We’ve all seen ads like these soliciting work from creative people:
“We’re looking for a new logo, so we’ve decided to have a contest! The person who submits the winning logo will get $500 and an ad in our monthly newsletter!”
“Comic book artist wanted to draw my book. To qualify, you must provide a portfolio, plus be willing to draw a 3-5 page test script. The person who gets the gig will be paid 50% or everything when we sell some books.”
“Looking for cool greeting card designs! If we like what you submit, we’ll pay you $20 for each design we pick!”
I can’t stress this enough. Aside from family, friends, new business partnerships, and reputable pro-bono / in-kind clients… don’t ever, ever, ever do anything for anyone without some kind of guaranteed compensation. Why not? Read on and I’ll tell you.
Example 1: “We’re looking for a new logo, so we’ve decided to have a contest! The person who submits the winning logo will get $500 and an ad in our monthly newsletter!”
In this example, a few things are going on. First thing is, they want to see a lot of finished logos so that they can focus on, and pick the one they would like to represent their company. This is bad for everyone for several reasons. The designer and the company would be missing the most essential step to finding a good logo solution by forgoing the understanding, collaboration, and distillation that is necessary in such a project. A logo should accurately and effectively represent the spirit, and function of a company in a single, simple, unique mark. That cannot happen without research, communication, and a collaborative journey to a specific goal. And those things cannot happen if all I know about a company is in conveyed to be in a one-page email. The company that posted that ad is only doing itself a disservice in taking this road.
The second problem with this proposal is price. Good logos design is time consuming. It takes a lot of research about a company, its market, its target demographic, its branding goals, mission goals, and its competition to really even to begin to form an idea about who they really are. That kind of understanding is essential to logo design. That said, I have never spent less than 40 hours on any single logo design. In fact, it usually hits closer to 60. I seriously doubt anyone could ever make a case where I would be willing to devalue my services to the $8.34 per hour necessary to even come close to this person’s request.
The largest problem, however, is the fact that even if you’re willing to do the other things– Forgo understanding, collaboration and the possibility of a good mark, devalue your services to close to minimum wage… There’s not any kind of guarantee you’ll even be paid for your extremely valuable time. In fact, chances you’ll be paid are pretty slim.
Take a look at the other examples in the beginning of this post. You’ll see that they are equally based on complete speculation, abuse of your time, and lack of understanding of the collaborative process. Opting to do this kind of spec work, no matter what is promised to you, is never going to be in your best interests.
For more information on spec work, check these links out:
NO!SPEC
Creative Latitude on “Why We Don’t Make Speculative Presentations”
A short AIGA essay on spec work
Hell, do some more looking for yourself.
2 Responses to “Logo ‘Contests,’ Art ‘Tests,’ and the Evils of Working on Speculation.”
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Don’t you mean “never” instead of “ever”?
Entry fixed. Thanks, man.
That is exactly why I’m a designer and not a Copy Editor.