Howard’s WorkChoices was a pretty major factor in the election of the Rudd Government. So it’s pretty disappointing to read that the Government 2.0 Taskforce is running a design competition rather than paying a graphic designer a fair price in acknowledgement of their skills and experience.
I find it difficult to imagine any other instance in which you would run a competition asking the general public to create a policy document, build a website, or administer a community service “rather than send the job off to the department’s usual [...]“.
But the skills and experience necessary to create a logo and a website banner seem to be so under-valued by the Taskforce, and by extension the Rudd Government, that Nick Gruen can argue that “pride in your work and the opportunity to have that pride vindicated and acknowledged publicly – in short a platform to show the world how good you are!” are an appropriate substitute for a fair wage, and Kevin Rudd will link to the post on his Facebook page. How depressing.
When governments decide that the “department’s usual [insert employee here]” is not enough – perhaps because there’s a need for some new input, fresh ideas, or perhaps because the employee is busy with other jobs – it is common to outsource jobs to the private sector. This can work out really well. They could even limit their search to small design firms or freelancers to share the government spending around, and do more to increase the number of creative people whose ideas are seen and heard. But still, outsourcing still usually involves payment.
Perhaps they’ll come back with the argument that it’s only a small job; that it’s not really a big deal. But that makes it worse, doesn’t it? That the hours spent designing the work, and the hundreds of hours spent developing the skills before that, will only be rewarded with the kudos of having their work chosen for a not-very-important job?
And what about the many hundreds of people whose work is not chosen? What is their compensation for their hard work? What would happen if policy-makers were reimbursed that way: only the people whose recommendations are included in the final draft will be paid?
At a time when more and more jobs are being taken off-shore, graphic design and visual arts are being reduced to a children’s colouring-in competition. Of course, not everyone will agree with me here. Check out The Logo Factory’s passionate defence of “crowdsourcing”. Maybe I’m just being snooty.
I didn’t have time to watch publicsphere today, but monitoring the twitters about it there seemed to be quite a few people excited about having the opportunity to design a logo. I don’t know how familiar you are with the Open Source community but there would be quite a few people eager to donate their time and expertise to do these sort of things, even for the government.
The government also uses open source software much of which is written by programmers who don’t get paid to work on it. There are studies around looking at why programmers do this. Some programmers do get paid to work on open source software by companies but still get to release what they do for anyone to use.
I think there would be many people who would be very eager to be able to participate in policy development even without payment.
It’s a time honoured plan by all and sundry.
On balance I’d say everyone should be paid for their work no matter how big or small, especially creatives, who usually make below par wages anyway.
But….
For me this experience in 2007 led to a full time paid job in 2008.
It’s a hard thing for the individual to balance but balance they must. Would I do it again? Depends. But after a year of proving myself and putting the runs on the board I think paid work under any circumstance in my field is what I deserve.
It’s an increasingly common thing to see, yes. But that just makes it worse, imo. It makes it harder for people whose livelihoods depend on having their skills recognised as having monetary value when more and more people expect free design, or want thousands of submissions only one of whom will be paid.
I say this as someone who got their first out of uni job after volunteering for a few months: this is not the same thing. Free design is becoming the default, rather than something that’s appreciated as a donation worth X amount of money.
Plus, as pointed out in the link I provided, crowdsourcing rarely leads to better design, so it’s of dubious benefit to the person running the contest as well. There are plenty of documented cases of entrants either knowingly or unknowingly entering designs that violate people’s copyright or that don’t meet the specs required in some way. So it’s a false economy, too.
This is the model to which all businesses shall aspire: sometimes you can get decades of labour out of people without them ever seeing minimum wage.
Yeah there was a lot of this in the last recession. Graphic designers, copywriters etc struggle to work and/or make coffee in recessions. And kids entering the job market tend to get a lot of ‘this is a real opportununity
to work for nothing‘ type bullshit. Happened to me – heaps. Usually courtesy of baby-boomer mediocrities (Oedipus again) who’d spent their entire ‘working’ lives courtesy of the taxpayer..
