Mark Boulton

47 Responses to “The Personal Cost of Designing on Spec”

1. 
   Ben Darlow said on: March 26th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

   I think you touch on a very import­ant point when you talk about mar­ket forces. Just because a given status quo emerges from the mar­ket doesn’t make it right or eth­ical. In fact, given the cur­rent tur­moil we’re see­ing in the world eco­nomy, it would seem like unwise to use the free mar­ket as a gauge for what is mor­ally right anyway.

2. 
   @kuzushisan said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

   Thanks for express­ing your pos­i­tion more clearly Mark.  

   I am intrigued by the num­ber of folk who seemed ok with spec work also seemed to be in the “I am an up and com­ing designer and this could be great for me” camp. 

   These are the people that spec comps are aimed at, those des­per­ate to become the next Zeld­man, those des­per­ate to pay the bills, those des­per­ate to be seen. 

   Des­per­a­tion seems to drive all sense of what is really going on, a form of Striv­ing Blindness. 

   THanks for stick­ing your neck out, and it will be inter­est­ing to see the flow-on from this. Mr Boag has also tried to cla­rify things too… (O:

   Good luck,
   
   Tim

3. 
   Graham Sanders said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   http://www.no-spec.com

   The NO!SPEC cam­paign: Serves as a vehicle to unite those who sup­port the notion that spec work deval­ues the poten­tial of design and ulti­mately does a dis­ser­vice to the client. 

   Our mis­sion: To edu­cate the pub­lic about spec­u­lat­ive, or ‘spec’ work.

   Our tar­get: Those who use cre­at­ive ser­vices, as well as cre­at­ive pro­fes­sion­als (design­ers, pho­to­graph­ers, illus­trat­ors, typo­graph­ers, writers and those in mar­ket­ing, brand­ing and advertising). 

   What you can do: Read NO!SPEC’s Pro­to­cols. Place a “NO!SPEC” logo on your site. Sign the NO!SPEC peti­tion. Dis­trib­ute the “NO!SPEC” posters. Con­tact us with your thoughts, com­ments, art­icles and insights. 

   Require­ments: The only require­ment for par­ti­cip­a­tion is put­ting the appro­pri­ate value on your profession.

4. 
   Lawrence Brown said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   I feel that spec work is in the same pond as unpaid intern­ships. A friend has recently taken on a 6 month part time one, he for­tu­nately has the fam­ily and fin­an­cial sup­port to do this. My biggest gripe is that both spec work and unpaid intern work dis­cred­its the time, effort, cre­ativ­ity and ‘real-world’ situ­ations of those involved. 

   I like com­pet­i­tions and place­ments at stu­dios, I think they offer a short insight into prob­lem solv­ing and meth­ods of work­ing that are unique. This should be encouraged.

5. 
   Paul Groves said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

   I couldn’t agree with you more on neg­at­ive impact of spec work. 

   I can see how the Car­son­i­fied con­test can be con­strued as such. 

   How­ever, I really think this a ques­tion of con­text and per­son­ally agree with Boag’s stance.

   In my opin­ion going into a full-on NO SPEC WORK offens­ive in this spe­cific instance makes you sound rather elit­ist and arrog­ant (although not really up your­self :)). An image which I feel, like spec work, does the design pro­fes­sion no favours either. 

   Don’t get me wrong, I have a great respect for your work and really respect the Drupal work and the way in which you are shar­ing this.  I think your repu­ta­tion is well deserved through a com­bin­a­tion of amongst other things tal­ent and hard work, but pulling the spec card here is cry­ing wolf.

6. 
   Phil Norton said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:20 pm

   Mark, I struggle with the Thread­less ana­logy to be hon­est. I can see what you’re say­ing, with regards to “want­ing” to belong to a brand, but I can’t hon­estly see how this is any dif­fer­ent to what Car­son­i­fied did. I’m not com­par­ing the behemoth that is Thread­less to Car­son­i­fied, but like it or not, Car­son­i­fied is a brand, the Future of… con­fer­ences attract both speak­ers and attendees largely due to this brand. 

   So, if a designer wants to design a slide for the Car­son­i­fied brand, is it not pos­sible that they are merely con­trib­ut­ing “to some­thing [they] feel part of, or want to be part of”? In which case, it’s cer­tainly no dif­fer­ent to the Thread­less approach.

   I hate Spec work. In one of my first jobs I must have worked on around 12 “pitch” designs in the short time I was there, and on each occa­sion had roughly 1 day to try to come up with a home page & sub page design based on sketchy bit of info a sales guy had given me. Now that I run my own busi­ness, we flatly refuse any pro­jects or tenders that require a pro­posal design be included. Partly because we’re a small busi­ness whose cash­flow would be wiped out if we star­ted to do that, and partly because of my moral objec­tion to it as a whole. 

   Bolt­ing on a prize after get­ting fee­back, and hav­ing a closed short­l­ist­ing pro­cess are two mis­takes they made IMO. I’d have lis­ted every entrant, with full dis­clos­ure as to who they were, their URL etc, and let the com­munity that had chosen to take part be in full con­trol of the pro­cess. That way, at the very least, any entrant would have been rewar­ded by linkage/recognition from the Car­son­i­fied com­munity, and this wouldn’t have been restric­ted to the win­ner alone. So every­one stood to gain at least some­thing from their efforts. 

