hello world but no spec please
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
This website has been in the making for a while, but due to too few hours during the day (and night) it’s been a bit slow coming together. But the new year is a good time to start so here it is.
2007 was a great year for me in the freelance world. I worked with some brilliant people on better projects than I ever even dreamt of when I was permanently employed. Sometimes I felt like pinching myself. Who knew you could actually get paid to do work you enjoy?! And this year is already looking good.
2007 had only one real dilemma which was a couple of requests to see my concepts without payment. I know this is an age old debate. Do you free pitch or not? I think it’s best to get it out in the open, up front and from the beginning, that I don’t do any spec work.
Free pitching was something I wondered about when I first went freelance. I even went to a talk - Win Without Pitching - given by Blair Enns. His solutions are aimed at large agencies and are much larger in scale than applies to me, but it gave me that initial boost to start believing that designers shouldn’t offer up their services for free. There are a lot of websites out there offering thoughts and solutions on this topic for both the designer/agency and the client too - namely No!Spec.
It’s not just an ethical question, but also a financial one. Most of the work I do is concept and I’ve been told over and over again that this is my strength and it’s definitely what I love. I put alot of time, thought and passion into concept work and I can’t get any of that back or resell it if I don’t get paid the first time around. So if I work for free then when I do get paid, it will need to be at a much much higher rate to make up for what I’ve lost. My rates are very fair and I want to keep them that way and to be honest, I don’t ever want to start thinking that what I do isn’t worth anything. So there you are - no free stuff! Rant over no need to speak of it again! Next time will be all about fabulous designy things - I promise.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:48 am
[…] finally in place: I’m pleased to announce that Little Bulldog Design is live! Have a look at her first blog post and, most importantly, her online portfolio. (And don’t forget that she also has a personal […]