Three Halves Design

The ‘Pay What You Want’ concept has been around for awhile – most famously brought to the world’s attention with Radiohead’s self-released In Rainbows album in 2007. Within a year the album had sold more than three million copies worldwide in both digital and physical formats. Proof that not every music lover in the world is vapid vortex of downloading impenitence.

A little closer to home there are plenty of examples of PWYW around town. After 13 years in the business Lentil As Anything have attracted nothing short of a cult following for their tasty variety of vegetarian fare on offer. So much so that they now have four restaurants across Melbourne and one in Sydney all embracing the PWYW ethos.

So this is where Ken from 3 Halves Design comes in, an independent designer who has totally flipped the normal business model – and loving it.

He decided he’d had enough of the media agency rat race and quit to set up his own practice -strongly centered around the PWYW model. However he went a step further and donates 50% of your first job directly to a charity of your choice. So this means you can get something designed and support your favourite charity. Win!

When questioned on his approach he explained that he wanted to build a working rapport from the first job, with none of the usual pressures about ‘will he rip me off?’ or ‘will the job be satisfactory?’. In other words none of the usual bull&*%$.

“I’ve always been interested in the PWYW business model. It works for restaurants, music downloads, the gaming industry… It’s opened up a new, exciting way of doing business. I see this as a bit of a social enterprise, helping charities whilst doing design.”

He’s been in business about a year now and has had a wide variety of jobs from one-off t-shirt designs, wedding invitations through to full blow website building.

Check out his work here.