A design competition for a govt department banner? Egad! That’ll make you the new Neville Brody in no time.
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I’ve got it. Here it is. Straight from my heart to yours Kevvie darling.
What I really think you are missing is that Graphic Design, while a noble profession in itself, is also something that a lot of people enjoy as a hobby.
I mean, the reason people don’t hold competitions for people to do their tax returns is that isn’t fun. But there are thousands of amateur artists out there who see designing a corporate logo as a fun challenge.
Totally agree Anna. I have no problems with competitions, but competitions with no prize at all ie. nothing!??
In that case, it’s not a competition, it’s just people doing work for free that needed to be done, and the supposed client choosing the one they liked all for nix.
Insulting.
you can also add “school based traineeships” in IT to the list. Let the kids off a couple of periods a weeks and make them run the network instead of paying someone to do it.
But there are thousands of amateur artists out there who see designing a corporate logo as a fun challenge.
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And that’s why they’re amateurs. There is nothing fun about designing logos. But it’s way more fun then designing a banner. For a govt!
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Talking of which here’s my new improved idea for Kevvie’s facebook site.
Not just IT Darin. There’s an increasing tendency for universities to encourage/require undergraduates to do ‘internships’, which consist of hundreds of hours of unpaid work for an employer. Maybe we’ll soon return to the craft system of the pre-industrial era, in which workers pay employers to get a job instead of vice versa.
@Chris: I don’t think the analogy to open source software holds up particularly well in this case. A closer analogy would be volunteering to produce closed source, proprietary software for a for-profit company, and people understandably don’t do that very often! They’re harnessing free labour at a time when graphic designers are finding it hard to find jobs.
I’ll explain in greater detail (apologies for the length):
Yes, one motivation for volunteering effort for an open source project is to “get your name out there”, to have a visible body of work you can brag about (whether to friends, potential employers, whatever). But there’s a deeper motivation for me and I think many others, which is, basically, that it makes the world a better place.
There’s a couple of parts to that. Partly it’s that by producing software available at zero cost you’re making a public good that anyone can benefit from, but that’s still not seeing the big picture. But even more importantly I’m creating something that others can learn from and improve — building an empowered community with continually improving skills and tools. This is because the source code, not just the end product, is Free (free as in speech (libre), not merely free as in beer (gratis)). In fact, the development process itself tends to be open and community-oriented; works-in-progress are shared, critiqued, and refined by a community of people (whether volunteers or paid) that have an interest in producing a better piece of software.
And that leads into the significant part, which is that by sharing the source code, and inviting contributions from anyone that’s interested (for whatever reason), by building a commons of excellent Free software to learn and borrow from, I and many others feel you generally produce superior software to the traditional closed-shop process.
Holding a competition to produce some graphic design for a company or government department doesn’t take advantage of any of this, except for the minor exception of the single person that wins. No other contributors benefit (except perhaps from the practice, but they don’t need a competition for that); no-one learns from anything from anyone else; the state of the art is not advanced.
Actually, it would be possible to hold a competition that was a little bit more like building a freely reusable and modifiable software: hold it in the open. Require all entries to be in a source format (probably PSD, but in an ideal world a truly open, non-proprietary source format would be ideal, perhaps SVG), and publish them as soon as they are received, and explicitly encourage other entries to build on existing ones. Not just say “please build on existing entries”, but put some effort into making that practical (just as any decent free software project will tell you where to find bug reports etc.) Random collaboration makes credit-giving a little harder, but far from impossible. To their credit they are reserving the right to release all entries under “a creative commons licence” (presumably CC-BY 2.5 (au), although they really ought to be explicit about legal details like that), but that’s still a far cry from making this anything like a free/open source software project.
They could probably learn a lot from the guys running OpenAustralia. They really understand how openness and community participation should work.