   All too often, I think people are only too happy to jump on Ryan’s back, but if noth­ing more, at least we’re all talk­ing about Spec work, and that’s a good thing.

7. 
   Kat Neville said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

   All these view­points have caused a mini argu­ment between my boy­friend, ollie kavanagh and I.  

   I really don’t think that Ryan’s con­test is spec work, but rather an exer­cise in publicity.  

   Yes­ter­day, a guy named Ollie K (oliver ker) sub­mit­ted his piece to the flickr group for the com­pet­i­tion.  I had never heard of him before (but he’s olliek, same as my boy, so sent his link around).  I’ve asked mr. ker how many hits he got to his web­site com­pared to the day before (he hasn’t got back to me yet, but my guess it would be a sub­stan­tial improve­ment).  This is just for someone enter­ing into the com­pet­i­tion, not neces­sar­ily from win­ning it. 

   Ollie Kavanagh has sided with you on this one, believ­ing spec work is spec work.  

   But, I just think about how much people spend on advert­ising, and how great it is for a bud­ding career to get your name out, WITHOUT look­ing like advert­ising.  Those design com­pet­i­tions for cli­ents are not good for any­one, but a little design for fun, to show your stuff off to all those people that fol­low ryan car­son on twit­ter is a huge step up for most people.

8. 
   Dave Kirk said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

   Design­ers and Illus­trat­ors want to be part of the Thread­less brand. They have a lot of pull, so much so that pro­fes­sion­als are will­ing to con­trib­ute to that brand.
   

   Could the same not be said for this com­pet­i­tion? Could design­ers not enter this com­pet­i­tion because they want to be part of the “Future Of” brand?

   I am not ques­tion­ing whether spec work is bad, I com­pletely dis­agree with it and have lost con­tracts because I am not pre­pared to do it. I am ques­tion­ing whether this com­pet­i­tion is spec work however.

9. 
   Tim Print said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

   I totally agree with what you say here Mark but also under­stand why some peope are temp­ted to do spec­u­lat­ive work. I guess the more suc­cess­ful you are the less tempt­ing it becomes. For someone like your­self with a suc­cess­ful agency and fairly high pro­file cli­ents there are really no bene­fits. For someone new to the game the tempta­tion is to win a higher pro­file con­tract and increase their stand­ing and portfolio. 

   I guess if we are proud of the qual­ity of our work, we should believe that even­tu­ally it will be recog­nised and we will get the type of jobs we aspire to. Maybe spec work is seen as a bit of a short­cut to that point if the cli­ent has a large audience. 

   I also come from a print design back­ground and really don’t want to go back to that way of working.

10. 
    Nathaniel Catchpole said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    I think dis­cus­sions like this get very clouded because design is an industry that people really want to work in. Sim­ilar things hap­pen in the music industry as well — a lot of live music per­form­ance ends up being for sub-minimum wage or ‘pay to play’ for example — and of course often without any prom­ise of a spe­cific con­tract afterwards.

    If a com­pany was invit­ing people to go work in an office or stack­ing shelves for a month for no wages, in the hope that one of them might be picked out for a full-time job, there’d be few people arguing this was fine or a good thing. I don’t see spec work as any different. 

    The same argu­ments about the free mar­ket dic­tat­ing spec work can be applied to any kind of work. People are ‘free’ to work for low wages, or they’re ‘free’ to not work and live on bene­fits (or starve, depend­ing on where they live). 

    How­ever I don’t think this is really an eth­ical argu­ment as such (or at least only for the people soli­cit­ing spec work, not for those doing it). It’s more about recog­nising the real­ity of it (the 40% unpaid time poin­ted out in your example) and whether that’s accept­able or not — the poten­tial for indi­vidual social mobil­ity vs. the poten­tial for a lower­ing of income across the board.

11. 
    Ollie Kavanagh said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    I have no prob­lem with Car­son­i­fieds com­pet­i­tion, I have met Ryan and the guys there and I know for a fact that ‘Spec-work’ is not what they are try­ing to do. They are try­ing to give great pub­li­city to someone at FOWD. 

    I think Car­son­i­fied and Ryan have been wrongly lam­basted due to an industry view on spec-work, which is not helped by the end­less.. “I’ll pay this much, every­one give me a design and I’ll pick one..” or the design com­pet­i­tion sites that pop up with people try­ing to get some­thing free or as cheap as pos­sible. How about you pay a design pro­fes­sional to do your design. It devalu­ates the industry.

    As I said on my twit­ter feed the prob­lem has far higher reach­ing con­sequences in the design industry, as Mark men­tioned above, I have sat through, and done work for end­less pitches that have never come to fruition, just because you had to as a res­ult of the mar­ket con­di­tions. I feel very strongly this is wrong, as much of the Design Industry do. And if you believe in it you have to battle back to make it not the norm. 

    That thread got taken well out of pro­por­tion, but has gen­er­ated a great dis­cus­sion on spec-work in gen­eral, which can only be a good thing ;)

12. 
    Damian Grounds said on: March 26th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    I’ve recently been fol­low­ing you on Twit­ter and am look­ing for­ward to ‘pay­ing’ for your forth­com­ing book ‘five simple steps’. 

