Graphic design contract template: what a second route costs.
A design project multiplies in four places, and in the contract below each one carries a price instead of the bracket you fill in later.
A graphic design contract has to carry six numbers a general services contract never needs: how many concept routes are included, how many revision rounds sit inside each stage, what the client can do with the finished artwork, who keeps the layered working files, what one more logo variant costs, and what is owed if the project stops halfway through. The contract below is a complete one for a $15,750 identity system, and each of those six lines has a figure against it rather than a bracket. You can copy it, download it as a Word file or a PDF, and the only blanks left are the ones genuinely changing from one agency to the next.
Where does a graphic design contract usually lose money?
On the second concept route and the third revision round, because design is the rare kind of client work where somebody can ask for more of the same thing rather than something new. A request for another page or another feature announces itself as extra work and gets treated that way. A request to see a couple more directions sounds like part of the job, and on most contracts it quietly is, because nothing in the document ever said how many directions were bought.
The version below is written for Thackery Bakehouse, an eight-week identity system for a bakery opening its third location, at $15,750. The work splits into five priced pieces: identity exploration at $5,400, the logo suite at $2,900, a twenty-four page guidelines document at $3,200, six packaging items at $410 each, and two menu boards at $895 each. Those five figures look like bookkeeping and they are not, for a reason section 12 gets to at the end.
The widely shared versions of this document handle the same ground in different ways, and it is worth knowing what each one actually hands you. Contractbook publishes a full numbered agreement whose revision clause reads as a bracketed number of rounds plus an hourly rate for anything beyond them, so the structure is there and the decision is not. Plutio's freelance design contract describes each section in prose, draws a clear line between a revision round and a change of brief, and puts native working files behind a quote rather than including them. Dan Mall's version splits into a general services agreement of twenty-nine clauses plus a separate statement of work, and of the three he is the only one assigning a dollar value to each deliverable, which turns out to matter enormously when a project stops early. What none of the three does is fill in a number, and that is fair enough for a document meant to fit anybody, but it leaves you exactly where you started on the afternoon you have to decide what a second route is worth.
What does the finished contract look like?
Fifteen sections, of which four carry nearly all the weight. Section 4 splits the fee across the five deliverables, section 5 prices every addition anybody is likely to ask for, section 7 says what a revision round actually is, and section 11 separates what Thackery owns from what stays with the designer. The remaining eleven are the standing material you will paste into your next contract without reading it again.
Project: [project name]
Reference: [TBH-01]
Date: [date]
1. PARTIES
1.1 Client: Thackery Bakehouse, [address]. Client contact: [name, title, email].
1.2 Designer: [your agency name], [address, email].
1.3 This document covers the work described in section 2, the fee in section 4, the rates for anything added later in section 5, and the way additions get approved in section 6. It replaces any scope described in earlier proposals, emails or calls.
2. WHAT WE ARE MAKING
2.1 Identity exploration: two concept routes, each presented as a direction board, logo artwork and one applied example. Thackery selects one route to carry forward.
2.2 Logo suite on the selected route: a primary lockup, a stacked lockup, a monogram and one horizontal variant, each supplied as vector artwork in full color, one color and reversed.
2.3 Brand guidelines document, twenty-four pages, covering logo use, clear space, minimum sizes, the palette in CMYK, RGB and Pantone, typography, photography direction and the three misuses we see most often.
2.4 Packaging artwork, six items: two bag stamps, two sticker sizes, one box wrap and one loaf label.
2.5 Menu board artwork, two boards, sized to the frame measurements Thackery supplies under 9.2.
2.6 Anything not listed in 2.1 to 2.5 sits outside this contract and is priced under section 5. Section 3 names the items most likely to come up.
3. WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED
3.1 Print production, print management and press attendance. We supply print-ready artwork and answer the printer's questions by email, and we are not on press.
