’t be happening, so don’t waste your time because I’m just going to ask you to email them to me anyhow. The reason for this is to have everything in writing so that there is no mis-communication. And also to prevent clients from trying to convince me they said something that they didn’t really (yes, this happens). Besides, my handwriting is disgusting so even if I write down your changes given over the phone, I probably won’t be able to read them later when I come to doing them (at least I’m honest). I will keep on supplying you proofs until your final copy is 100% correct and you confirm this in writing. No jobs go to print without this confirmation. No exceptions, no matter how nice you are, or how much you beg me to pass them. Most work includes three proof returns. From the fourth proof onwards, I charge my usual hourly rate of R280. Sometimes I won’t charge for extra proofs, but this is entirely at my discretion, so don’t take it for granted.If you’re fussy about colour and worried that the colour of your designed work isn’t going to be print correctly, please ask for a printed proof. This is charged at standard per-page colour-digital printing rates and will be added to your final invoice. The same applies to black-and-white text proofs supplied for books and manuals.Please be aware that digital printing is not a perfect science. If your designwork is being digitally printed, the colour may differ slightly from your proof to the final product and from one print run to the next. There’s nothing that we can do about this and I don’t take responsibility for refunding you or for the cost of reprinting your job if the colour of one run is slightly different from the next. If you are really fussy about your colour-matching then you’ll need to print your work lithorgaphically, which requires larger quantities, but the unit cost is usually less than digital printing. Please remember to provide a printed sample or a colour-swatch of the colour you want, a Pantone code equivalent or Process Colour (CMYK) breakdown. We don’t print in RGB so will convert any RGB files you supply us to CMYK, which will change the print colour.4. Payment My payment terms may seem a bit harsh to many, but this is only because I have a good credit name and I intend to keep it that way. I also have to eat, feed all my cats, pay a bond, school fees and utility bills, insurance and retirement policies, staff and computer maintenance costs so I can keep giving you great work, plus pay printers and other bills that really have nothing to do with these conditions but are still necessary to be settled at the end of each month. And, just in case you wondered, I don’t smoke, drink, do drugs, splash out on brand-name clothing or other useless items, so my earnings are pretty much channelled right back into my business and personal sustenance. Not that it was necessary to tell you that, but I thought that some of you might just benefit from the extra info.So, before any work is started, a deposit of 50% is required on amounts of R500 or more. This can be actioned by electronic transfer or cash. No cheques, credit card payments or trade-offs are accommodated. There are no exceptions to this so please don’t even think to ask me where your proof or printing is if you haven’t paid your deposit. Also, do yourself a favour and send me proof of payment (by fax, sms or email) as soon you’ve paid your deposit. Sometimes a transfer may take a few days to reflect in my bank account. I don’t check my bank account every day so I won’t start your work until I do any online banking and see it there. As soon as I get your proof of payment, your project will be designated time in my work schedule and I’ll start on it asap. If you order a new project from me but haven’t yet paid the balance for a completed previous project, I won’t be starting on your new job until both the balance of your previous project is settled and the deposit paid for the new one.Also, if I do work for you and you realise halfway through my efforts, that your cousin’s auntie’s sister’s grand-daughter is a graphic designer who is going to do the work for you for free, please be aware that any work I’ve already done for you will still have to be paid for if it isn’t covered in your deposit! If you’ve already paid your deposit and decide to go somewhere else halfway through the work, then too bad, you’ll lose your deposit. I don’t do refunds.No final useable electronic files, print-ready files, or printed work are released until the balance of that work is paid for in full. Although I will send you proofs you can view on-screen, the quality of those files (they will be low resolution) will not be suited to printing or using elsewhere. The same goes for printing. All printed work is due for payment on completion, not on collection. As soon as I have the printed job in my grubby paws, the payment becomes due, unless you’ve spoken to me nicely beforehand and we’ve made some other happy arrangement.And, no, I don’t accommodate accounts. I am not a bank and I don’t offer credit loans to anyone. If you’re desperate for some designwork and can’t afford it, you’ll need to visit your bank for a loan, or borrow the bucks from a family member so that you can pay me. My prices are really reasonable so this shouldn’t even be a problem. To reiterate: all my work is deposit upfront with balance on completion. (I certainly wouldn’t expect another businessperson to just give me something for free - it’s not ethical) If you intentionally stall progress on a project to avoid paying the balance, I’ll know. After three months, incomplete projects that haven’t been paid for in full are deleted from my system and you’ll have to pay all over again for me to do all the work again. I’m not a public storage facility. I only back up work that has been completed and paid for. You are also responsible for keeping a backup of any final files I send to you. Although we do back up all our work regularly, neither myself, my staff, nor Cosmic Creations will be liable for the cost of recreating lost files. I should tell you that sometimes I'm naughty and don't always ask for a deposit, for whatever reason of my own choosing. This doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for the work done. The second you ask me to start your work via email, over the phone, or in person, you are binding yourself to a design contract with me. Only clients who have a proven good-payment track record with me don't have to pay a deposit. If you're one of these fortunates, I'll let you know.I'm not going to make you sign this. Instead I'm going to stipulate that by commissioning work from me, it is presumed that you have already read, understood and accepted these terms and conditions. What kind of idiot would do work with someone without first sussing out the small print, anyway? If you find yourself in a sticky situation regarding your work with me, then that's your own fault for being slack by going through these conditions.Oh, and if you don’t pay me, other designers and printers will find out that you are a bad payer via the print-and-design-grapevine. We have ways and means of sharing this information with each other. Obviously if your bank-account was hijacked, you end up in hospital, die, or you have some other genuine, major financial or other payment-related problem, please let me know, or get a family member to inform me in advance. I do have a heart. In case you were wondering, Cosmic Creations is not a VAT Vendor, so any prices I quote you or invoice you for do not include VAT and will not have VAT added to them. Yes, this means you can’t claim the VAT back from SARS because you won’t be paying it to me.5. Conclusion Before I forget, if there are ever any legal fees to be paid as a result of your misunderstanding of any of my terms and conditions, or because of bad business conduct or unpaid invoices on your part, you will be the one footing the bill for all of these simply because I feel it unfair fair to have to pay for a problem not caused by myself or my staff (temporary or permanent).Hopefully I’ve covered everything necessary, but if I haven’t then anything missing will be added to these conditions as soon as I remember it, or when a situation comes up that warrants an additional condition. This means that these terms and conditions are subject to change at any time and will still be valid whether you’ve read them or not.Finally, the end.