I mentor a few artists just starting out and I’m often asked about this. Spec work, or the contest model, is never a good idea. I’ll explain why, on both counts.
Spec work is asking a designer, many designers to work for free with no guarantee of compensation for their hard work. More so, it doesn’t show a designer’s best work either. In the end both the designer and the customer feel short changed. The above video explains it so well, but it also brings up another important point.
Don’t work for free. It sounds nice, a friend of yours needs a logo or a website and you want to help them out so you offer to work free. Just like Spec Work, working free of charge takes the design relationship out of the equation. You feel like a burden is put upon you because you’re doing this work free, not to mention that your customer doesn’t provide enough feedback for you to design appropriately. The customer doesn’t feel comfortable treating you like they would a paid designer. The customer doesn’t tell you what they didn’t like about the project or they are afraid to press their ideas too much, after all you’re doing this as a favor. In the end both the designer and the customer feel like they were taken advantage of and neither are truly happy with the end product, in the worst case scenario the customer ends up not using the work and everyone’s time is wasted.
They often say money in a friendship can ruin a relationship, in this case lack of money ruins it. If you charge your friend, even at a discounted rate, for the work then they have ownership of their end of the project and you can build a professional relationship that’s key to the design.
Contests are another area to avoid. I have a rule, I don’t do contests. Much like spec work, a contest eliminates the ability to have the customer/designer relationship we’ve discussed is needed for any project. Worse yet, in a contest you don’t get to negotiate your terms and often even if you don’t win the contest, they contest holder owns the right to your work. Contests pay you once for something you’ve made (yes, there are rare cases when a contest winner went on to being the go to designer for the customer, but that’s not the norm) and they can then use it indefinitely any way they like. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, it’s not that far from normal contract work, except normal contract work your best is being sold and there is often more work after that. When a customer asks me to design a logo they often come back to me to create their stationary, business cards, website work, you name it. I can make sure my logo is being used properly and not being distorted, the logo always looks good, the customer always looks good, and I can be proud of my logo.
I’ve worked for agencies that have run design contests, most of the time the intention was good, to give exposure to young artists in school. The problem is that even though we liked the logos produced, we couldn’t change them, because it was a contest winner, and the logo suffered. We ended up with a logo that we were 80% happy with. I have no idea who designed it, and there wasn’t a way to get in touch with the designer, because it was a contest, we the customer had our hands tied. In the end, it was bad for both of us.
The key ingredient to success is the design relationship, getting feedback from your customer, being told what works and what doesn’t work. If you can’t handle some one saying they don’t like your design or even “it’s ugly”, you are in the wrong business. Designers need a thick skin, and often we need to push our customers to tell us what they don’t like. Only then will we have a stunning design.
