The “Pros” and Cons of Spec Work

I’ve found your blog post while researching crowdsourcing and open source collaboration, and reading your post I must first applaud your non-absolutist stand and furthermore admit that it inspired me to have my say.

I am not a designer, but coming from advertising and branding background I have worked with many plus my long time girlfriend is also one (an many of my best friends).

I can understand the fear of many designers considering that a general rule of thumb market price is that, whenever a new entry into the market lowers the price bar for work that can be (at times and to the untrained eye) comparable, it might tend to influence employers to argue that the new market supply dictates that equivalent labor can be found for much lower price and the low-ball professionally hired designers.

Being from third-world country (Venezuela) where creative work is compensated at a very low scale (some of the for-spec prizes seem attractive to my minimalistic personal economy), I see how this can become a frightful scene considering a possibility of a modern-day skill-employment shake up comparable (in an extremist way) to that brought forth by the industrial revolution to skilled workers at the time.

But, I must say that merely condemning it will not do designers well. Simply because we live basically in a free market economy and, since the world wide design population is not a homogenic, union based community a stone hard stance will not be followed by ALL.

And one other important reason: condemnation makes you miss the bigger point. If this (for-spec) has happened and thrived to some degree, it is because we need to understand that there are reasons for this. Be it the democratization of design tools, the connection (through Internet) of massive supply and low-end demand or the proliferation of design as an attractive career for an ever expanding highly educated universe, the current system does not work well for ALL graphic designers (the same could be said of many careers, but lets continue with this example).

So I would think that it would be more beneficial for all to preach understanding and information. Understanding of why this is happening, for the groups advocating rejection, and information for designers to when they should consider spec work and when not to.

If you advice correctly, analyze the possibilities for it to become beneficial for out-of-work designers without it being harmful for already hired ones and inform your audience about their choices, maybe you could actually see this as an opportunity than a catastrophe.

In fact, why not establish a watchdog operation where you can monitor the practices of companies and websites to make sure this newly plowed playing field is at least on par with the interest of the graphic design community (that is ALL, not just those employed) and maybe even promote those whose practices seem on par, and may even contribute to the advancement of young talented designers?

You should even open up the monitoring process so that the millions of designers out there can make their claims, inform each other, discuss an profile the opportunities out there and chastise those who do more harm than well.

Oh well, maybe this already exists. But my point is basically is: this is happening and won’t stop; make it your own before you lose the fight on absolutist terms.

Hope didn’t bore anyone to death.