Five Dollar Fridays bring design and marketing consulting to startups and nonprofits on a budget

Startups and nonprofits that need some design help, but don’t think they can afford anyone who can manipulate a program more complex than Word may have a new reason to look forward to the end of the work week.

Five Dollar Fridays is a new weekly consultation service offered by Center City-based design firm Laryssa Kwoczak Graphic Design (LKGD) and two others, for, as the name implies, only $5, with just two small catches.

Signing up is relatively easy — you simply answer three questions.

1. What are you looking for?
2. Where are you in the design process?
3. What’s keeping you from moving forward?

Then you set up an appointment and provide your contact information. To sign up for Five Dollar Fridays click here.

The catch is two-fold. First, the service is only available on Fridays. That’s in the name. Second, $5 gets you just 20 minutes of consultation time with a graphic designer or marketing expert who can offer direction or advice, but probably not much else.

Still, five bucks for 20 minutes — in other words, $20 per hour — is undoubtedly cheaper than a designer or marketing expert’s normal hourly rate. So why would anyone offer their expertise and time for only five dollars?

Kwoczak, 29, CEO of LKGD, says the upshot is not just helping the small business community in Philadelphia, but also helping to better connect the graphic design community to potential clients.

Kwoczak, a Drexel design alumnae who lives in West Philly but grew up in the Northeast, is interesting in more effective copy and style.

“My first job was working for a big marketing firm designing direct mail nonprofits. This is where I realized the marketing and advertising industry wasted a lot of paper mailing stuff to millions of people who could care less. I thought this was absurd, but the company I worked for and their clients didn’t seem to care because all the designs were made incredibly cheaply in China,” she tells Technically Philly. “So I quit the marketing firm, freelanced for a few years and then started my own company where we focus on using more sustainable paper, working with local businesses and designing less wasteful marketing.”

Read more about the initiative on Generocity.