As a professional in the graphic design field with eight years of experience as a staff designer, who has now decided to go it alone, one thing I find myself constantly putting a large amount of effort into is self-promotion: trying to win new clients. Online social media/networking—among other methods—has been effective, if not invaluable for this. But social networking is not exactly a perfect solution to bringing in projects for the design professional who places a high value on his or her time and work—i.e. the designer who absolutely refuses to do work on spec.
Web sites like 99 Designs and other crowdsourcing sites, where the client posts a contest that designers can enter by working up a design and submitting it, have been kicking around for a while now and offer both designers and companies an interesting road to go down in terms of finding projects/designers for hire. I say “interesting” because, while not a terrible idea, I don’t approve. True, it may work for some, but I stand by my opinion that these contests are doing a disservice to both clients and designers. The work tends to suffer when a designer is doing it purely speculatively. To the contest winner goes the compensation, but many of the clients posting design contests find themselves unable to choose a winner—everyone loses.
No one wants to do work for free. Would we expect a contractor to come into our home and paint our walls prior to our decision to actually hire him or her? “Oh gee, this looks great but it’s just not quite what I had in mind. I’m sorry, I’m not going to hire you.” Of course not. We don’t expect anyone to do a job properly for us without first being guaranteed compensation unless it’s a pre-determined pro bono project. So why is the graphic design professional the exception?
NO!SPEC is a fabulous resource for other design professionals like myself who are angered by the seemingly constant expectation of work to be done speculatively in our field. But it’s also a great resource for clients who might want to understand why this practice isn’t favorable and doesn’t work. You can sign the NO!SPEC Petition here.
And in case you were wondering? Here is AIGA’s official position on spec work.