3.2 Photography and illustration commissioned for the packaging or the boards.
3.3 Copywriting. Thackery supplies final approved text for menus and packaging.
3.4 Signage, vehicle graphics, uniforms, and artwork for a fourth location.
3.5 Website, social templates and digital advertising artwork.
3.6 Trademark searching, clearance and registration.
4. FEE AND PAYMENT
4.1 The fee is $15,750, made up as follows: identity exploration and route selection $5,400; logo suite $2,900; brand guidelines $3,200; packaging artwork, six items at $410 each, $2,460; menu boards, two at $895 each, $1,790.
4.2 Payment: 40% ($6,300) on signature, 30% ($4,725) when Thackery approves a route under 2.1, and 30% ($4,725) on delivery of final artwork.
4.3 Invoices are due fifteen days from the invoice date. Thirty days past due, work pauses and final artwork is held until the account is current.
4.4 The fee excludes sales tax and any pass-through costs quoted separately, including stock photography and typeface licenses bought in Thackery's name.
5. RATES FOR ANYTHING ADDED
5.1 Additional concept route beyond the two in 2.1: $2,700.
5.2 Revision round beyond the two included at each stage: $560.
5.3 Additional logo variant beyond the four in 2.2: $480.
5.4 Additional packaging item: $410.
5.5 Additional menu board: $895.
5.6 Additional guidelines page beyond the twenty-four in 2.3: $140.
5.7 Layered working files, meaning the original Illustrator and InDesign documents with the fonts as used: $2,350.
5.8 Anything not listed above: $120 per hour, quoted in writing and approved under section 6 before it starts.
6. HOW ADDITIONS GET APPROVED
6.1 Thackery names one person whose written approval commits money: [name, title, email].
6.2 We price the request against section 5 and send it in writing. Work starts when that person replies approving the price and any date change.
6.3 An approved addition is added to the fee and invoiced with the next scheduled payment.
6.4 Where a request moves a date, the same message says so, in working days.
7. REVISION ROUNDS
7.1 Two revision rounds are included at each of the three stages: route presentation, logo suite, and guidelines and artwork.
7.2 A revision round is one consolidated set of notes from Thackery on the same piece of work, sent in one message.
7.3 Correcting our own error is not a revision round.
7.4 A change of direction after a route has been approved under 2.1 is a new route, priced at 5.1, not a revision round.
8. SCHEDULE
8.1 Eight weeks from signature, assuming the approvals in 8.2.
8.2 Thackery returns each consolidated set of notes within five working days. Every working day beyond that moves the remaining dates by the same number of days.
8.3 Dates move under 8.2 or under an approval given in section 6, and not otherwise.
9. WHAT THACKERY SUPPLIES
9.1 Final approved menu and packaging text.
9.2 Frame measurements for the menu boards in 2.5.
9.3 Printer and packaging vendor specifications, including die lines and color requirements, before artwork begins.
9.4 Where Thackery supplies photography, artwork or text, Thackery confirms it holds the right to use it.
10. ACCEPTANCE
10.1 A deliverable is accepted when Thackery approves it in writing, or five working days after delivery if no notes arrive.
10.2 After acceptance, a change to that deliverable is priced under section 5.
11. OWNERSHIP AND USE
11.1 Until the fee and any approved additions are paid in full, everything we make stays ours.
11.2 On full payment, the final artwork in 2.2 to 2.5 transfers to Thackery, worldwide and with no time limit, for Thackery's own use as a bakery business, across packaging, print, signage, digital and advertising.
11.3 The unselected route in 2.1, and any concept not carried forward, stays ours.
11.4 The layered working files stay ours unless bought under 5.7. Thackery receives production files: vector artwork as PDF and SVG, packaging artwork as print-ready PDF, and the guidelines as PDF.
11.5 Typefaces are licensed in Thackery's name under 4.4 and are not ours to transfer.
11.6 We may show the finished public-facing work in our portfolio once Thackery has launched it, unless Thackery asks us in writing not to.
12. ENDING IT EARLY
12.1 Either of us may end this contract with fifteen days' written notice.
12.2 If Thackery ends it, Thackery pays for every deliverable in 4.1 completed or in progress at the date of the notice, valued at the amounts in 4.1, plus any additions approved under section 6. Amounts already invoiced above that total are credited back.
