I found Adam Howell’s article about Derek Powazek’s startup Pixish.com on Daring Fireball and my first instinct was to immediatly delete the account I set up to check it out because every point he makes is correct. Spec work is terrible, it’s an underhanded approach by businesses or people to barter for work they don’t see a true value in but still desperately want and need. I can’t tell you how often I hear – I could pay (insert distant relative name here) less than (insert fraction here) of what you say this will cost.

It sucks but it is what it is.

I can’t force kids right out of school to charge rates comparable to mine, they don’t have the same experience I have, I can’t try and convince them that they shouldn’t flex their muscles on these attempts at circumventing paying “lucky” working professional designers that are thinly veiled as contests. It’s hard to dissuade that hunger that we all have to create and that is all too vulnerable to these kinds of attacks.

I also can’t make the uniformed masses appreciate the work that we do, they think we are just kids sitting in corners with markers, crayons and play-doh having fun. It’s the one true drawback to doing work you love, at some point someone is going to try to take advantage of that love.

I do think it is bad form to call those of us who make a living working in design “lucky” I admit that sometimes luck may factor in landing a certain job but that usually centers around timing and not the quality of your work. I myself have worked very hard to build up my skills and my body of work, I try very hard to stay educated on the industry in which I operate and on the tools I use to do my job. There is nothing lucky about that.

To those talented folks out there that aren’t employed as professional designers I make no judgement as to why you aren’t but let me assure you it’s nothing to do with luck. It’s a weak defense against the spec work argument to call us lucky and to say you are trying to improve the luck of others. That having been said I don’t really think they mean it to be taken as an affront.

I also don’t think Pixish overall is as evil as Adam makes it out to be. Like he says there are three bajillion ways of getting recognition on the internet, this just happens to be another one. It may make it easier for the offenders to reach their pray but once it is out of Beta and some of the direct contact functionality they talk about is in place it may turn out to be a good conduit to some alternative clientele. I think there may be some need for some moderation of the assignments making sure they have very clear language in regard to compensation, if any. You can only protect the masses so much though.

Ultimately it’s success will depend on how well it is adopted by mainstream publishing clients and how well the artist can differentiate between them and the opportunists, maybe an artist/client rating system based on feedback from both parties.

I say try it out, if you like it great, if you don’t that’s fine too. Just know that like they say you don’t have to do work that doesn’t pay if you don’t want to but also know just because you do doesn’t mean you will become successful either.

Besides I’m sure there are many non profit organizations working on noble efforts who would welcome your skills at no charge that will offer a great deal of experience.