    Until recently I came from the ‘cli­ent’ side through my mar­ket­ing role and when ‘com­mis­sion­ing’ a pro­ject usu­ally had a fairly clear idea of what we needed and what we wanted to achieve through the medium/s being used. How­ever, just select­ing a par­tic­u­lar designer or agency that one has either worked with before or never heard of, can be frought with problems. 

    Pitch­ing for work enables the ‘cli­ent’ to choose from a wider range of ideas rather than stick­ing to known entit­ies and gen­er­ally pro­duced more cre­at­ive solu­tions to mar­ket­ing problems. 

    I used to spend a lot of time short­l­ist­ing those ‘cre­at­ives’ that I thought would be most suited to a par­tic­u­lar cam­paign. Hav­ing to pay for each of the short­l­is­ted pitches would not have been viable and ulti­mately would have meant less cre­at­ive work com­ing to the fore.

    Com­pet­i­tion work is a mat­ter of choice. Yes, it requires huge amounts of time, but being included in the shorl­ists and of course win­ning far out­weighs the input required for the kudos it gains those involved. Archi­tec­ture is unique in this respect, as much of the com­pet­i­tion work is being car­ried out for ‘pub­lic com­mis­sion­ing’, account­ab­il­ity for the pub­lic money being spent is the lead­ing factor here. 

    Zaha Hadid spent years enter­ing com­pet­i­tions before she even received her ‘first’ com­mis­sion. But she is both the rule and the except! Com­pet­i­tion work has paid off for her. 

    ‘Cre­at­ives’ are gen­er­ally not selling a ‘fin­ished’ product that one can see and buy off the shelf. Each pro­ject is unique, and until star­ted upon, the fin­ished product is often unknown whilst it evolves. It is this ele­ment of uncer­tainty, I believe, that induces a sense of panic in ‘cli­ents’. They need to know what they are ‘buy­ing’ in advance and this in turn requires they have an ele­ment of ‘cer­tainy’, which in turn is provided by nar­row­ing the choice down to a few ‘pitches’ — and a greater sense of known out­come choices.

    Cre­at­ive work is just that. The best work comes from uncer­tainy and it is this uncer­tainty that drives the ‘spec­u­lat­ive pitch­ing’ work ethos. 

    Per­haps the ‘cre­at­ives’ could adopt the method used by garden design­ers, who charge vari­ous amounts from ini­tail con­sulta­tion to com­plete design and build.

13. 
    Jimbowen said on: March 26th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    Going slightly off-kilter for a moment, this reminds me of a slighty older busi­ness prac­tice: that of simply ‘kiss­ing a*se’, an equally det­ri­mental prac­tice in my opin­ion, as it simply lowers the cred­ib­il­ity and value of what someone really has to offer, redu­cing them to the level of a ‘brown nose’.

    Yes man­ners and polite­ness are essen­tial, though qual­ity of work and evid­ence of this qual­ity will hold an indi­vidual in a stronger more respec­ted pos­i­tion in the long run.

14. 
    Dave Bowers said on: March 26th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    Some­thing that caught my eye over Car­son­i­fied way was a com­ment by Matt Hende­r­son that claims that by par­ti­cip­at­ing in spec work, his stu­dio made the leap from a client-base con­sist­ing of local enter­prises and low-value pro­jects, to hav­ing huge names such as the US Navy and Google in their portfolio. 

    For a young design stu­dio such as ourselves, this is extremely frus­trat­ing as we are obvi­ously keen to attract pres­ti­gi­ous cli­ents, but not at what we con­sider to be at the expense of the industry as a whole. While we’re not at all opposed to the stand­ard prac­tice of build­ing up a pro­file for ourselves through good work and strong recom­mend­a­tions, it seems like an unlevel play­ing field that oth­ers are able to skip the queue simply by hav­ing a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues to ours.

15. 
    Elwyn Malethan said on: March 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    @Dave Bowers

    I’m kind of pick­ing up on a very small part of what your say­ing but for­give me for that. I don’t think that vying for work in any industry can be any any way ana­log­ous to a *queue*. It’s more like a busy bar. In this envir­on­ment — rightly or wrongly — he or she who catches the eye of the barman/barmaid in the right way gets served sooner. Not neces­sar­ily the one who’s been wait­ing the longest or is per­haps the more deserving. Being overtly oppor­tun­istic in this envir­on­ment can be reward­ing but is gen­er­ally bad for bar’s cus­tom­ers as a whole, which ulti­mately includes the our oppor­tun­istic drinker.

    On a more gen­eral note, people’s atti­tude towards spec-work needs to be a com­prom­ise between what’s good for the indi­vidual and what’s good for the com­munity (or industry), and it is bad for the com­munity in my opinion. 

    I think that enter­ing a com­pet­i­tion such as the one being dis­cussed may be the right com­prom­ise for some and not for others.

16. 
    Edd Couchman said on: March 26th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    If you’re good at some­thing, never do it for free.

17. 
    Mark Boulton said on: March 26th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    @Paul Groves: In hind­sight (and isn’t that a won­der­ful thing), that blog post was prob­ably not the best place for that dis­cus­sion. How­ever, I think it has noth­ing to do with elit­ism or arrog­ance. If you deem pro­fes­sional eth­ics, and believ­ing in what you feel is right, as elit­ism, then I strongly disagree.

