Dribbble’s Position on Spec Work

This seems to be an emotional, tribal issue for designers, particularly for designers who used to occupy the lower rungs of the value chain for corporate design work and who passionately believe that a teenager with Photoshop would necessarily produce a deliverable of lower quality than theirs but can't quite articulate why.

In many other fields of professional work -- which laugh in the general direction of $200 per project -- spec work is an unremarkable part of the customer acquisition dance. I need an accountant who understands how to legally minimize tax burdens of an IP based business with service components with activities split across Japan, the US, and the EU. I was interviewing two accountants to decide who I would use. Both of them a) reviewed 3 years of tax returns, b) spoke to me for several hours, and c) broke out the books and looked at tax treaties. That is exactly indistinguishable from what the winner will eventually charge me for. But that time isn't billable. Cost of doing business.

Similarly, many of my consulting engagements get sold on the basis of me going to a client's office, getting introduced to their CEO, lead tech guy, and head of marketing, and then talking for between 1 and 6 hours regarding plots I've hatched in advance, while everyone in the room takes notes. If there were already a contract in place, a) that presentation would be a deliverable and b) that meeting would be billable, along with the rest of the week. At the end of the meeting, sometimes the CEO says "Great stuff. Let's think about it and circle back on this later.", which occasionally turns into a firm "No." three months later. This is, to plagiarize Thomas, life in the big leagues.

Ways of compensating for this: a) Charge. More. , b) Minimum projects of sufficiently large size such that customer acquisition is just a cost of doing business., and c) if you can't reliably explain to clients why you're better than a teenager at 1/20th the price either you're looking for the wrong clients or you're in the wrong business.

While its completely within Dribbbles right to not cater for Spec work, and might make complete sense. I really dislike and disagree with the indignation surrounding spec work and propogated by things like NO!SPEC.

Spec work doesnt harm the creative industry, the fact is a lot of clients just want cheap decent looking logos / website designs, and there are a lot of designers that are willing to do the work even with a risk of not getting paid, likely because they are inexperienced and have a hard time finding standard paid contracts. Designers get experience, some money and an opportunity to grow into a career they are interested in, the client gets a reasonable quality product at a cheap price and low risk to them.

Nobody forces designers to take on spec work, as long as the structure of the work / payment is clear to both the designer and the client then they are both willingly taking it on.

So what are you going to do if a big brand (I won't mention any names but think of the biggest brands in the world) come knocking on your door and request your company's presence in a pitch with two other agency's? You'll f*cking be there man. And you'll give it all you've got.

These companies know they can do it. They're so big and they'll bring a ton work if you win the pitch. Just one of their projects can be over 300 hours if you win. Even if you don't win, they'll know what you're capable off and you're on their radar. I've seen this happen a lot of times. Not winning the pitch, but still becoming a preferred supplier for other types of work.

Spec is here and it's not likely to go away unless you're a rockstar-designer. Even a lot of existing clients pitch their new design-jobs now. Optimize for it. Make sure you can debrief, brainstorm and create "rough-but-good-enough" concepts and designs as fast as you can. Just don't forget your existing clients. (They are the ones who are really paying for the pitches).

I find this debate interesting. However, it's ultimately is up to the individual designer on work they choose. If you're an art director at an agency, or don't need to be on these crowdsourced sites, then don't.

Sales folks spend time on presentations and prep for business they never close, and some of the top tech companies the Valley require engineers and designers to complete projects as part of the recruiting process.

As founder of a crowdsourced design site (fantastic.me), we see this issue often. Here is a blog post I wrote on our position, and how we think there is business model where everyone wins.

http://blog.fantastic.me/2012/07/is-crowdsourcing-design-rac...

Stop doing spec work. Don't compete to make a for-profit company's logo or anything else in a contest.