(Disclosure: I’m currently lucky enough paid to work full-time on Free/Open Source (GPL) software project, although I’ve been a contributor to open source software since well before I thought I might get paid to do so.)
Yobbo: I see it more likely as:
But there are thousands of amateur artists out there who see
designingphotoshopping a corporate logo as a fun challenge.There are at least two sites that I know of that have regular photoshopping competitions: Fark and B3TA. But themes are generally chosen to get a laugh or a rise out of the observer. For example, the last B3TA challenge was to take the piss out of neo-Nazi BNP head Nick Griffin.
This Government 2.0 competition seems a little too serious to be fun. Perhaps intellectually satisfying for the artists entering the comp and applying their skills. But fun?
But there are thousands of amateur artists out there who see designing a corporate logo as a fun challenge.
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And that’s why they’re amateurs.
Oh so true.
Whoa yeah – being creative it’s so wild and crazy. Who needs money?
Yep, this sort of thing shits me as well.
This is funny. After writing this I just received a draft of flyer for a documentary for a distributor’s catalogue. Pretty simple stuff. Images, words. Muck around with them to make a design. But guess what – I paid a graphic designer. Not much admittedly, but he’s a friend. If I can pay for a raphic design job, why can’t the govt?
This whinge is too precious. Since when is “graphic design” ‘creative’? What’s wrong with the government getting “the people” involved? Do you cry when Big Brother contestants aren’t paid industry rates?
I’m really unclear why this should inspire vitriol. If a designer thinks their talents, skills and products are worth more than this, they don’t enter. They lose nothing. They’re not being forced to work for nothing.
For all those who decide that exposure and the sheer pleasure of doing work is worth the effort, they will enter.
And there must be alot of the latter considering the success of such schemes, and considering the number of young designers out there who tell you that getting experience and exposure is the most important thing for their careers, you can see how they can see the virtue in the deal.
If the first group gets no business, then I guess no-one else values their work as much as they do themselves. This gives them the exalted status of frustrated artist.
But if a company/government takes work freely granted even whilst the fact no payment will be made is made explicit, I cannot see what is to be condemned unless we believe the artists providing the work are too stupid to make decisions for themselves
Richard, you’re missing the point. It’s not just that Graphic Designers have the power to refuse to enter if they so wish, it’s that most people expect that this sort of work be done for free. Graphic Design is not considered ‘work’, which has been reinforced by the government by this very competition, so the value of an individual with talent, vision and experience is devalued.
If it was an industrial design job, or some kind of architectural design work for the government, you can guarantee it would be up for tender – or, at the very least, be a competition aimed at professionals, not ‘the people’, offering prize money. Instead, they expect something for nothing.
Like the saying goes, you can die of exposure.
Spot on, Amanda.
“Visionary graphic designers”!!!????
What Mark said.
Germaine Greer said to me that if you give your work away it will be treated as if it’s worthless.
So if I’m getting it, it’s not so much that it’s exploitative or anything, but a strong symbolic issue whereby people have to recognise that creative professions (including graphics and advertising it seems) have to have their value recognised with money. That the value of these outputs will only be afforded the same respect as other outputs if a price tag is put on it.
I applaud the emergence of this sentiment. We’ve had centuries of frustrated artists saying their work wasn’t recognised because they wouldn’t cater to the demands of petty commercialism and the crass desire for material rewards.
To have creative types saying the recognition they desire from society should be clearly quantified in money is refreshing.
Ally Kinsey, assuming in fact your enquiry is a serious one (and not just trolling, but let’s be charitable), if you think design is an irrelevant criterion in the presentation and usability of any object or service or interface, then I’m afraid you don’t understand much about either creativity or business.
“We’ve had centuries of frustrated artists saying their work wasn’t recognised because they wouldn’t cater to the demands of petty commercialism and the crass desire for material rewards.”
Huh?
