Design and Protect
Yet one more reason to correctly and legally copyright design:
Twitter Paid $6 or Less for Crowdsourced ‘Birdie’ Graphic (WIRED)
This article also highlights the practice of designing “on spec” — that is, you get paid if we pick your design. Designing on spec has historically been advised against by the Graphic Artists Guild, and the design community has weighed in. AIGA has even made a formal statement against it:
“AIGA strongly discourages the practice of requesting that design work be produced and submitted on a speculative basis in order to be considered for acceptance on a project.”
It will be interesting to see how this evolves in the new share-everything, job-scarce, over-populated world.
Have you ever designed or written on spec?
2 thoughts on “Design and Protect”
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I think we all need to readjust our thinking about “free”. Attribution is ridiculously valuable if it leads to viral fame or notoriety. It’s unfortunate that the artist for the Twitter bird is uncredited, but photos on Flickr and blog posts can definitely lead to interest and demand. How many great bloggers have given away their writing for free only to get lucrative book deals or more likely, well-paid speaking engagements? You may be writing for free, giving it away, but you are creating a valuable commodity. A more valuable commodity, I would argue, than the writing you are giving away.
You can create until your fingers bleed and demand your rate, but that doesn’t mean you’ll sell anything. Create demand and you can charge and procure high rates.
And writing on spec? The kill fee has been around forever, but writing for magazines pays so dismally these days, it’s often more worth while to blog.
Ridiculously valuable, indeed. As I said, It will be interesting to see where this leads and what it opens. It will also be interesting to see what it kills as it changes.
But that’s life and evolution!