Pulp To Pixels

Recently, I had a rather odd con­ver­sa­tion with a fel­low designer. Instead of dis­cussing indus­try trends, cur­rent projects, or some geeky design ephemera, the con­ver­sa­tion decayed into them chron­i­cling the dif­fi­cul­ties find­ing work and their frus­tra­tion with clients plac­ing such low value on cre­ative services.

Now, I real­ize I have been car­ing on vari­a­tions of the same con­ver­sa­tion for sev­eral years. The first cou­ple times I chalked it up to some­thing about the designer mak­ing them unde­sir­able to a poten­tial client/​employer. Just as in per­sonal rela­tion­ships, some­times when meet­ing a new client they get an off-​​colored impres­sion and the rela­tion­ship just does not jell. But sure enough, time after time the con­ver­sa­tion kept pop­ping up despite the fact the design­ers cre­den­tials, expe­ri­ence, and atti­tudes were so dis­parate. So what’s going on?

First, this sit­u­a­tion is in no way unique to Florida, I real­ize this. How­ever, hav­ing worked through­out the states I can say with a degree of cer­tainty, bum clients here are the rule not the excep­tion. One only needs to peruse the Art and Media jobs sec­tion on any bay area/​central Florida sec­tion of Craigslist.org and you will quickly know what I am refer­ring to. In response, on sev­eral recent occa­sions posts from the cre­ative com­mu­nity directed towards the busi­ness com­mu­nity have become increas­ingly, and openly, hostile.

This brought me back to some­thing I have won­dered ever since mov­ing to Florida; why the lack of a local orga­ni­za­tion fos­ter­ing pos­i­tive rela­tions with local busi­nesses. In a per­fect world even, a cre­ative indus­try union. Other parts of the coun­try I have worked in have mul­ti­ple resources ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing the Cre­ative com­mu­nity a voice and means by which they build mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial, pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships with the busi­ness com­mu­nity. In return, the busi­ness com­mu­nity learns our pro­fes­sion is more than mak­ing pretty pic­tures. The real ben­e­fit to the busi­ness com­mu­nity is it removes the mys­ti­cism often asso­ci­ated with the design process. This, in turn, helps deci­sion mak­ers in the busi­ness com­mu­nity become edu­cated con­sumers when mak­ing pur­chas­ing decisions-​​both of ser­vices and the design­ers offer­ing them. Ulti­mately, the absence of such community-​​building orga­ni­za­tions fur­ther solid­i­fies the neg­a­tive opin­ion of, and fur­ther fos­ters even, the omi­nous state of the indus­try in the South East.

In fact, while recently on con­tract in Dal­las, a local design rag pub­lished a fea­ture arti­cle regard­ing what is per­ceived as the biggest threat fac­ing the local design community-​​the sud­den influx of low-​​cost design­ers flood­ing in from the South East and Florida in par­tic­u­lar. The cur­rent struc­ture here brow beats design­ers into com­pla­cence with pay scales pro­claim­ing eight-​​to-​​twelve dol­lars per hour as com­pet­i­tive, fair mar­ket value. Given this, twenty dol­lars an hour with gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion offered for tal­ent and all at half the cost of liv­ing becomes irresistible.

In con­trast, an arti­cle pub­lished circa 2005 in a South West Florida busi­ness jour­nal acknowl­edged the trend in the local cre­ative com­mu­nity. In the arti­cle, they pointed out busi­nesses value of cre­ative ser­vices, for var­i­ous rea­sons, has not kept pace with other sec­tors of the local econ­omy. While the arti­cle did con­vey the local gov­ern­ments dis­ap­proval regard­ing the trend, it did scarcely more than let busi­nesses off with a slap on the wrist and a men­tion of the need to increase wages-​​a glar­ing endorse­ment of the obvi­ous. It left me fur­ther puz­zled as to the com­mu­ni­ties cal­lous­ness over the exo­dus of skilled tal­ent. Hav­ing seen the stag­ger­ing amount of crap busi­nesses here pump out in the name of mar­ket­ing they need to be gravely con­cerned with retain­ing as much tal­ent as is possible.

