Comments on: Would You Work on Spec? Why Should Your Logo Designer?

By: Tweets that mention Would You Work on Spec? Why Should Your Logo Designer? -- Topsy.com

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:10:47 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Con Kennedy, Mr A.W Kelly & Sons. Mr A.W Kelly & Sons said: Praise be @conkennedy: Would you work speculatively? Why should your designer? http://bit.ly/b73RuJ [...]

By: Lisa Solomon

Lisa Solomon — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:57:52 +0000

This week, On the Media (on NPR) did an excellent segment on this topic. You can find it at http://tinyurl.com/2dcsta4.

By: Melissa Ulto

Melissa Ulto — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 01:02:31 +0000

ckeck out this show on freelancers and a CEO who argues his "tweet" value is worth spec work - TWIST episode 61: http://bit.ly/9hbR15

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:25:29 +0000

Such an excellent comparison! Logo design work (and the whole profession) is only devalued by spec contests!

By: Rock Langston

Rock Langston — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:47:29 +0000

Thank you for this great post. For me, it’s always a matter of ethics. The Joint Ethics Committee Code of Fair Practice Standards is my touchstone; I have it on my website (www.tomatographics.com/ethics.html). I sent this info to some of the crowdsourcers (CrowdSpring was one) They’d never heard of it (no surprise), but said they’d present it at a meeting. A little late, as ethics is a good element to include when developing a business model. It’s obvious that ethics in this type of business is in short supply, a foreign concept.
Still don’t get it? Try this approach with your dentist. Try it with your car repair guy. Let us know how that’s working for you.
Lots of great comments on this topic, and more to come, I’m sure. Again, thanks for putting this issue that adversely affects the design profession in another context.

By: BT

BT — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:49:48 +0000

we talk about this on Graphic Design forums a lot: http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23924&highlight=free

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:29:44 +0000

This was a great post and I’m glad to see we have opinions from both sides of this field, both for and against services from sites like 99Designs and crowdSPRING. I’ve participated in contests before and have these thoughts.
As a recent college graduate, I’m no stranger to being approached with speculative work and crowdsourcing. All too often myself and colleagues are approached by clients who make it seem like they’re doing ME a favor by giving me work. “It’ll be great exposure for you”, “It’ll be good for your portfolio” and “This is just the beginning, if we like your work – there’s unlimited potential for you!”. Personally, I stand strongly against sites like 99Designs and crowdSPRING, as sites like these harbor this negative image for the creative design community: It’s cheap, easy and can be done by anyone.
Here’s a scenario for advocates of 99Designs/crowdSPRING:
You’re an accomplished and dedicated contractor whose been building custom homes for years. A prospective homeowner approaches you and tells you he’s holding a homebuilding contest with you and 5 other competing contractors participating – when the homes are fully built and complete, he’ll choose the “best” one and pay that contractor handsomely. You wouldn’t do this for free would you?
Before I give my personal answer, I do acknowledge two important elements:
1. Homes and logos are two very different items.
2. You’re not forced to participate in these contests.
However, even with those two elements identified – the premise between the two is the same:
- You are a professional and highly skilled your craft.
- You’ve already invested countless time/resources into building a career/reputation.
(College education, graduate school, etc)
Even if that one selected contractor wins the huge job bid, he’s losing in the end, as word spreads that new homeowners can now simply approach ABC company and they’ll hold a contest for contractors if you need a house built!
Now you’re being approached left and right by naive clients that expect you to bid for their jobs on claims of “Well, I can just hire ABC company to do it and I’ll get 500 designs, so what are you going to do to persuade me to stay with you?”
While visual communication and graphic design has taken giant technological leaps forward, here’s a key point 99D/cS:
Good design is NOT data entry. I don’t sit down at my computer, enter a few numbers/color codes into a form and out comes a perfect finished product. I invest my own creativity, skills and alacrity into my work.
I know myself and others work hard to ensure a smooth job process and work for clients that we respect – AND respect us for the professionals we are and the work we produce.
You’re poisoning people into believing all designers are nothing more than lowly drones whose jobs require menial effort.
I’ve read through your numbers, the millions of dollars and YEARS of unpaid money/time from your 52k+ designers you advocate makes me sick.
Especially when your “designers” use iStock watermarked images in their cheap work:
http://www.specwatch.info/jan.1.2010.html