    @Phil Norton & @Dave Kirk: The brand issue of one of those issues that I feel con­tri­bu­tion can work. Yes, Car­son­i­fied is a strong brand that people want to be a part of. So, this is one of the factors that has me com­ing back to the ques­tion: are design com­pet­i­tions spec work? I’m still on the side of ‘yes’, but it’s becom­ing increas­ingly grey. 

    But, this post was actu­ally less about Car­son­i­fied and what they did, and what was said. It’s more about my pos­i­tion on spec work, how I see it defined and how I’ve seen it affect the work.

18. 
    Rachel said on: March 26th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    I agree with you entirely.  A few years ago, we used to do spec work to gain cli­ents as it was ‘industry norm’ in a cre­at­ive city over-populated with design­ers — every­one would do free work to add to their port­fo­lio.  When we stopped doing it, we gained more time and it made no dif­fer­ence to the quant­ity of jobs we won or lost — if any­thing it gen­er­ated more respect with new clients.

19. 
    Lea said on: March 26th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    Hi Mark, thanks for cla­ri­fy­ing your stance. I was the one who made the Thread­less com­par­ison, and like Phil Norton, this is why I felt it isn’t spec. 

    I think by say­ing it’s not the same is simply pla­cing _value_ over one brand over the other. So it’s spec if you don’t value the brand, and if you do, it isn’t? That’s a dan­ger­ous game to play.

20. 
    Eric Meyer said on: March 26th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    I com­pletely do not get how you see Thread­less (or your hypo­thet­ical Apple con­test) and the FOWA slide con­test Ryan launched as being suf­fi­ciently dif­fer­ent that one is spec work and the other(s) are not. 

    I don’t even mean I see where you’re com­ing from and dis­agree; I mean I don’t under­stand how they can be con­sidered as dif­fer­ent, so I can’t even tell if I dis­agree or not.

21. 
    Chris Madden said on: March 26th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    Thanks for cla­ri­fy­ing Mark. And I hope I didn’t offend you or any­thing yes­ter­day, I only inten­ded to point out some­thing I found a little humor­ous. Although, I would have to dis­agree with you as far as equat­ing com­pet­i­tions as spec work, and I felt that you and many oth­ers over­re­acted. Any­ways, nice to see you cla­rify your position. 

    –Chris Madden

22. 
    Phil Norton said on: March 26th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    I think by say­ing it’s not the same is simply pla­cing _value_ over one brand over the other. So it’s spec if you don’t value the brand, and if you do, it isn’t? That’s a dan­ger­ous game to play.

    I think that’s pretty much summed up my feel­ings. Whilst Ryan has a lot of friends/supporters amongst his peers (and I’m sure Mark is one of them) he also has a healthy num­ber of detract­ors who are ready and will­ing to jump on his back the minute he (or one of his staff) posts any­thing on the com­pany blog.

23. 
    Joshua Bullock said on: March 26th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    Out of curi­os­ity, why is it that web developers are really smit­ten with the idea of crowd-sourcing every other thing, but when it threatens our live­li­hood, which spec-work has the poten­tial to, crowd-sourcing is the great evil? I under­stand the mar­ket forces argu­ment that Matt H. put for­ward and ulti­mately he’s cor­rect in that the mar­ket will be the decider. But bey­ond that, I’m just curi­ous where the middle-ground is in this debate…if there’s middle-ground to be had? 

    Is there some­thing between spec-style con­tests and web sites that devalue design tal­ent for the low­est bid­der and give everything to poten­tial cli­ents, versus tra­di­tional design shops that tend to be rather high-dollar. Spare me the “you get what you pay for” argu­ment; I’m well aware…

    Just play­ing devil’s advoc­ate here, if we’re all so vehe­ment that spec-work is evil (which I agree does devalue good design work), are there viable altern­at­ives? It seems like the pop­u­lar argu­ment from design­ers is “I hate spec work because I could lose the work.” That’s great and I’m sure the buggy-whip com­pan­ies spoke sim­il­arly about auto­mobile man­u­fac­tur­ers back in the day. 

    …more than just bitch­ing that there’s a prob­lem, per­haps we can col­lect­ively offer a viable solu­tion that would erode the spec-work model altogether?

24. 
    Lea said on: March 26th, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    Joshua, how some stu­dios do it is this: when a com­pany asks them to provide a design before they sign the con­tract, they stip­u­late that they will charge for it and that it will be con­sidered part of the deposit if they decide to go with them.

    Example scenario: 

    Poten­tial Cli­ent: “Can you show me some mockups?”
    
    Designer: “Sure, that will be $500. This over­all pro­ject is $1000 so I will con­sider that your 50% deposit when you go with me. I need the pay­ment before any actual work is star­ted.”
    
    Poten­tial Cli­ent: “What if I don’t go with you?”

    Designer: “Then you’ve paid for ini­tial work com­pleted. I do not begin any work without bein paid a deposit.”
    
    Poten­tial Cli­ent: “OK.” 

    Mean­while: I don’t do the above OR take any spec work, FYI. But if any­one IS con­sid­er­ing it, the above seems to be the com­prom­ise people tell me to try.

25. 
    Matt Henderson said on: March 26th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    I’ve yet to see com­pel­ling argu­ments that spec-work and com­pet­i­tions are (a) dam­aging to an industry, or (b) mat­ters of ethics.