The result of all the tal­ent leav­ing for greener pas­tures is the void being filled with peo­ple out there who have a com­puter, a copy of Pho­to­shop, and the arro­gance it qual­i­fies them to be a designer. If drop shad­ows and bevel/​emboss are the sta­ple of your design grab bag, then you fall into this group. But I digress, another arti­cle for another day.Other than skill and tech­nique, design­ers need to respect them­selves, the pro­fes­sion, and fel­low design­ers and not accept second-​​rate jobs. When you accept a project for pen­nies on the dol­lar, you rein­force clients low assess­ments. I’m not advo­cat­ing inflex­i­ble pric­ing struc­tures, as I often offer price breaks to clients request­ing my time in bulk, but don’t give the farm away just to sell the milk. It can be ago­niz­ing as many times design­ers are backed into a corner-​​flip burg­ers, or do what I spent con­sid­er­able time and money pur­su­ing in col­lege? Often this goes hand in hand with the slip­pery slope of “I’m only going to do it this once so I can gain expe­ri­ence and pad my resume/​portfolio so I am more appeal­ing to the next client.” It never works. You break your back to accom­mo­date them and prove worth-​​they per­ceive it as a mutu­ally accept­able arrange­ment which becomes the basis of all future deal­ings. The mind­set here is to get it as cheap as pos­si­ble rather than obtain­ing the best pos­si­ble prod­uct at the best pos­si­ble cost.

Be wary of bois­ter­ous promises of future pay­offs; “Stick with me kid and I’ll make you rich.” With­out a doubt, the surest of red flags sig­nal­ing a bum client is solic­i­ta­tion of spec work. Never sup­ply spec work to a client or enter into any con­tract which is con­tin­gent on accep­tance of spec work. Com­monly, the client takes the specs and con­tracts some­one else to do the work cheaper. They have your work and you have no bind­ing con­tract or compensation-​​good luck pay­ing legal fees and meet­ing the bur­den of proof in a copy­right infringe­ment case. More­over, if you find it tough pay­ing bills at min­i­mum wage, see how far you get work­ing for free. Addi­tion­ally, an unscrupu­lous client may use spec work to test a design­ers gulli­bil­ity. They know to play on your des­per­a­tion and if they can get you to work for free the first time, they place you in a weak bar­gain­ing posi­tion now and in future nego­ti­a­tions. Save your­self the grief and impend­ing self condemnation-​​shoot them down and move on to the next oppor­tu­nity. For more infor­ma­tion on the ethics of spec work, visit no-spec.com.

In fair­ness I have to point out, I can under­stand to a degree much of the hos­til­ity busi­nesses show toward the cre­ative com­mu­nity. Count­less times I have been tasked with right­ing the mess of a pre­vi­ous designer-​​unfinished work, poorly con­structed files, author­ing files deleted, objec­tives not met, etc. Suf­fice to say, the list of offenses can be shame­fully long. It seems there is an almost equal num­ber of bum design­ers who swoop in, cash the check, and leave the client feel­ing taken advan­tage of and vengeful.

It’s an inevitabil­ity. I have worked with bum clients in the past and as such this is com­ing from a place of expe­ri­ence. For­tu­nately, I have only once made the mis­take of tak­ing on a bum client and was able to maneu­ver my way out of the sit­u­a­tion none too worse for the wear and with a les­son learned. A bulk of my deal­ings with bum clients have been via con­tracts through an employer, and as such I did not bare the result­ing neg­a­tive fall­out. I very much like to keep it this way. I shoot down spec work. I inquire about clients rep­u­ta­tions with other design­ers. I study what they deem accept­able por­tray­als of them­selves via cur­rent print and web pieces. If it epit­o­mizes the “churn ‘n burn” com­mon­place here, pass. My per­sonal prac­tice is to sac­ri­fice bill­able hours this week in favor of woo­ing clients whom pro­vide qual­ity bill­able hours next week. It took me a long time to learn these pre­cepts when I made the leap from employee to Inde­pen­dent Con­trac­tor (IC)-it can be painful to break the addic­tion to the “pay­check men­tal­ity” dic­tat­ing the need for money flow­ing in on a reg­u­lar basis.

This arti­cle could go on for pages, but to bottom-​​line it I offer one sim­ple met­ric to prove my obser­va­tions correct-​​all the bum clients I have worked with in the past are already out of busi­ness or in their death throes. I’m still here.

About the author

Jeff designs print and web expe­ri­ences for a vari­ety of clients and enjoys shar­ing what he learns along the way. He entered the indus­try at the split of web design from graphic design occurred and is now fas­ci­nated as the two dis­ci­plines are on the cusp of com­ing full cir­cle to merge into a new, media savvy gen­er­a­tion of design­ers. When not crazy busy, Jeff likes geo­caching and con­sum­ing copi­ous amounts of cof­fee. You should fol­low him on Twit­ter and Facebook.

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