Laura
Clearly you are a bit behind the times, but for Germaine “virginity” was “work”.
Hmmm. I think John Greenfield is happy to give folks the benefit of his insight and wit without charge.
As you were.
Design “competitions” cheapen the industry and the fact that the government has (again) jumped on the exploitative bandwagon is very disappointing. People who enter into such competitions do the whole industry a disservice and promote the idea that design is worthless. I would urge people (particularly designers and design students) not to enter such competitions. Lets try to show that you get what you pay for hey.
If people really want to give away their time and design talents for free, there are lots of charities out there that could use it and they make a lot less money than the government.
Andrew B – I agree that the analogy to Open Source software is not exact, but there are similarities to open source development with the entries being released under CC. And increasingly CC artwork is becoming an important part of open source software development and the increasingly large pool of CC’d artwork is very valuable.
As you say it would be better if people were allowed and encouraged to build upon other people’s entries. Having a couple of rounds of entries would help, perhaps choosing the best 5-10 and commenting why they were chosen.
Fine @ 13 – Just because they’re amateurs doesn’t mean that some won’t produce very professional results.
One reason competitions like this can produce excellent entries these days is that if you have a computer then there is Open Source software to develop professional artwork available for free. You no longer have to fork out thousands of dollars for proprietary tools. So people can, and do, spend many hours of their free time developing skills in these areas, often with the help of tutorials released for free.
I agree there can be a problem with people expecting time and effort from graphic artists for free (programmers in the open source world have similar issues). But as others have said if you don’t want to then don’t participate, just don’t try to stop others from participating in something which they enjoy just because they’re not “professionals”.
Indeed, Jaz, you make a good point.
Note also that the government pats itself on the back for offering prizes of 100k for writing.
It’s part of the point, but not all of it. Because most charities still pay most professionals as well: builders, electricians, PR guys, accounting people…
It’s the difference between a culture in which free design is the norm, and in which when people offer free design it’s treated as the valuable gift that it is.
Nick Gruen, (who I think is a fine fellow), writes for the Fin and whoever else for no payment–because he can afford to. But he is doing no serious writer trying to make a quid any favours. Indeed, by his actions he is helping to ensure they don’t get a look in at all. Why would the Fin pay a freelancer to write a quite possibly more rigorous article than what Nick produces if they had to pay them?
What Germaine said to Laura. Spot on.
This is so very typical of the freemarket. Get as much of it as you possibly can for free. It’s the only way it can function profitably. Free labour, questionable tax offsets, unscrupulous employment arrangements or any other dishonest scheme you can come up with to save yourself a buck. Run to the letter of the law, with no offshore banking arrangements, no outsourcing of labour, no subsidies or government handouts and free market capitalism is a dead duck.
This isn’t a ‘competition’ as we’ve all come to understand. There isn’t any ceremony, perpetual trophy, no awards, no prize etc.
As Anna’s links show, this isn’t some one-off brainfart by some public servant wanting to award excellence in design, (through one site banner FFS) it’s apparently become an on-going way for businesses to have regular graphic design work done for free.
And it’s for one thing for start-up companies and/or the local accountant to want to get his/her business card done on the cheap, but another imo, for a Govt Dept. (or medium-big corporates for that matter) to be hiding this crummy no-paid piece work behind the fig-leaf of it being a ‘competition’.
What about a competition to do your job better? No prizes, just the satisfaction of doing someone else’s job for free!!
I’ll just put on my devil’s advocate hat here.
I happen to work in an industry whose major (possibly sole) customer is government (not necessarily ours). Sometimes the govt will put out a job for tender (say, to supply an air warfare destroyer, or something). The handful of companies in the local industry then bid for the job, said bids costing some millions of dollars, typically. This is at the cost, and risk, of the companies bidding for the work.
Of course, the winning bid makes its company a fuckload of money (which is in stark contrast with this contest), but all the other bidders are out of pocket.