    The first should be an object­ive ques­tion, and I’d love to see some evid­ence of dam­age to an industry which is not com­pensated by some greater bene­fit. (And, we have to be care­ful not to con­fuse “chan­ging” an industry with “dam­aging” an industry.) 

    The second, the ques­tion of eth­ics, seems to revolve around the concept of people not get­ting paid for their work. To me, not get­ting com­pensated for my work would only become a mat­ter of eth­ics, in the case that I had worked, in good faith, under the prom­ise of compensation. 

    (And if choos­ing to work for free, in a con­text that can com­mer­cially bene­fit oth­ers, for the poten­tial reward of recog­ni­tion is uneth­ical, then we’ve got some major prob­lems with a lot of people work­ing in the world of open-source.)

    I think it should be recog­nized that identi­fy­ing ques­tions of eth­ics and mor­al­ity can be dif­fi­cult in the first place, and answer­ing them harder still, since val­ues and prin­ciples rightly dif­fer from per­son to per­son, and, import­antly, some­times change over time. (Most of us in the 21^st cen­tury west­ern world find it quite nat­ural to label someone who doesn’t believe in God as an “athe­ist”, yet would find the ques­tion of what to label a non­be­liever in Pos­eidon to be quite silly.) 

    I hap­pen to believe that the marketplace—people act­ing freely, in their own self-interests and through vol­un­tary cooperation—is the best mech­an­ism we have to answer ques­tions like this. We don’t need to risk inap­pro­pri­ately cri­ti­ciz­ing people like Ryan for hold­ing com­pet­i­tions, and we don’t need to risk falsely accus­ing par­ti­cipants of under­min­ing an industry. 

    The mar­ket­place will, on its own, determ­ine the extent to which they should exist, and the con­di­tions under which they do and don’t work, and (if allowed to oper­ate) will reg­u­late the situ­ation over time. If, as the AIGA and oth­ers claim, they are bad for every­one involved, then nat­ur­ally they will dis­ap­pear on their own.

    PS: Thanks, Mark, for the kind words. I’d also meant to men­tion in my com­ments yes­ter­day that we’re friends, and that you’re some­body I also very much respect pro­fes­sion­ally and personally.

26. 
    David Airey said on: March 26th, 2009 at 7:06 pm

    Like you, Mark, I feel strongly about the prac­tice of spec work, and in the past I’ve pub­lished a num­ber of blog art­icles against it. 

    Our views about the con­sequences are the same: sub-standard work, devalu­ing design, harm­ing the industry and exploit­ing people. 

    I’m glad you chose to air your opinion.

27. 
    @LuisRoca said on: March 26th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    There will always be those who seek the free lunch. Busi­nesses have been exploit­ing cre­at­ives for a very long time. As design­ers it begins and ends with us. The moment you take on spec work you say “I don’t really value myself or design very much.” Edu­cat­ing the pub­lic and busi­ness industry is import­ant but sup­port­ing and edu­cat­ing each other will make a big­ger dif­fer­ence in the long run.

28. 
    Jerrol Krause said on: March 26th, 2009 at 8:07 pm

    I agree with all of Mark’s issues with spec work. 

    I guess the ques­tion of spec work is largely one of cir­cum­stances. Since freel­an­cing isn’t my primary bread and but­ter, I don’t ever do it. It’s just not worth my time. Why work for cli­ent A for free on the off chance I’ll maybe get paid when I can work for cli­ent B and be com­pensated for my time?

    I sup­pose if I freel­anced full time and my only choice was sit­ting around doing noth­ing and doing spec work to drum up busi­ness I might be more motiv­ated. On the other hand, the time spent doing spec work could just as eas­ily be spent net­work­ing and look­ing for cli­ents who actu­ally value your time.

29. 
    Patrick Algrim said on: March 26th, 2009 at 8:34 pm

    I don’t under­stand how the debate of spec work is gain­ing momentum still. It’s been a talked about sub­jects months and months ago, but now that some­what lar­ger names are late to the game on the dis­cus­sion, it’s got­ten back into the water. First it was Zeld­man with a tweet, Car­son­i­fied with this idea. I mean, the first dis­cus­sion I saw it on was the Sig­nal VS. Noise. 

    I would like to see this end to a cer­tain point. I just don’t care any­more, and I think oth­ers shouldn’t either. In my opin­ion Car­son­i­fied hav­ing someone else design their Web site is stu­pid because aren’t they a design firm? Sure they might be look­ing for other input, but then why not hire the right people that matches their pro­ject bet­ter? Seems like an excuse to get some­thing for free to me.

30. 
    Jamon Holmgren said on: March 26th, 2009 at 8:46 pm

    My busi­ness mostly revolves around small, local busi­nesses, and I’ve found that most of the time doing spec work has not actu­ally turned into a sale. Often, I rush the design and don’t do the qual­ity that I would nor­mally do. And when I do secure a job this way, the cli­ent often wants more work for free. 

    How­ever! I agree whole­heartedly with Matt Hende­r­son that spec work is not dam­aging to the industry as whole. Com­pet­i­tion drives innov­a­tion as opposed to stag­na­tion and this is just one more hurdle that we have to innov­ate our way around. If your com­pet­it­ors are doing spec design, find another com­pet­it­ive advantage—for example, you will be cheaper in the long run because you’re not doing lots of spec work, and the qual­ity will be bet­ter. So show the cli­ent that! 