12.3 Work stopped before completion transfers under 11.2 once the amount in 12.2 is paid.
13. CONFIDENTIALITY
13.1 Neither of us shares the other's non-public information. Recipes, supplier terms, opening dates and pricing stay confidential until Thackery announces them.
14. LIABILITY
14.1 Our total liability under this contract is limited to the fee paid under it.
14.2 We are not liable for print costs on artwork Thackery has approved in writing, so proofs are worth reading slowly.
15. GENERAL
15.1 Governing law: [state or country].
15.2 Changes to this contract are made in writing and signed by both of us.
15.3 This document replaces anything discussed before it was signed.
SIGNED
For Thackery Bakehouse: ____________________ Date: __________
For [your agency]: ____________________ Date: __________
Two things in there are worth noticing before you adapt it. Section 2.6 says plainly that anything absent from 2.1 through 2.5 gets priced under section 5, which turns the deliverables list into a boundary rather than a description, and section 3 then names the six omissions clients ask about anyway. That pairing does more work than a long list of exclusions, and it is the same move making a priced exclusion harder to argue with than a bare one.
How many concept routes and revision rounds belong in it?
Two routes and two rounds at each stage is the arrangement above, and the number you choose matters far less than having any number written down at all. What makes it hold is the definition sitting next to it. Clause 7.2 calls a round one consolidated set of notes on the same work sent in one message, so six emails trickling in over three days are one round rather than six, and the client who sends them is not being punished for thinking out loud. Clause 7.3 excludes fixing your own errors, which is the fairness the client is entitled to ask for before agreeing to the rest.
Clause 7.4 is the one earning its keep. A change of direction after a route has been approved is a new route at $2,700 under 5.1, not a revision round at $560, and writing that down before the project starts is much easier than explaining it in week five to a marketing director who joined the company in week four. The same logic runs through the creative brief you agreed before any of this, where an adjective with no number attached to it eventually turns into an invoice somebody has to justify.
Pricing an extra round rather than capping it is the deliberate part. A hard cap forces you into refusing a client, which is a conversation nobody enjoys and which usually ends with you doing the round anyway and eating it. A price lets you say yes and attach a figure, and it moves the decision to the person who should be making it, since Thackery gets to weigh whether a third direction is worth $2,700 of their own money.
Who owns the artwork, and what do the working files cost?
Thackery owns the final artwork once the fee is paid in full, which is what 11.1 and 11.2 between them say, and the transfer is broad on purpose: worldwide, no time limit, across packaging, print, signage, digital and advertising. A bakery that has paid $15,750 for an identity should never have to email and ask whether the logo can go on a delivery van. What stays behind is narrower and more specific. The unselected route stays with the designer under 11.3, typefaces are licensed in the client's own name and were never the designer's to hand over under 11.5, and the layered originals stay with the designer under 11.4 unless Thackery buys them for $2,350.
That working-files line is the one most designers hand over without thinking about it, usually at the end of a long project when somebody asks for the Illustrator files and it feels petty to say no. It is worth a number instead of a reflex, because a client holding the layered originals can have anybody at all change the logo, redraw the packaging or extend the guidelines, and the value of what changes hands is every future piece of work on that identity. Putting $2,350 in section 5.7 turns an awkward refusal into an ordinary line item, and quite often the client reads it, decides they do not need the originals, and takes the production files instead.
What happens when the client adds work in week six?
It gets priced off section 5 and approved in writing before anyone opens a file, and on this project it took one message. In week six Thackery signs a wholesale account with a regional grocer, which needs a shipping carton the original scope never imagined. Three things follow from that: two more packaging items at $410 each under 5.4, one more logo variant at $480 under 5.3 for the narrow lockup the carton panel needs, and one revision round on the guidelines beyond the two included, at $560 under 5.2, so the new items are documented for whoever prints them next year. The addition comes to $1,860 and takes the engagement to $17,610.
