By Scott Savage courtesy of Design Assembly

When starting out as a freelancer it takes a while to find one’s feet. Juggling the administrative side of a business can be a steep learning curve.

The biggest headache to conquer is dealing with the money side of things, for me at least. It goes without saying that you’ll have to sort tax, and that there will be problems with non-paying clients. But as a designer how does one find balance in keeping clients happy in the work that is achieved, and not being taken advantage of in the process?

Let’s look at three scenarios about prospective income for creative work. Although I may refer to them in terms of design, each scenario is transferable to any other creative work such as illustrators, web developers, photographers, or writers. By far this article is not all-encompassing though does aim to start lively discussion about best practice in considering new clients and work.

Pitching for Free

Recently I was invited to tender for a substantial project for a major institution. I had worked for this client before and was flattered to be asked. On tight turnaround, I spent a week preparing the tender, submitted it, then got an email confirmation of its receipt. After three weeks I received another email saying basically, ‘Things are delayed’. And finally, after six weeks I was emailed to be told briefly, ‘Thanks, but your tender was unsuccessful’. Pretty deflating.

Ideally it would have be great to get a little more feedback on why the design was unsuccessful, otherwise it seems as if I had entered into a beauty pageant without being able to perform in the talent section. In retrospect, there was a sense of being asked to make up the numbers, where they had obligation to put out a certain number of feelers, even if they intended to stick with the previous designer (their Miss Venezuela). Is this fair?

An obvious reservation to doing another tender is, in this instance, the pitch equated to a weeks’ work to prepare, and consequently a weeks’ lost income, in giving it priority over other client work. Circumstantially, within a studio, with multiple employees doing a free tender would be less effecting, but on your own it’s a big commitment.

To my naivety I thought this blind hope tendering was all fairly common practice. I was wrong and there seem to be a trend against this type of ‘dangling carrot’ speculative work and efforts to inform creatives, educators and clients on the pitfalls of this type of one-sided practice.

NO!SPEC is an long-established and invaluable resource formed ‘to educate the public about speculative (spec)work’. By ‘speculative work’ it refers to:

“… any kind of creative work rendered and submitted, either partial or completed, by designers to prospective clients before taking steps to secure both their work and equitable fees. Under these conditions, designers will often be asked to submit work under the guise of either a contest or an entry exam on actual, existing jobs as a “test” of their skill. In addition, the designers normally unwittingly lose all rights to their creative work because they failed to protect themselves by means of a contract or agreement …” (No!Spec FAQ about spec work)

Doing creative work on speculative basis puts designers in a compromised position as the reality is that often the work does not result in further work, or other fulfilled promises, exposure or gain. I refer to it earlier as a ‘dangling carrot’, when you are starting out it’s a very tempting proposition to get sucked into, especially if one is either looking to build a portfolio and/or secure bread-and-butter clients.

Speculative work seems to set itself up for compromised outcomes as the process of comprehension and resolving of the brief is overshadowed by prioritising an outcome which is a purely aesthetic commodity. This ultimately devalues the design and the designer. Essentially design becomes a kind of solicitation exercise. The gamble is having many create something blind, as opposed to investing in a single designer to come in and understand the company first. This is especially relevant if the design outcome is propositioned as a contest. It doesn’t necessarily make the client look good and the designer may be treated with less regard or unprofessionally once the contest result has to commit to a further relationship with the successful designer.

NO!SPEC has collected many design organisations policy of speculative work, for example, DINZ (Designers Institute of New Zealand):

“7.4. Members shall not undertake work for a client without payment of the appropriate fees excepting cases of work for charitable or non profit making organisations when payment may be waived or at a reduced rate.”

…. and many more can be found here.

Although not everyone will choose to be a DINZ member this seems a feasible guideline to follow on a client-to-client basis. If you are pitching for work, question the conditions under which it is done. Establishing a paid contract for work done is a fair tester to how committed they are to you for the tender.

Should I Work For Free? by Jessica Hische  …  this infographic may be helpful also (view larger)
 
The Empty Promise of Future Success

I’m probably a terrible person for saying this, but I have reservations about doing anything with ‘startups’. The promise of future success relies a lot on trust and belief on behalf of both parties. The reality of many startups however, is the enthusiasm for the ‘idea’ and ‘vision’ often doesn’t equate to success. That’s ok, but in bringing others into the equation like designers, it needs to translate into genuine value for them as enthusiasm can only go so far.