    One thing that I’ve done if the situ­ation seems to require it is to give the cli­ent the abil­ity to back out for free dur­ing the con­cep­tual design phase. How­ever, before I start I want a down pay­ment and at least a verbal com­mit­ment that I have the job. They can get their money back if they don’t like the design I’m doing (so they feel more secure about using me) but they rarely do because I put more thought and effort into it as well as show them I value their busi­ness. It’s a good com­prom­ise in cer­tain cases–not all, but cer­tain ones, at least for my business.

31. 
    @MikePoint25 said on: March 26th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

    Mark’s views are com­pletely true, spec work hurts cre­at­ive indus­tries. In May I’ll be writ­ing my exam to become an R.G.D (Registered Graphic Designer). One of the main reas­ons I’ve wanted to become a mem­ber is the association’s strict set of by-laws pro­hib­it­ing things such as spec-work. In work­ing as an in-house and freel­ance designer for the last 5+ years, I’ve found the per­sonal rela­tion­ship you build with a cli­ent to be one of the most reward­ing aspects of design. These rela­tion­ships are cru­cial in find­ing a real solu­tion to a client’s needs. How can any­one expect to build that kind of rela­tion­ship by com­pet­ing on spec­u­lat­ive projects?

32. 
    roger wilco said on: March 26th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

    The prob­lem with your Thread­less defense is that you are defend­ing the reason, not the action. In other words, even though you are try­ing hard not to word it this way, it appears you are say­ing in Thread­less’ case, spec work is okay because the artists want to be part of the Thread­less brand. 

    I hap­pen to believe Ryan’s com­pet­i­tion is just that, and most design­ers here are being overly sens­it­ive and defens­ive. The fact that most design­ers are per­fectly okay with other forms of “spec work” (i.e. Thread­less and, oh, I dunno, the CSS Zen Garden) and not with Ryan’s makes it appar­ent Ryan should be more defens­ive when he comes up with these things. I’m sure his earlier posts on out­sourcing aren’t help­ing his case any.

33. 
    Dan Ritz said on: March 26th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    I have two beliefs that make wor­ry­ing about spec work almost point­less. Some might think I’m off in fantasy-land, but I like it there. :) 

    1) Busi­nesses look­ing for qual­ity work under­stand that a good design requires a deep under­stand­ing of the com­pany, industry and maybe even their mar­ket. You don’t get that from spec­u­lat­ive work—you get people tak­ing their best guess. 

    There will always be com­pan­ies look­ing for qual­ity. There will always be com­pan­ies look­ing for free­bies. Learn how to attract the ones you want to work with! 

    2) The mar­ket may encour­age spec­u­lat­ive work, but design is about mak­ing a new mar­kets. You still may have to oper­ate in the lar­ger mar­ket for a cer­tain amount of time, but design­ing what needs to hap­pen to con­vince an audi­ence to change their think­ing toward you is *chan­ging* the market. 

    As design­ers, we’re all, in my opin­ion, being paid to try and change the mar­ket. So if we’re all at the will of this “mar­ket” then we can never do our jobs.

    +++++ 

    Start small, avoid spec­u­lat­ive work, and do your best, and you will build your­self a good repu­ta­tion a lot faster than jump­ing into any scene with a “chance to win all the glory” situation. 

    I could care less if it’s right or wrong. It’s a waste of time!

34. 
    Paul Groves said on: March 26th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    @Mark Boulton Thanks for your response, abso­lutely not sug­gest­ing hav­ing pro­fes­sional eth­ics and stick­ing up for what you believe in is elitist.

35. 
    Clayton Misura said on: March 26th, 2009 at 10:36 pm

    The ‘mar­ket will reg­u­late’ argu­ment is bull­shit. It won’t. Maybe, in a per­fect world.
    
    Some people are happy to com­mit spec work to the nature of cre­at­ive indus­tries, but once again — bull­shit. The prob­lem: most design­ers don’t truly care about design as a pro­fes­sion, and chose rather, to employ a rogue men­tal­ity when decision mak­ing, like “ I’m an artist, so piss off “. 

    Sure, it’s great to get your work noticed, but at what cost. Design is a fant­astic pro­fes­sion, not a com­pet­it­ive after-thought. The next time a cli­ent scoffs at your hourly rate, blame spec­u­lat­ive work.

36. 
    Linda Tieu said on: March 26th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    I think we could argue indef­in­itely if a par­tic­u­lar con­test or offer­ing is or isn’t spec work.  There seems to be clear cut attrib­utes as writ­ten by AIGA, but as we’ve seen in this post­ing, people are still debat­ing whether Thread­less is con­sidered spec work or not… 

    I’ve had bad exper­i­ences with spec work in youth and cer­tainly have had the exper­i­ence in agen­cies doing pitches.  Cer­tainly those who argue against spec work have great reason to and I agree entirely.  I per­son­ally will not do any spec work.

    Of course, there are those bor­der­line cases, gray areas where it cer­tainly seems like spec work, but given the right con­di­tions it doesn’t seem so bad some­how.  I can under­stand why some people might sway in the other dir­ec­tion.  Think of the example with Apple, if they opened up a design com­pet­i­tion of sorts…?  