I don’t think this is right or fair btw, particularly for small graphic design businesses, but it’s the price of doing business with the government. Unfortunately.
The tendering process for government work can be a real pain, David, I know from experience. But it’s worth going through if you think there’s a realistic chance of getting a contract. I don’t see the analogy here because the ‘winning’ applicant gets no remuneration.
Everybody please take a deep breath. The taskforce isn’t trying to pull a swifty. They presumably thought it would be a nice way to show their crowd-sourcing bona fides.
Anna, your argument sounds eerily like rantings and ravings I saw in the 90s over open source. It was the devil’s own work according to lots of programmers. The end of the world, the path to universal starvation, an insult to working programmers, a scam for businesses to get slave labour etc etc.
Look. This is Nick Gruen we’re talking about here. He’s honestly trying to do the right thing.
I think the idea about asking entrants to submit “source” – XCFs, PSDs etc – is an excellent one.
David Irving, it’s not a bid. It’s the entire design, already finished and handed in.
Jaques: Ranting and raving? Spare me. I don’t care if it “sounds similar” to anything else. Handing in the working files after doesn’t make it open source. The work is already done, and wasn’t paid for. The analogy doesn’t work how you think it works. Allowing other people to change and alter your work isn’t the same thing as asking someone to do work for free.
And I’m not suggesting that anyone’s doing anything in bad faith. I’m pointing to a really big problem that non-designers don’t see, because they don’t see the hours put in to design a decent logo. I am explaining which is what blogs are for, I thought?
I wonder if Nick Gruen and the taskforce members are working for free? Serious question. Out of a spirit of pride in their work and a desire to serve the public, etc?
And how do you suppose open source programming works? I’d like to hear more about how it’s not at all creative.
We’re not talking about people being asked to hand over old logos for other people to re-work them, which is what would need to happen for the analogy to work.
Giving away a recipe is open-source. Getting a bunch of people to make cakes and give them to you so you can eat them all and choose the best one is not.
I’d say blogging is a closer analogy than open-source here.
Both writing and graphic design are real work, for which you often need to pay a professional, but which are also done, and often done well, for reasons unrelated to money.
Way back when, I got a theme designed for me in return for writing blog posts on topics of interest to the designer.
But there are thousands of amateur artists out there who see designing a corporate logo as a fun challenge.
::shakes head::
Most of my PhD on ‘enthusiasm’ looked at the curious ontology of ‘challenges’ — the way they are open multiplicities (so an outcome is not known), but demand one to mobilise their enthusiasm as an affirmation of the possibility of a positive outcome. Rise to the challenge, as it were. Enthusiasts will their own sujectification. It is one of the ways the cultural industry carries out its war against labour through this practice of crowdsourcing. When the revolution comes I want to make sure the crowdsourcers are the first ones lined up and shot.
Surely the government should be working on protocols to make sure young creatives can protect themselves from these sorts of horrible mechanisms of exploitation? Maybe the gov 2.0 fools should think about the fact that anyone — in the whole world — could potentially enter this competition. Do they want to protect jobs in Australia? What is their mission?
I think those who believe they shouldn’t give their work away for nothing should immediately cease writing blog posts.
“I think those who believe they shouldn’t give their work away for nothing should immediately cease writing blog posts.”
Does your work look like a blog post?!?! I am a fulltime writer. My work looks nothing like a blog post.
I am finding the whole blogosphere experiment increasngly tedious because of this sort of unthinking comment.
What Glen said.
AFAI can tell, the website doesn’t say whether the taskforce members are being paid. Just that ‘costs associated’ with the chair, admin etc will be borne by the department of finance.
Which is, at its most minimal, a step up from bearing the costs associated with designing stuff for the website from your own pocket.
Jacques I believe that, but I wonder that he’s not given much, if any thought to the implications of his free labour for others less well positioned–less dilettent-ish.