Committing to unpaid work in place of shares in the company or future benefits? Responsibly even exposure should be done with some trepidation as thing can change quickly. For example, I was asked to be involved in a startup project a year or so ago to design a web interface and was offered shares in the business in exchange for work. The work would commit me to up to three days per week for three months. The startup founder had been working on the business for a year. The business and website had a solid grounding but was not yet fully formed. To be honest the idea didn’t interest me much, and I had an uneasy gut feeling about it so it was hard to match the enthusiasm they had. Soon after meeting and eventually declining the opportunity, the founder moved to another city and the business idea ceased to happen. I  wished the business well as there was a niché for it but, in this instance, it lacked an evident profit structure and I would have been silly to commit. Unfortunately, I’ve known of a few instance where designers have committed to as much as a years’ work, unpaid, and the project has fallen flat. It’s gut-wrenching to witness even though the experience wasn’t mine and to know how much work was put in for no return.

In another instance, I had decided to work with a startup on the basis that they had successfully taken products to market and had a clear goal. They wanted to use me as designer and not an investor which was more comfortable for me as the business wasn’t my vision. The income initially wasn’t great but I was paid. The income has grown as the company has. In return for the work they had given me, I designed a logo for them at no charge as they had established a clear commitment. They were chuffed and ultimately facilitated working with a nicer brand that I was now invested in. So, win win, but along the way little risk to me.

The conditions of working with a startup need to be established contractually, and present benefits to the designer beyond unguaranteed promises. Unfortunately, doing a David Choe, and gambling the payment of work for shares in Facebook (which ended up translating to $200M) is a one in a million chance reality. He was gambling with $60K, so either way he won. In reality though designers shouldn’t be put in the position of gambling and letting it ride if the reward is out-of-sight.

For What It’s Worth … Maybe

What we charge for the things we design for clients is a balance of our inherent value and time served, i.e. we spend this much time doing it, and we charge X amount. Well, we all know this isn’t true, at least this is my understanding as a freelancer. Although I might work X amount of time on a design, I would rarely charge for all of it. The admission is that it’s hard to justify to the client, as the end result is what they want to pay for, not the process that has lead to it. I’m fine with that. I’ve come to peace that there is a general disbelief in the monetary value of design work. It’s not a universal logic for all professions (accountants!) but does seems to be ever-present in the design industry.

Is the value of design just something perpetuated by ourselves? This is not to say it’s not necessary, but rather do the high standards we keep sit unnecessarily above actually making the client happy? The late Lindsey “Linds” Redding (art director for BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi) discussed this in a blog post entitled A Short Lesson in Perspective describing the commercial creative industry as an elaborate hoax:

” The creative industry operates largely by holding ‘creative’ people ransom to their own self-image, precarious sense of self-worth, and fragile – if occasionally, out of control ego. We tend to set ourselves impossibly high standards, and are invariably our own toughest critics. Satisfying our own lofty demands is usually a lot harder than appeasing any client who, in my experience, tends to have disappointingly low expectations. Most artists and designers I know would rather work all night than turn in a sub-standard job. It is a universal truth that all artists think they are frauds and charlatans, and live in constant fear of being exposed. We believe by working harder than anyone else we can evade detection. The bean-counters rumbled this centuries ago and have been profitably exploiting this weakness ever since.”

Is there a middle ground? Would we be happy working there? Well, no, probably not. Redding goes on to say:

“Truly creative people tend not to be motivated by money. That’s why so few of us have any. The riches we crave are acknowledgment and appreciation of the ideas that we have and the things that we make.”

I don’t know if this is completely true, but is, perhaps, a less fortuitous circumstance of being a creative. I think it could go either way where, for a good percentage, the riches we crave is, well, just fat stacks over validation.

How do we rationalize our value then? Is what we charge per hour a purely subjective exercise, and how do we justify this to our clients? Do we need to? This is particularly tricky when taking on new work with new clients and we don’t want to scare them away.

Is there an industry standard or is it a free-for-all?

• Courtesy of Design Assembly / conversations on graphic design