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Michael Bierut with The Road to Hell: Now Paved with Innovation?

Fact: Bruce Nussbaum from Business Week’s NussbaumOnDesign launches INside Innovation, a magazine that promises “a deep, deep dive into the innovation/design/creativity space.” [... Continue reading ... Michael Bierut on NO!SPEC

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Kevin Broome

kevinbroome.com

Kevin Broome is a strong supporter of the NO!SPEC Campaign. This week he’d interviewed Carmen von Richthofen and John Furneaux of RGD (Ontario). Read on as they discuss working on speculation and the design industry. [... Continue reading ... Kevin Broome with a NO!SPEC interview

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Design View : Andy Rutledge

On Thursday morning I received the best ever post from Andy. What a hoot!

Redesign Competitions: looking for a commitment or just a roll in the hay?

From Andy: I’m hosting a competition. I need a partner with whom to have a serious relationship but I don’t want to invest any time or effort in finding the right woman; I shouldn’t have to. I’m a great man and any woman should be proud to be with me, so I’m holding auditions. I’d like for all interested women to visit me and show me your ‘wares’. I’m definitely looking for someone with a hot bod, and not afraid to show it off. Extra points for staying the night and letting me sample your attentions and enthusiasm.

One lucky winner gets a $400 wedding ring and the prestige of having me for a partner (’cause I look good). The rest of you just get screwed. Awright, who’s with me?

Found on Design View:
Mark Boulton’s discussion on spec competitions.

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Journal : Mark Boulton

Wikipedia is holding a spec contest. In response, Mark Boulton made points regarding spec contests, whoring, and working pro bono in his post, Wikipedia and Bowing to the Brand.

From Mark: The design is not the end result, the design is process one took to arrive at a solution to the problems. There’s just so much in there to give away for nothing. Yeah, you may get your name up in lights, but at what cost?

But Wikipedia want a design, a free one, and they’ll get it because they are Wikipedia and you will bow to the brand and this will keep happening until designers, real ones, say NO to free work.

Via Andy Rutledge: Redesign Competitions: looking for a commitment or just a roll in the hay?

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Freshly Squeezed Droplets

Answers Against Contests and Spec Work: By requesting speculative work from a designer or agency, a company is basically asking for designs to be created blind. Because there is no commitment to a relationship with the designer, the company is denying the essential tools necessary to develop the best solution.

That’s not to say that a talented designer can’t come up with a solid creative concept in a speculative situation. The question is whether or not it will be the ‘right’ creative concept, or whether it will contain valuable substance. Speculative work doesn’t always fail, but it does lower the odds by reducing design to an uninformed gamble …

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Brian Warren

Watchtan

From Brian I think these contests are a total joke …

Via: Greg Storey at Airbag Industries.

EDITED: Watchtan is now Be Good Not Bad. And YEAH! Brian redirected his article. Nice.

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Steven Clark

I dunno, there is something appealing about a site with just text and … text. Lovely. I came across Pig Work while checking out the NO!SPEC stats and stuck around to see what Steven had to say.

From Steven: What’s particularly bad is it’s so ingrained into some industry heavyweights that it’s the only way they work. But it only works because we play the game.

So next time someone gives you a phone call and asks for speculative work just say NO THANK YOU. If they can’t figure you’re capable from your portfolio somethings amiss. They do it because they can take advantage of designers.

From nortypig: In many workplaces it would be down right illegal to get 4 people to come and compete for a position that three were going to be fired for. A fair days pay for a fair days work.

EDITED: Steven Clark’s Pig Work has evolved into nortypig.

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Matt Davies

Attitude

Matt from Attitude has joined the NO!SPEC Campaign with NO!SPEC – Just Say NO!

From Matt: Speculative work is the bane of the design industry. In every pitch you might have 4 out of 5 companies who do not win that contract. If we take that as an average that means that 4 fifths of the industry do not get paid for spec work.

So these people that miss out have wasted there time, their money, and their passion on something that has been a waste of time. Their clients may have suffered and they have a team of demoralised designers. They have given over ideas that have not been completed under contract and could be used or could influence the client without them having to pay a penny and also they have condoned this whole approach by partaking in the first place!

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NO!SPEC Campaign

Well, it’s a wrap. Since the 14th of March we blogged about the NO!SPEC Campaign here on Designers who blog. The support from the internet was amazing.

A special thanks goes to those helping with the NO!SPEC site (design, programming, articles, research, etc), spreading the word, joining in on the conversation, as well as those sporting the NO!SPEC logo or url. [... Continue reading ... NO!SPEC wrap

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Eric Karjaluoto

ideasonideas

What could be more fitting, than to end the NO!SPEC Campaign where it began, with www.ideasonideas.com.

A bit of background: On February 24th followed a link on the GDC/BG Blog to The Value of Canadian Design at ideasonideas, where they were discussing a [spec] web design competition being held by the Canadian Heritage and Design Exchange. I then posted a rant at about.com, where Betta took it further with, “we could do an anti-spec work week”.

From Eric:Some people likely don’t understand why there’s so much hubbub around spec work. I’m sure that a few even feel that we just need to chill-out. Fine enough, but I’m convinced that most would change their minds upon considering this practice, and what spec implies.

Take your profession. Think about how hard you have worked to learn what you currently know. Now, pretend that every month or two, you have to defend what you do to your boss, and then she will pick and choose who gets paid for their work. Ultimately, that’s what spec is. When a potential client asks for work on spec, they basically negate the entire value of a profession.

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