June 16th, 2009 Google’s Call for Spec Work

For everybody reading this who isn’t a designer, the logo at left is for an organization called NO!SPEC (obviously). If you are a designer, you should already be familiar with the logo. If you are a designer who isn’t familiar with the logo at left, shame on you.

NO!SPEC is a group dedicated to informing and educating designers and users of design to the dangers of spec—or unpaid—work. Spec (short for speculative) work is becoming more of a problem in our industry as businesses are creating faux competitions in order to pick and choose among many designs and then paying a deeply discounted rate for one of the many designs in front of them. It’s a perfect world for a business, but it’s terrible for professional designers and it devalues design as a whole.

I’m not suggesting that no designer should ever do work without charging or submit to competitions. Websites like Threadless are genuine competitions…just like with any freelance writer, you make your own creation, submit it and either it is accepted or not. It’s not the same as a company telling you what they need, you doing all of the work (along with 100 other designers), and then having the client choose just one. And as far as Pro-bono work goes, it’s been a part of design and advertising for as long as the fields have existed, often donated to non-profits and charitable organizations.

In the case of Google, though, you hardly have a non-profit organization. Google profits were $1.42 billion in the first quarter of 2009. When you’re on pace to profic nearly $6B, it’s really hard to cry poor. But even with those $6B, Google doesn’t want to pay for design.

Google approached dozens of nationally prominent artists asking them to use their artwork for user-customizable skins their new Chrome browser. In return for the design Google is offering…nothing. The theory being that so many people will use Chrome that they will see your work that you’ll get more work because of it. It’s just like a client telling you that they can’t afford to pay you now, but later when they get huge, you’ll make out.

I’ll admit I bit on a couple of deals like this early in my career, when I was desperate to keep my newborn business afloat. And every single time someone promised me riches down the road? Nothing ever came of it. It was a waste of my time. More often than not, the client went under. And in the few times that they didn’t fail, they found another designer to do cheap/free work rather than deliver the promised payday. These clients are known as assholes.

And that’s just what Google is doing. They obviously recognize the need for design or they wouldn’t have approached the artists in the first place. They want the benefits without it costing them a dime. The whole thing seems half-assed and poorly thought out. Google, whose reputation was pretty stellar, comes out of this looking pretty cheap.