Kill All The Designers
As I was driving into the Lijit offices, I was thinking about this years SXSW conference, and how different it would be for me. I was thinking about the posts I had read from friends who were going and had gone before.
The difference for me this year will be striking (speaking vs. not-speaking, knowing people vs. not knowing people, how much hotter I am, etc.). Yet with all the growth I have done personally and professionally, some of my friends are still light years ahead of me in terms of accomplishment and recognition.
And thats ok.
I realized that what I love most about life is the realization that no matter how much I accomplish, I always have people around me to remind me that I have a long way to go. That, for me, the only thing that drives me is success and since there will always be someone more successful than me, I have a long way to go.
Which brings me to the raging debate about spec work.
(huh? Yeah, I know, but its how my brain works. Stick with me.)
I am not a designer. I can barely draw a straight line. But, I have been a business man, even played one in real life.
Here is how I see a basic logo development conversation (for 99% of the world):
Business guy thinks to himself, “hmmm, I need a logo. Im bored/tired/renamed my business/whatever, and it about time. I dont want to spend a ton of money on it.”
Designer guys thinks to himself, “I love being an artist. I live to create. I dont just “do” logos, I create identity.”
Business guy: “sweet on the identity. How much will it cost?”
Designer dude: “$5,000.”
Business guy (after laughing so hard he is crying): “Thanks.”
And then business guy heads over to one of the “spec work” shops, and puts in a request for a logo, with a couple of requirements, and prices it at $500. A couple of weeks later, a logo is approved and used, and the business guy is happy. The “spec work” designer is less happy, but has $500, the “real” designer is totally unhappy, and blames everything: spec work, the business guy and the “spec work” designer (but not himself).
There is no questioning his pricing, or the value of his production, just that he got undercut by an “amateur.”
I think I get it.
Designers are being protective of their industry and their “art,” by railing against an activity that by design, reduces the amount of money they can charge.
At SXSW, Jeffrey is on a panel entitled “Is Spec Work Evil?” and the moderator, Jeff Howe wrote a great post called “Is Crowdsourcing Evil and Other Moot Questions …” where he wrote:
The demand for low-end design has ballooned in recent years alongside the profusion of start-ups and small businesses. Conveniently enough, so has the supply of what we might call “low-end designers” (amateurs, recent grads and the like). According to Forbes there are 80,000 freelance designers in the US alone. Most of these are, proverbially speaking, waiting tables. When someone matches demand and supply, well that’s kismet!
I agree that the market drives the business and the business practices. Take the hurt feelings out of the spec work debate, and you have an efficient marketplace driving costs down due to an overabundance of designers, coupled with the increasing number of small businesses and startups (which by definition, have no money to spend on huge design projects).
Is spec work “evil” (meaning detrimental)? Hell yes. It devalues the work of the designer and trains the business professional to accept a lower quality (but sufficient) work product.
But the problem is not with the companies that drive spec work, or the designers that participate in it, or even the companies that pay for it.
The problem is simply a result of an upside down economic model where the artificially high supply of designers is pushing the pricing downwards. Include the general efficiencies that are provides by the internet, and BAM! spec work is perceived as evil. Read Jeremiah’s post about how he views spec work from the business perspective, and you can see exactly this dynamic occurring.
I commented on Jeff’s post:
I am excited to listen to the panel and continue the conversation that we have had around these here parts (Its Boulder, we can sound Western…).
There is a constant fight for equilibrium between business interests and service providers, where businesses will always undervalue the esoteric value of intangibles, and service providers will always overvalue them.
There is not a service industry that is not touched by the concept of spec work or unfavorable (to the service provider) competitions. The canary has been dead for awhile, people just have named it.
Of most service industries, graphic design (and design as a whole) is probably the most disparate in perceived and actual value. How do you value “art”? How do you value “feeling”?
Businesses apply a value to everything. When I sold my company, when I agreed to accept a non-compete that had a value. The association of my name to the new company had a value.
The positive of the spec work revolution is that it forces designers to think: 1) am I talented enough to be charging what I am charging; and 2) what is the real value I bring to the table that can be counted by my client (the business) in dollars.
The negative is that designers are realizing that their perceived value is not equitable to their real value.