In time he may find that this:
is a remorseless beast that just keeps sucking, long after the first flushes of puffed uppedness. And then its back to Germaine’s advice to Laura and the adage pride cometh before the fall.
What a great topic. As a full-time writer (who has a few graphic designer friends) I am tired of the expectation that we must work for free to gain experience. It is against the law not to pay a student for training in their casual checkout chick job. Yet writers and designers undertake a lot of free work to build a portfolio and gain contacts. I can’t see how it’ll change though – the whole attitude of the industry needs to evolve. And of course that starts with us not doing work for free – but tell that to the struggling writer/designer starting out: the choice is do it for nothing or do nothing forever.
I do find this interesting, in that many of the arguments here are the ones commenters regular deride when coming from the mouths of journalists.
I’ve worked in ‘creative’ areas (though have now abandoned it for glorious, boring, well-paid work), and this kind of thing doesn’t really bother me.
God knows, I’m the last person to advocate a free market, but truly the value of something is only what people are willing to pay for it. I don’t believe graphic designers, writers, artists, musicians, carpenters, tinkers, tailors, soldiers or sailors, have some inalienable right to pursue their professions if there’s not a market for it. There are markets for unpleasant, non-famous jobs, in all those fields.
I dunno, this calls to mind the atruly execrable arguments used by Australian Authors in the recent debate about book import duties.
Kaste Grenville argued that it was “guaranteed” Australian authors and publishers would be “seriously and often fatally damaged” in a free market.”
Tough, I say to that and this. Plenty of graphic designers do survive on what they draw, and plenty don’t – just like every other industry where people are willing to work for little or free. This isn’t the cotton mills people, they can always go and get another job if they don’t like it or can’t earn from it – like the vast majority of writers for example.
Missed the point by a country mile patrickg.
To keep with the analogy, in the open source world people often ask for programmers to modify the recipe or add new recipes to the collection. If no one finds the request interesting it doesn’t get done though. Releasing the source files to artwork is important because it helps others in working out how it was produced and makes it easier for it to be modified. Even better would be asking that the entrants explain how it was created which would add to the lots of good CC tutorial videos around creating artwork.
Jacques is correct in that the arguments used here are very similar to the ones used by programmers opposed to open source development. People concerned their work will be undervalued, reduce their wages and do them out of a job because there are others out there who will do the work without payment.
Feel free to enlighten me, rather than bandy insults, Laura.
Glen & Laura,
When I say ‘blog post’ I’m referring to the actual topic essay not the comments that follow on. I’ve read many blog posts that are far better than what I see in the opinion pages of Fairfax and Murdoch publications for which I imagine the writer receives decent renumeration.
In 2005, about 2 years after I started my blog in I got offered a job writing copy for a porn site. I turned it down because I wanted to keep writing (for free) about the subjects that interested me, throbbing cocks not being one of them.
Seriously, no. That’s like saying that if an artist releases her sketches we’ll be able to see how she painted that beautiful canvas.
Actually Laura, PatrickG at#47 is bang on the point.
I’m starting to think trying to clarify is pointless, because people aren’t actually interested in hearing what I have to say, but in case it does, one more time: I’m not against unpaid work per se. I’m against this kind of attitude that they are providing the opportunity to work for free as a favour to the designer rather than as as a favour to the person who’s getting the work for free.
And furthermore, I’m against our Labor Government lending support to the idea that this shit is in anyway good for workers, good for the economy, good for the the skilled employment they’re always going on about.
This has been the case in the music industry from time immemorial, particularly of course with original work. We used to call it “paying to play” and people still do. Of course you were “paid”, whether it was a door deal or some flat rate, but nevertheless once you allowed for your transport and PA hire and rehearsal rooms and your instruments and depreciation and whatnot, you ended up paying to play. There’s even a book of that name with interviews with Chrissie Amphlett and similar.
And you can be sure the publicans saw themselves providing a favour to us and our scruffy retinue, rather than the other way round, despite the fact they sold more booze (and, in the noughties, food). Except for the enlightened few.