    Someone com­men­ted that intern­ships are like spec work — I don’t think that is true at all.  There might be some bad intern­ships out there, but the whole point of intern­ing is to gain exper­i­ence, meet people in the busi­ness and get an internal view of the industry you want to be a part of.  You cer­tainly get great things out of it, just not cash.  I guess it goes back to defin­ing what “com­pens­a­tion” is for each person.

    Ulti­mately, every­one has to make their own decision as to what they want to do and think hard about why they think it’s okay or not okay.  I respect those on both sides who do what they believe in and fight for it.  I think our debates and dis­cus­sions will mold how the mar­ket shifts regard­ing this topic…

37. 
    Mark Boulton said on: March 26th, 2009 at 11:15 pm

    @Eric Meyer, @roger wilco

    Look­ing back over the post, I don’t think I made myself clear enough, so apo­lo­gies for that. 

    I’m say­ing Thread­less isn’t spec work because of the motiv­a­tion behind the con­tri­bu­tion. The dif­fer­ence, in my view, is one of community. 

    Thread­less is a club of cool kids. But, they don’t keep the cool things to them­selves, they sell them, right? By buy­ing Thread­less stuff, you’re want­ing in to the club. If you’re in, you may want to give back. You may want to con­trib­ute. You don’t con­trib­ute to a com­pet­i­tion, you enter one for com­pletely dif­fer­ent motiv­a­tions (to win a prize, or for per­sonal gain). Although, maybe split­ting hairs with myself here, but, maybe if you’re blinded by the brand, you could view enter­ing as con­trib­ut­ing, or that any design com­pet­i­tion can be centered around com­munity. You may com­pletely dis­agree, but is that any clearer?

    @Matt Hende­r­son

    Once again, great response. Your com­ment regard­ing Open Source can be con­sidered in the same regard though. With my cur­rent involve­ment in the Drupal com­munity, I’m see­ing first hand, every day, the pas­sion­ate con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­ject. By and large, it’s not for per­sonal or com­mer­cial gain. It’s to con­trib­ute. To give back. It’s not spec work, because for the most part, the con­tri­bu­tion is for the good of the greater whole, not indi­vidual com­pens­a­tion. Con­trib­ut­ors aren’t com­pet­ing for the prom­ise of anything. 

    @everyone

    Thanks for the com­ments so far. It’s refresh­ing to see that intel­li­gent, con­sidered debate can hap­pen without in-fighting, bitch­ing and get­ting personal. 

    Now, with regards to design com­pet­i­tions, you know, I’m happy to say that my pos­i­tion on this, fol­low­ing this intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion — and thank you for that every­one — is not as nearly as black and white as it was yes­ter­day. To judge brands on indi­vidual merit, one spec, one not, is indeed dan­ger­ous (thanks @Lea). The power of brand can blind design eth­ics. And, con­trib­ut­ing can be seen as spec work, or not. Is that a com­plete cop-out? Am I talk­ing com­plete crap? Prob­ably. It’s been a long day.

38. 
    Ben Darlow said on: March 27th, 2009 at 3:10 am

    Con­sid­er­ing the Thread­less ana­logy again for a moment, another import­ant point reason why it’s dif­fer­ent from any other spec work com­pet­i­tion is that there isn’t only one win­ner, and so ulti­mately there is no reason to assume that your effort will be in vain. Com­pare it to a con­test to design a t-shirt, where one design wins and the rest lose; a Thread­less design will ‘win’ regard­less of the num­ber of com­pet­it­ors based on how many people like it — it’s a far more egal­it­arian system.

39. 
    Lea said on: March 27th, 2009 at 3:19 am

    Ben, all Thread­less does is hold the con­test in per­petu­ity, as if it was more than one con­test. There are way more entries than there ever will be win­ning shirts. Whether or not someone enters or feel it’s “in vain” is com­pletely sub­ject­ive. With this logic, if all Car­son­i­fied did was hold their slide con­test _forever_ and gave more prizes instead of just one, it’s not spec? 

    Bares repeat­ing: pla­cing _value_ over one brand over the other is dan­ger­ous and should not be used in any­way to define what is or is not spec.

40. 
    James Kurtz III said on: March 27th, 2009 at 6:01 pm

    The only way spec work will ever end (and it won’t) is if cli­ents real­ize that by using spec meth­ods they are recie­ve­ing design work that will harm their bot­tom line. 

    There is okay design that won’t affect any­thing, there is great design that will lead to sales, and there is bad design which will hurt sales. Spec work breeds bad design and hurts sales.

41. 
    XYZ said on: March 27th, 2009 at 10:16 pm

    “The best work comes from uncer­tainy and it is this uncer­tainty that drives the ‘spec­u­lat­ive pitch­ing’ work ethos.” 

    No way! You have these sites ded­ic­ated to spec work or people post­ing on craigslist for free samples and pay upon accept­ance… No qual­ity design comes from this type of thing. First of all most of the people work­ing on spec basis aren’t exactly qual­ity design­ers. Secondly, the fact that every­one knows they are com­pet­ing against droves of other design­ers is not exactly a cata­lyst for great design. If any­thing people are going to put as little time and effort into design­ing on spec since there is almost no chance if win­ning any­way. Then to top it off the people post­ing the pro­jects aren’t art dir­ect­ors or design­ers. These con­tests essen­tially end up tur­ing into a bunch of unskilled “design­ers” being art dir­ec­ted by people who took an art class once in high school four­teen years ago. 

