Really Forbes? Spec Work?
As many in the design community may have already heard from Debbie Millman or Armin, Forbes published an article yesterday touting the “crowdsourcing” value of a company called “CrowdSpring”. Apparently, this company acts as a broker for “designers” who are willing to do spec work and likes to think of itself as a “crowdsourcing” medium. What does this really mean?
1 | It means that there’s a large group of people out there who think it’s okay to have 200 people do all of the work they’re asking for, but only paying one of them. (for those who don’t know, spec work involves putting out a brief for anyone to submit entries for, and picking/paying one winner)
2 | It means that clients are no longer directly involved in the creative process. “Designers” are thus required to do independent research, and match it to the brief without any extra (read: legitimate or necessary for branding) information.
3 | It means that a service is being treated like a commodity. While I don’t recommend some sort of certification, consider this: Nobody would hire a lawyer who didn’t pass the BAR. Nobody would hire a lawyer who didn’t even go to college. Nobody thinks a person who owns a copy of the Constitution of the US is capable of being a lawyer. So why would someone who has no real experience, no art education, and Photoshop be considered the equivalent of a person who has agency experience, a degree in art, and the necessary tools? (we’ve been over this before… owning a saw doesn’t make you a carpenter, so why would owning Photoshop make you a designer (especially since it’s not a layout tool))
4 | It promotes a culture rife with theft of intellectual property. By client as well as by “designer” (QBN had a hilarious thread, but apparently it’s gone now, about a designer whose work was lifted by a similar spec broker…)
5 | It’s proponents fail to acknowledge an unethical system. Often groups like iStock or Threadless are cited as “speculative work”. Notice a slight difference, however. In both cases you are selling a product that any person can buy, not providing a service which only one client can “reward” if deemed “worth”.
6 | It provides the impression that clients can control the design process. Anyone working for an agency knows that (for the most part) client control and ability to meet client needs are inversely related. The more the client leads the project instead of the creative, the less it is likely to actually meet the goal.
7 | It says that a designers time is not valuable. To borrow an example, it’s like
“having an attorney draft a will for free, and then not paying him because you don’t like it”. That says the attorney’s time is not valuable and it cuts out any sort of discussion, critical thinking to improvement and creative editing.
So, with all of that said, I find it VERY hard to believe that Forbes would publish this article. Forbes, the company who hires designers for both their print and web work, who expects layout designers to be competent; who pays writers based on their work, not on winning some sort of zombie beauty bash; Forbes, who places ads in all of their materials. It strikes me as ridiculous and somewhat hypocritical, and the author comes across as completely ignorant of the case he is pleading for. In what world would 100 people write an article for Forbes.com, and only one get paid for it? There isn’t one. So why would this author make the case for design?
This is all to say that spec work is a horrible, awful, no-good, very bad idea.