The arithmetic is not the part worth copying. The part worth copying is that nobody had to decide what any of those three things cost, because all three rates were signed in week zero, and the whole exchange fits in a reply rather than a meeting. Section 6.1 names the one person whose yes commits money, 6.2 starts the work when that person replies, and 6.4 carries the date change in the same message, four working days here, since the carton artwork has to reach the box vendor alongside the rest of the packaging. Agencies that run this often enough tend to move it onto a standing change request form so the wording stops being rewritten from scratch every time, and it is the same discipline behind handling a creeping scope without making the client feel policed.
A contract that can be stopped halfway and still add up
Split the fee across the deliverables the way 4.1 does and you can answer the hardest question a client ever asks, which is what they owe if they stop. Dan Mall makes this argument about his own contract, and of the three published versions we read his is the only one carrying a value against each deliverable rather than a single number at the bottom. It costs nothing to write and it decides the most expensive conversation in the whole document.
Say Thackery pauses the project the week after route approval, because the third location is delayed and nothing can print. Two deliverables are finished: identity exploration at $5,400 and the logo suite at $2,900, so $8,300 of work exists. Invoiced by then: $6,300 on signature and $4,725 at route approval, which is $11,025. Clause 12.2 says the difference of $2,725 is credited back, and there is nothing to argue about, because both sides are reading the same five figures they signed in section 4. A contract carrying one number at the bottom cannot do that, and the conversation it produces instead is the one where each side names a percentage and hopes.
That is also why the deliverables in section 2 are written as counts rather than descriptions, since a deliverable you cannot count cannot be valued, invoiced or stopped halfway. If your work is closer to a standing relationship than a single build, the same material splits cleanly into a client contract holding the standing terms with a short scope underneath it for each new job, and a solo designer signing in their own name will find the freelance version covers the same ground with fewer parties to name.
Frequently asked questions
What should a graphic design contract include?
Beyond the parties, the fee and two signatures, it has to answer the four requests that arrive on nearly every design project: another concept route, another revision round, another logo variant, and the layered working files. The contract above answers all four with a price in section 5 rather than a rule, which is the difference between settling a request in one reply and negotiating it for a week. Around that sit the deliverables list with counts against it, the exclusions, the payment schedule, one named approver, an acceptance rule, and the ownership terms deciding what transfers when the invoice clears.
How many revisions should a graphic design contract include?
Two rounds at each stage is a workable arrangement and it is what section 7 of the contract above uses, but the number matters less than the definition sitting next to it. A round there is one consolidated set of notes on the same work, sent in one message, so six separate emails over three days count as one round rather than six. Fixing your own error is not a round at all, and a change of direction after the client has already approved a route is a new route at $2,700 rather than a revision.
Who owns the files after a graphic design project?
The client owns the final artwork once the fee is paid in full, and the designer keeps the layered working files unless the contract says otherwise. That split is deliberate, because the production files let the client use the work everywhere they need it while the layered originals are what somebody else would need to rework the logo without you. Section 5.7 of the contract above puts those originals at $2,350 rather than refusing them outright, and 11.5 notes that typefaces are licensed in the client's own name and are not the designer's to hand over.
Can you write your own graphic design contract?
Most independent designers and small agencies do, usually by adapting a graphic design contract template rather than starting from an empty page, and the parts you write yourself are the parts nobody else could write for you anyway: the deliverable counts, the rate card and the schedule. What we publish here is not legal advice, and the clauses carrying real risk, meaning liability, indemnity and governing law in sections 14 and 15, are worth an hour of a lawyer's time once. After that review the same wording carries over to every contract you sign.
What is the difference between a graphic design contract and a scope of work?
The contract holds the terms surviving the project and the scope of work holds the description of one project, and a single document does both jobs perfectly well for a one-off identity build, which is what the version above is. Splitting them earns its keep once a client keeps coming back. At that point sections 11 through 15 become the standing agreement, and each new job gets a short scope of work underneath it carrying its own deliverables, fee, rate card and named approver.