    So, this is bad news all around. The design­ers either don’t get paid because the did not “win”. The “win­ner” gets paid pea­nuts because no one post­ing spec work ever has a budget to start with. Finally people are essen­tially pay­ing people a few bucks to ruin their busi­ness image since they are get­ting sh!t qual­ity work.

42. 
    Gaz Shaw said on: March 28th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    [<stromg>Matt Henderson’s</strong>] take on spec work, if I under­stood this cor­rectly, was that the mar­ket will dic­tate the prac­tice. If both sides of the mar­ket – the sup­plier (the design­ers), and the con­sumer (the cli­ent) – find that spec­u­lat­ive work is mutu­ally bene­fi­cial, then the prac­tice would become an industry norm

    I’m not sure whether the prac­tice will ever become the norm, espe­cially with so many voci­fer­i­ous voices against it; how­ever, I’m of the opin­ion that there will always be cli­ents who’ll want to get some­thing for as cheap as pos­sible — or rather on their terms — and sup­pli­ers who are will­ing to do it for them. 

    Tak­ing Lea‘s example, cli­ents will either under­stand the situ­ation i.e. you don’t get some­thing for noth­ing, or dis­reg­ard the value of the design work — whether it be because spec work is com­mon prac­tice in other fields, as Mark points out, or because they are play­ing the exploit­a­tion card — and walk away from the deal until they can find someone who fits their terms.

    Talk­ing about voci­fer­ous voices against, David Carson’s com­ments dur­ing the “]SWSW No Spec debate are inter­est­ing. He believes that design­ers who have pre­vi­ously done no spec work for notori­ous web brands that dabble in this area are, or will be, ostrisised from the cred­ible, pro­fes­sional design com­munity. Per­haps this dis­hon­our­able charge will sway future design stu­dents away from doing spec work; per­haps it will cre­at­ive two more pro­nounced sides in the no spec debate. 

    Whether Carsonified’s com­pei­tion is no spec work is clearly a mat­ter of opin­ion. It’s clear from this and [many] other debates on the topic that no spec work is not a black and white issue; we’ll still be debat­ing it for yearsto come and this is why I think such prac­tice won’t become the norm.

43. 
    Barry said on: April 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 am

    I think spec work is really dam­aging when it requires the designer to invest a large amount of time and effort, and in essence treat the pro­ject just like he/she would if it was paid for because it replaces the demand for non-spec work. 

    I can per­son­ally draw a line between that kind of spec work and a play­ful com­pet­i­tion like carsonified’s, which does noth­ing but provide an oppor­tun­ity to be cre­at­ive, express­ive and to just have fun. It’s some­thing a designer might have a bit of a blast with, and spend no more than an hour or two on, per­haps on his/her day off.

    I think it all boils down to how the com­pet­i­tion is per­cieved. If a designer feels the need to enter to reap some kind of reward, and for that reason treats the com­pet­i­tion just like a paid for brief, then it’s miss­ing the point, and is dam­aging. If a designer treats the com­pet­i­tion as an oppor­tun­ity to have fun then it’s not damaging. 

    It’s the respons­ib­il­ity of the people who run these com­pet­i­tions that they pack­age them like that. I take my hat off to car­son­i­fied for being pretty much on the mark in that respect.

44. 
    Mexabet said on: April 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm

    I’m not too sure design com­pet­i­tions can be cor­rectly clas­si­fied as spec work. But I take a strong stance that the prac­tice of spec­u­lat­ive work harms business.

45. 
    bobbyandrews said on: April 5th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    One thing inter­est­ing about spec work… No details are usu­ally provided about design pref­er­ences, style, likes and dis­likes, etc. The designer is work­ing blind. How can you meet a cli­ents needs with no feed­back, so idea of what they want? It’s doesn’t mat­ter how good you are. The final selec­tion will be made based on pref­er­ences you had no idea existed.

46. 
    George Terezakis said on: April 7th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    OK, it was not such a big deal, I agree. But an all-important detail: only after the uproar cre­ated by their post did Car­son­i­fied throw in a free pass for the con­fer­ence. So not a com­pet­i­tion to start with.
    
    So, Car­son­i­fied asked people to work for what reason exactly? They already had a design to use (and their designer is a mighty good one, if I may say so). They asked for a new design just because they could and I believe that’s the evil that drives demand for spec work.
    
    I Ryan’s a nice guy and all, and I do like his exper­i­ment­a­tion with the way he pro­motes his busi­ness. To his credit, most times it works out really well. And what’s even more import­ant, in the rare cases when it doesn’t work out, he’s the first to step in and take the blame.

    So, in the spe­cific case, I just dis­agree with the way it was done, set­ting some­what of a wrong example on how to ask the com­munity for a contribution.

47. 
    web design and development said on: April 8th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    this post is flaw­less i have the same opin­ion but i am unbal­anced and more weighted towards the pos­it­ive side of spec,i think so with the dark­ness of unem­ploy­ment in the whole industry it gives some sort of sup­port to the individuals.