A Napkin, A Screw, and the Law
esign, like other creative endeavors, isn’t a commodity. Whether it’s print, web or interactive, the results are based on talent, work, and years (or decades) of hard-won experience. For those who might have a hard time grasping this, I offer these three parables:
Picasso’s Napkin
The story goes that Picasso was sitting in a Paris café when an admirer approached.
“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”
Therefore, Picasso politely 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-b-but, 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.”
Legal Aid
An Indianapolis talk show radio host and lawyer told a similar story, it went something like this:
A client walks into my office and asks me a legal question. I turn around, and from my massive bookshelf pull out a book and flip through it. Finding what I’m looking for, I turn around, read the answer to the client, and charge him $800.
The client is upset, and says, “How can you charge me $800 when all you did is turn around and look up the answer?” To which the lawyer replied, “I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars and years upon years in education so that I would know where to look and so that I could understand what I was reading when I found it.”
The Machinist
And finally,
A machine in a factory has malfunctioned, and the engineers on site can’t find the source of the problem.
Therefore, they call on a retired worker who had spent a long time working with the machine. He comes in, walks up to the machine, looks at it for a minute, pulls out a piece of chalk and draws a circle around the screw that needs to be tightened.
He then writes them a bill for $5,000.
“$5,000, that’s ridiculous, all you did was draw a circle around a screw!”
Therefore, he writes them a new bill:
- Drawing a circle around a screw: $1
- Knowing where to draw it: $4999
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