Drew Davies at BeADesignGroup.com has a great rant on why you should say no to spec work.
If the entire business community understood the value of good design, and saw the effect we can actually have on their bottom line, there wouldn't be nearly enough design firms to handle all of the business. But when any creative firm reiterates to a business client that it's okay to give away what we do on a gamble of a big payoff, it's a huge setback. So I'm raising the horn again and sounding the rallying cry- if we all band together and tell the business community that, like any other professional service, we provide something of great value that is worth paying for, only then can we win the war. Fellow designers, please join me in saying no to spec work.
There are quite a few good links about the argument against spec at the beginning of the post as well as in the comments.
I've dug up a few links as well which go into the evils of working on spec for free. SpeakUpZeldmanProvider.comCreative Latitude (which also has other useful-looking information here) Last year I wrote about Advertisers fear "cartel" in Oz as agencies were looking for compensation for doing spec work when pitching for new business. It created a lot of hoopla in the ad market there. The Australian Graphic Design Association, founded in 1988, has an Anti-Free Pitching Register which states:
The Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) has, since it inception, been opposed to the practice of free pitching as a means of acquiring new business in graphic design. Collectively, our members believe it to be detrimental to the value of our core capabilities as a creative profession, short sighted as a means of evaluating designers and their companies for commercial projects, and counter to the efforts of many individuals in raising the perceived value of graphic design as a economic resource.
We could put photographers, art directors, writers, etc in the place of designers and the concept should still apply. Unfortunately it seems only designers have set up this kind of self-regulation against attempts at getting work out of them for free. Perhaps this is what prompted the Australian ad agencies to push for changes in pitching practices. The AGDA's Practice Note, Free Pitching and Designer Selection, discusses why spec is bad for both clients and designers. As one quote in the paper states "Sure, we've done the occasional free pitch. But to be honest, how good is the work really going to be if you're not getting paid for it? I mean, you're just not going to put in the time." There is also more on their site here about why free pitching is bad. The group's Code of Ethics is based on the Model Code of Professional Conduct for Designers published in 1987 by ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic Design Associations), ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) and IFI (International Federation of Interior Architects/Interior Designers). The Institute of Designers in Ireland has a similar Code of Practice for its members as well
