The Economic factor plays a significant role in design decisions as a budget determines the cost of design, materials, labour, and potential revenue from a final product. Designers must balance aesthetics and functionality with budget constraints.

Design and business are connected. Efficient design seeks to minimise costs whilst maintaining high standards in safety, function and finish. Economic concerns in design are:

• Labour costs in design

• Land costs for studios

• Energy costs

• Going green - renewable energy, ethical and sustainable materials and production locations 

• Technology costs (communication, software, hardware)

• Illustration, photography

• Printing

• Specialists

• Engineering

• Testing

The chief costs for Message designs are design time, photography, printing and binding. Designers cut the costs of photography by buying images from photo stock libraries. Whilst paying for photos may seem expensive to a student, the cost to a studio is far less than employing a photographer, actors, props and a studio to shoot original pictures. Technologies used in the preparation of artwork, photography, pre-press, and printing, especially in the number of colours, paper stocks, paper laminations, foils, binding, print runs and size also impact on production costs. Due to the rising costs of land, energy and labour, the location of production also impacts on costs. It is frequently cheaper to print a magazine designed in Australia and intended to be distributed here, overseas. A print run also affects the unit cost. The more copies printed, the cheaper it is, per copy. Low-volume printing is far more expensive per unit than high- volume printing. The kind of paper stock used affects cost too. Generally thicker papers cost more. Unusual paper formats, like square, will also cost more as they cannot be cut efficiently from regular 'A' series papers.

The costs for Interactive Experiences are in design, programming, prototyping and web applications.

The chief costs for object and environmental designs are design, testing, manufacturing techniques and materials. The cheapest products strike a balance between the use of existing manufacturing techniques and readily available materials. Specialist designs may involve innovative, highly skilled manufacturing techniques, use rare materials and be manufactured in small production runs. All of these characteristics lead to increase costs.