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:24:59 +0000

Carolyn,
AWESOME article! I don’t see why our business is different from anyone else.
Can I ask 99 contracting companies to build me an office/studio with working plumbing, electrical, heating and the works and THEN pick the building that I like and pay only that one that I chose? Of course not. That’s ridiculous.
Can I ask 99 doctors to give me a check-up and then just pay the one that did the best job. NO!
Can I ask 99 plumbers to clean the crap out of my toilet and then just pay the one that did the best job? NO!
Can I ask 99 mechanics to give my car a tune-up and then just pay the one that I think did the best work. NO!
Why is our profession any different? Why are some of us talented, worthwhile individuals getting sucked into this nonsense?
Let’s all treat ourselves like a regular business because WE ARE!!!
If you’re reading this and you participate in one of these “contest” sites, please have more respect for yourself and your craft and stop devaluing your profession and the industry in general.

By: jane

jane — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:52:56 +0000

Leanna’s friend is only one satisfied example. That’s great for her. But having worked as a designer for 20 years, it is nearly impossible to get a good creative brief out of a client that describes their goals, values, audience, key offerings, what makes them unique, etc. In short, the map to a successful design process.
The combination of a well-chosen designer (portfolio, references, meeting in person) plus a client who provides a clear, unambiguous, detailed creative brief on who they are yields great results. A third very important element is an organization that does not engage in muddling the process through contradictory feedback and design by committee.
The only reason a designer fails to satisfy the client is that one or more of the above happens. Rarely is it simply a matter of personality mismatch.
So, crowdsourcing is not a solution to a problem that can be fixed some other way.

By: Carolyn Elefant

Carolyn Elefant — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:13:32 +0000

Ross,
I agree – many law firms put work into preparing RFP’s and many marketing firms put time into presentations for an account. The difference is that in those cases, the lawyer or designer are not being asked to supply the end product, i.e., something that can be taken and used without any further input from the provider. With the contest, providers are asked to tailor and submit a customized product. That is very different from what a lawyer submits in an RFP – and indeed, that is the point: when a lawyers ARE asked to respond to an RFP that requires research and memo writing, most will withdraw.
Having said that, I must admit that I was not as familiar with crowdspring as 99Design. I reviewed your user and buyer contracts and agree that they do afford some protection, particularly from copyright violations and the like. In addition, the Crowdspring Pro competitions (at least as I understand them) seem to offer a little more certainty to participants, perhaps making those competitions more like the RFP example, where designers submit concepts without any guarantee of winning, but don’t provide a fully functioning work product.
Still, as I said in my post, my biggest objection to the concept of crowd sourcing is not the devaluation of design but rather, the concept of “working for free so that others can make a profit.” The “value” that your site delivers to users is their ability to get access to multiple concepts without paying for them. And the reason that users can access multiple concepts is because designers provide them in response to contests without cost to the site or benefit to the designer (except if he/she wins).
Yes, I am sure that your site offers its share of success stories – designers who got their foot in the door because they won a few contests. However, their success is subsidized at the expense of dozens of others who don’t receive this benefit. Moreover, I suspect that there are other similar lucky stories of designers who got a break from a colleague or by making a decent contact through networking. The fact that your site potentially opens a few doors doesn’t justify the free labor because there are other more direct opportunities for newbies to break into a field.
You are right about one thing, though: I can’t fight the market, nor would I want to. If 52,000 designers work on your site (I doubt that this many are active, but I’ll buy your number) and there is sufficient demand for your service, then more power to you. It’s just that personally, I could never ask people to do free work unless I could provide some benefit to them, nor do I see how lawyers can do so when they wouldn’t work under this scenario themselves (I doubt you’d find much of a market for a site that asks lawyers to draft a memo on a unique legal Q and picks a winner from the bunch). So as much as I did like the designs on your site (and I do — I thought they were much better generally than 99Designs), I could not use it unless there were a way to set up a contest to compensate all entrants even for a di minimis amount or, alternatively to collect work samples but not final product. If you find a way to add this kind of feature, I might come on board.