(There is also the reality of the economic abundance of designers makes it easy for spec work to exist. If I were a designer I would stop worrying about spec work and get more people to quit the industry.)
At the end of the day, being underpaid for valuable work sucks, which is what the specter of spec work brings. Want to combat it? Dont suck. Provide value. Set realistic expectations.
The only way to reduce the negative effects of spec work on the design industry is to make the supply of designers scarce.
Want to end spec work? Kill all the designers.*
* of course this is meant simply as an oversimplification of a complex problem. Please dont kill the designers. Perhaps take away all the stolen copies of Photoshop, or disallow internet access for designers at coffee shops, but killing them might just be a bit more evil than the perception of spec work.
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Hah! Taking away stolen copies of Photoshop (more accurately the entire Creative Suite) would eliminate a *big* chunk of the designers doing spec work. I think that would be a great start. And while we're at it, let's take the stolen copies away from clients too.
I would bet green money that 99.9% of all well-known working designers out there learned on stolen software. Myself included. Taking away the stolen software isn't the problem. Every design has to start somewhere, and except for the very few, they all suck fat donkey balls – metaphorically speaking, of course. For me, the biggest issue I see is crossover. In the late 90's, you were either a print design or a web designer. People proficient in identity work usually belonged to the print camp. As the print jobs became less and less, and the web jobs became more and more a lot of the print designers started designing websites. They were terrible at it. Subsequently the web designers were also terrible at designing for print. 1999-2003ish was a weird time for designers who were trying to figure out what kind of design they should be doing to stay reactive to a changing graphic design field – and especially the industry expectations of a designer. What it has mostly turned into is a designer who is expected to be a jack of all trades, but ultimately a master of none. This is the problem. The guy who spends all day designing banner ads for some shit-ass agency and wants to make a few bucks is gonna go onto a “contest project” site and try to do a logo for $500, because fuck it – it's $500. Do they know how to use the applications to make a logo? They sure do. Do they have any expertise in logo standards? Know how to rescale a logo so it looks good blown to the size of a building, or as a one color 1/4″ logo on a business card? Hell no. But what do they care? They could make $500 and the client who posted the project won't know any better to understand that what they're paying $500 for isn't suitable for what they actually need.
That's the problem. I give it a few more years before Apple comes out with image editing software that does for graphic design what iMovie did for video editing. Digital image manipulation and “light design” is going to become a standard skill. The point is that simply understanding how to use the application doesn't make you equipped to complete the task at hand, and most of the people presenting the tasks don't know enough to know if what they're choosing is correct. But like Jeff said in his article, and like I said in mine – spec work as a business is pairing d-level companies with underskilled designers. that's fine, if they choose to work together. Where I agree with you is that what's driving down prices is the overabundance of “designers”, a shitty economy, and the good old fashioned american capitalistic tactic of undercutting that says “sure it's cheap, but it's better than nothing.”
Thats great background on how the problem has become pervasive. The issue is the same, the surplus of designers allows spec work to exist. If every company was fighting for the same resources, spec work wouldnt exist. By making it easy to hang a shingle and call yourself a designer (similar in my mind to the explosion of SEO professionals), the overall quality of the work suffers, and the potential revenue to the designer dips.
You know what spec works provides the designers? Ability to avoid clients. Ability to work in volume and cheaply. Ability to suck and survive.
As long as businesses are willing to take “good enough” work and be successful, the spectre of spec work will continue to exist.
My point is unchanged (and bolstered by your comment): Designers are killing their own industry but not weeding out the sucky ones. Spec work is a result of sucky designers, not vice versa.
A solid post, but the challenge for the designers is differentiation. I just wrote a post on this called “Your Job is somebody else's hobby” (http://www.jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/n...) and it is at the heart of many of the crowdsourcing sites like GeniusRocket.com and eLance.
Fact is, these guys will have to figure out a way to be THE best or do something else. Part of the Schumpeterian Creative Destruction.
Outstanding post, Micah.
Any of these designers that are crying foul because there's an influx of wanna-be's should ask themselves if they've ever purchased inexpensive stock photography (iStock, etc.) instead of hiring a professional photographer. How about the graphic designers out there that added web design or photography to the skills they offer – aren't all of these things hurting other creative professionals?
