Hi all,
To be frank – 2025 continues to be the most challenging year of my life so far, with my attention continuously and repeatedly divided between unexpected, urgent, and distressing personal matters and a very demanding level of workload. This has caused unprecedented delays to client work which require an explanation. I have linked this post to my email signature so that clients new and continuing are able to read what’s happened, how I’m planning to recover, and what business changes I’m making to mediate impacts in the future.
[Trigger warning for mention of death, mental health incidents, sexual harassment]
Challenges this year have included:
- An unexpected and serious family admission to the youth mental health unit in hospital (November 2024);
- Another family member unexpectedly needing to move to my home in Canberra, with high care need impacts (November 2024-March 2025);
- An unexpected and traumatic family death, witnessed by another family member (March 2025);
- A major relationship breakup (April 2025);
- An unexpected family wedding and need for me to undertake a second unplanned return to Australia from my base in Dublin (November 2025);
- Moving house three times (December 2024, June 2025, September 2025);
- A serious and prolonged workplace sexual harassment incident on me, and subsequent requirement to write a report to management and seek counsel from police (November 2024-November 2025);
- Associated mental heath impacts and work capacity reduction from the above incidents, with difficulty in accessing counselling in a timely manner and across countries, currencies, and time zones, and with no Medicare coverage in Ireland (April-November 2025);
- Serious financial impacts from two unanticipated rounds of flights home to Australia, two months’ worth (in excess of $20,000) of cancelled work during the acute April-June period following the family bereavement, significant amounts of refund or partial refund issued to clients due to project lateness, increased fees (in excess of $10,000) to support contractors to take the remainder of my delayed or dropped work to ensure my corporate clients weren’t left in the lurch, and significant fees from medical and counselling expenses, meaning that I have not been financially able to take a break from working to recoup and recover from the year’s challenges (April-November 2025);
- More demand for work than I can manage at any given time, including repeated urgent requests from existing clients with a variety of timeframe-dependent stakeholders when schedule is already full (May 2024 – ongoing);
- Becoming accustomed to managing and training a support team, and learning their differing strengths and styles across multiple tight timeframes to be able to address the above (March-November 2025);
- Difficulty in pricing correctly to account for my support team’s wages, which are close in comparison to my own historical hourly rate, meaning profit margins are lower than they should be for financial breathing room (see “Price Rise from 10 November 2025” below);
- My own support team reaching capacity, experiencing serious personal matters, or becoming ill and taking leave, resulting in the sudden hire and training of a fifth support person at little notice (October 2025);
- More numerous and urgent than normal corporate projects which have no wiggle room for deadline adjustments, meaning that commercial/private client project timeframes have taken a hit when capacity has been exhausted (September-November 2025);
- Clients, particularly corporate clients’, own timeframes requiring adjustment and rebooking due to unclear scope, employee commitments and external stakeholders’ feedback, with re-entry required at times when the schedule is pre-booked with other projects and capacity is low (see “Introducing Project Deferrals” below) (August-November 2025).
I won’t mince words, it’s probably been the worst year of my life. I am usually great in a crisis and able to focus on work and put things behind me, but 2025 has felt like one thing after another, all out of the blue, impossible to predict, and very difficult to manage. While my support team of all-female design subcontractors has been a great help since their onboarding in March, I have still found myself low in concentration, facing chronic exhaustion, and dropping the ball consistently on deadlines this year; whilst trying to manage a huge range of clients whose interests, deadlines, and demands often conflict with each other and cannot be fulfilled at the same time. Unfortunately, this will always result in someone being disappointed.
While I can only continue to do my best to manage things, delegate work where possible, explain when new unexpected disruptions occur, discount where necessary, and apologise when delays happen, I’m putting some further measures in place to increase capacity and give clients more flexibility moving into 2026.
A Longer-Than-Normal Christmas Break to Recover
***Edit 8/12/25: Due to continuing overwhelming demand in December, holiday closure period has been shifted later, to 5pm 24/12/2025 until 9am 27/01/2026***
To get things back under control, I will be taking a full month’s break this year from Saturday December 20 2025 until Tuesday January 20 2026, to ensure sufficient rest and rejuvenation to reset my professional capability and punctuality back to normal. I will be gradually returning to work part-time from the week starting Monday January 5, working only on a handful of projects which were already booked as of today 1/11. Any further tasks requiring action during this December-January leave bracket will be tackled by my support team.
Importantly, I cannot guarantee that urgent tasks will be able to be completed during this time period, as pricing and availability will depend entirely on my team’s capacity and holiday leave dates. Therefore, if you know that you will have a job coming up from December 20 to January 20, I would recommend getting in touch now to secure availability early.
Bookings will resume as normal from 27/01/2026 and you may submit a design project enquiry now to get a 15% discount on your 2026 job.*
*Note that to receive this earlybird discount, you must confirm your 2026 design project booking and pay your 50% deposit prior to 31/1/2026. There is no value cap on the discount – a $10,000 quote, for example, will receive a 15% reduction of $1500 if locked in by January 31.