The invention and subsequent enhancement of better and more idiot-proof digital cameras, free online tutorials and a shift that there should be a price drop since there's no film involved has forever changed the photo industry, we're seeing the same with graphic design. I agree with Jeffrey (see above in comments), graphic design…at least amateur (not that great) design is becoming a “standard skill”.
I've also found that even though most business owners (clients) aren't getting top-shelf design, they don't care. As long as it's cheap and fast, the quality isn't as important.
The bottom line (and it's a tough one to swallow) is that if you can provide value above and beyond with the influx of wanna-be's can, you can still make good money as a freelancing designer. If all you have to sell is “good design” – you're already dead, you just don't know it yet.
Cry, complain or learn to differentiate yourself…choose quickly.
Here are my 2 cents:
http://tinyurl.com/dh4fp8
http://tinyurl.com/clnam4
As I just tweeted, the single most pertinent article about the current state of design. I'm raising my hand at this one, guilty. Blame the spec kids, the spec companies, the clients who don't 'value' good design. But yeh, you gotta take a look at yourself, and how the industry has changed beyond compreghension and with such rapidity in the last few years. I read this and gulped. Sharp intake of breath. And I fell into this trap, and am currently clambering out of it, with a 'timely' 'relaunch'. It's an unfortunate fact that design is not valued by the large majority of the business community, but it is a fact nonetheless. Principally because design is not a physical thing, you cannot grasp it, it's somewhat of an enigma or even a black art still to many folk, who need it but don't understand the value it can bring. Back to the relaunch.
As a guy who'd be playing the role of the unhappy designer in your scenario, I'm here to say I'm far from unhappy if a client goes somewhere cheap for a logo. You can never talk someone into thinking design is worth more. They either get it or they don't. I'm confident that any work I create is far ahead of the spec stuff that this is never an issue. If anything I kind of like there being this class of pseudo-designers around the place because it makes sure my clients are ones who really value what I do.
ps – dude, this superwide textarea really encourages longer comment!
As a total non-designer is the superwide textarea a good thing?
Micah, enjoyed your post.
We (VAs) are having essentially the same issue with the Virtual Assistant industry with so-called Virtual Assistant workers overseas using the freelance sites to cut the general VA per hour rate of $25/$35 down to $10 or under. Like some web/graphic/logo designer sites, there are also Virtual Assistant sites having been started by corporations solely for the purpose of selling Virtual Assistant services at ridiculously low rates by using underskilled, overseas 'workers' (as you can't call them Virtual Assistants), therein undermining the qualifications and years of experience most real Virtual Assistants bring to the business owners and industry.
Having said that, I agree whole-heartedly with what Rob M. comment above. I guess it depends on what kind of work or 'clients' you want to have. Like the designers out there, many VAs are up in arms about the cut-rate VA business model of some corporations exploiting the industry but, I think, having clients that value, and understand the value of, what you do will ultimately make for a much better working environment (for both parties) rather than having to justify everything and 'sell' yourself every time. A soft-sell is expected for each new client but having to do the competitve hard-sell to get clients all the time would wear me out, and down! :)
And, one last comment. On the verge of jumping into the development start-up phase of several businesses I actually need half dozen logos/designs for branding. I have done a fair amount of research and looked around at a lot of designers and there are so many great ones out there. However, at this point, I just can't afford them. To be clear, I have a champagne vision with a beer budget (at the moment). Good designers, like a good VA is worth every penny in what they can bring to moving your business forward. I will just have to find the best designer I can, for my budget. Not by using spec work sites and thereby promoting them but, like perhaps hiring a great Virtual Assistant with lower rates you can afford, by doing some research and legwork and finding someone qualified out of school, or by word of mouth, etc. Perhaps too you can barter some great advertising for the designer if your site is expected to be high-profile. That, I think, is much more valuable that a fee! :)
Deb I am so interested in understanding the VA industry..in many ways, it
baffles me. Perhaps we can talk one of these days…
Deb I am so interested in understanding the VA industry..in many ways, it
baffles me. Perhaps we can talk one of these days…