Price Rise from 10 November 2025
When I started the search in March for a team of casual freelance designers to support me in my busy periods, it was critical to me that I hired Australians. This would keep money in our economy, ensure time zone appropriateness, ensure an implicit understanding of my Australian clients’ needs and tastes (particularly for government work), make sense for GST reasons, mean I had reps to attend meetings for me in other states, have the ability to get security clearances if ever needed, and avoid exploitation of cheap offshore labour.
I’ve ended up with a team of five brilliant graphic designers, layout designers, and illustrators selected from an applicant pool of 17 immensely talented women (I wasn’t trying to fit a quota, but no men applied – that’s just how it turned out!).
The team has passed their design support trial with flying colours this year, and it is time for an existing client price rise to ensure I can continue to pay them what they deserve without stretching us as thin as we are. I can no longer afford to price as low as I am currently (between $70-$100/hr depending on how long we’ve been working together and whether you’re a for-profit entity), as it’s become clear that the demand for my services is no longer meetable, and my profit margins are too low to be able to pay my workers, take on urgent tasks, and meet deadlines reliably while keeping an appropriate buffer remaining for refunds and emergencies.
While you’ll pay more in 2026, this will result in better and more punctual work by financially enabling me to take on fewer new enquiries and therefore focus way more closely on the needs of my existing client base. This means faster turnaround, better quality, and improved communication.
So – from November 10 2025 (my 30th birthday, btw), Origami Graphics’ prices will be as follows:
BAND 1 Charities, Not-For-Profit Organisations, and Original Clients in continuous work from 2018-2020:
Rate changes from $85/hr or less to $95/hr GST inclusive*
Express rate $140/hr GST inclusive**
BAND 2 All Other Existing Clients onboarded from 2021-2024
Rate changes from $85-$100/hr to $105/hr GST inclusive
Express rate $160/hr GST inclusive
BAND 3 New Clients from January 1 2025
$125/hr GST inclusive
Express rate $200/hr GST inclusive
Existing clients were notified of this rise in a client-wide email on 1/9/2025. Because things can’t continue the way they are, I will need to be firm on quoting using these new increased prices – so if this doesn’t work for your business, shoot me an email and I can look at referring you to someone cheaper. One of my team may even be suitable to work with you directly for a slightly lower rate, but note you should still expect an absolute minimum of $70/hour plus GST for this option and that I won’t have any involvement or quality checkover on your design product at all.
*Lower rates available for clients with extremely specific needs such as those on disability pensions – please contact me to discuss.
**Please try to organise your design project at least a month ahead to avoid having to pay the Express Rate, which your job will be quoted on if I’ll need to work after-hours or on weekends to get it finished in time for a tight deadline.
Introducing Project Deferrals
It’s not just me who has had trouble meeting deadlines this year. I’ve encountered a few clients who, due to circumstances completely out of their control or similarly heavy workloads, haven’t been able to fulfil their ends of our agreement and have needed to pause their design projects and recommence them later. The reasons for this can vary massively: from basic disorganisation, to a key stakeholder hitting the brakes, to a critical employee becoming sick or failing to turn copy around, to unexpected pregnancy and seriously increased personal expenses that now need to be allowed for. It happens to all of us (well. Maybe not pregnancy).
While I can’t generally refund deposits unless the circumstances are exceptional and out of your control, I’ve majorly messed you around and breached our contract, or you’re within a cooling-off period (especially as I now have a support team, who were likely already paid to be on deck for your work using those funds), I’ve now consolidated the rebooking process into a new policy available for detailed reading in my Terms and Conditions.
Project Deferrals: If you are unable to dedicate the required time to your design project and you don’t want to cancel it, you may request a deferral and rebook the entire project for no additional financial penalty up to 6 months in the future. I may allow deferrals in excess of 6 months at my discretion, if the project is being deferred for an exceptional reason such as an ongoing health matter.
Note that unless I have informed you otherwise, a design project which is not resumed by 6 months after the date of initial deferral will be considered abandoned, will not be refunded, and will need to be requoted to get started again – as I am not able to hold work indefinitely without charging, and a repeated holding process creates impacts on my other clients. Your date of recommencement will also be subject to my availability to start at your exact preferred time.
If a deferral doesn’t work for you, you can request an extension on your project, or pay for what’s been done plus a 15% fee to cancel the entire thing – both are options which have always been available. Note that per the Terms, significant unexplained client delays on a project will result in application of late fee surcharges from 5% for 3 days lateness or up to 30% for 3 weeks or greater lateness – so it’s important to ask for an extension, deferral or cancellation before we reach that point.
(And yes, I’ve been super lenient on client lateness this year and haven’t charged any late fees because of my own hypocritical lateness. We’re all just trying to make it through to Christmas shutdown. Nearly there!)
On a lighter note…
Yes, things have been hard – but in this tornado of busyness and despair, I’ve also been exceptionally proud of the work Origami Graphics is producing and think some of it is my best ever. I’m still in the process of getting my website redesigned with the help of one of my team members, and new work – the first I’ve shared since 2021 or 2022, probably – will finally hit the portfolio when I launch. I can’t wait for you to see what I’ve been up to.
Thank you for your continued support – here’s to a better 2026.
– Taylor