Graphic design and digital art is the rock n roll of the noughties.
Right, I get you Anna, but if it’s an attitudinal thing, surely the fault lies in the eyue of the beholder here?
We use the term ‘Designer’ in an homogeneous sense, however in this context (and in similar context with many different titles), designer encompasses everything from a fifteen year old kid to a small firm.
I read an interesting post recently in a similar vien to this, asking if your media is ‘dense’ enough for new media. I think it’s relevant in that the argument is if your topic is interesting enough it will good responses.
Regarding my comfort with the wording, etc, no I don’t like, but hey no harm in trying I feel. There are some people I’m sure who will feel they’re getting a favour done, and many who won’t.
Word Helen.
Although I feel miffed that you’ve trumped my making-everything-about-the-music-industry schtick.
Genuine pay-to-play still exists in Sydney. We played the Cat & Fiddle in Balmain last year, and they charge each band an even share of the $100 they pay the mixer. Then they ask each payer who comes in which band they’re there for, and the first x dollars each brings in goes straight to the mixer till they reach their share – AFTER the venue skims their “cut” of the door. So on a packed night where the bar takes thousands (never mind the shitty overpriced thin steaks and pokies out back raking it in), one of the lowly support bands could still be forking out actual cash for the privelege.
I was gobsmacked. We scraped over the line, but I was all fired up with an impassioned speech, and somewhat disappointed not to get the chance.
Are those hours worth it? Can designers demonstrate the marginal benefits good design to justify the extra cost? I’m not talking about “Look how great the design is!” but rather “How much more money will the professional design generate over the for the company over what the amateur one will do?”; or “How much more effective will the service delivery be of the government department because they chose a professional design over an amateur one?”
Anna @ 53 – seriously yes. Part of my work is creative and I’ve found looking at source files for photoshop/gimp/inkscape to be quite informative for improving the technical skills required to create the artwork. And I think have a reasonable pool of candidate logos released would help by seeing how different people approached the same problem. Not that there is a shortage of logo competitions out there.
I’m not suggesting that this approach be done all the time, but done sometimes I think it can be good for the community at large. And its one way to allow for individuals in the general community to feel like they’re participating in government rather that it always being enclosed in the public service or by companies.
FDB @ 58 – I’m a bit amazed that bands will pay to play – is there that big a shortage of venues?
If you think the technical aspects are the most valuable part of a logo, as opposed to the idea, then I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree.
“FDB @ 58 – I’m a bit amazed that bands will pay to play – is there that big a shortage of venues?”
In Sydney, yes. The Hopetoun in Surry Hills, the Annandale in err… Annandale, and then there’s… anyone from Sydney help me out?
Those two are pretty good, even in Melbourne they’d be a bit above average in terms of looking after the bands. But I can comfortably walk to 4 or 5 places just as good from my house in North Carlton, which is by no means a centre for live music in Melbourne.
O noes!!! From a music derailment to a Sydney Melbourne stoush… sorry Anna.
Anna @ 61 – not the most valuable part, but a required part of the process. And from what I’ve seen of creative, but not really computer people, an area they struggle with. I’ve seen some of the “amateurs” do some pretty amazing stuff once they can get over that hump. The community does gain from having a larger pool of people with these skills even if it might to be some small detriment to the professionals.
I probably didn’t express myself too clearly last night. (It must have been the wine … )
I realise there’s a huge difference between a large company tendering for a govt contract and a graphic designer entering a contest with no prize. Particularly as the small number of said large companies who operate in Australia know that even if the don’t get this contract, they’ll probably get the next one. (We suspect there’s a kind of informal round-robin allocation, just to keep the industry competitive. Also, everyone allows for the cost of previous unsuccessful bids in the current bid.)
I guess my point was that it’s always risky and expensive doing any sort of govt work, whether paid (ultimately, one way or another) or for free.
Sure, but that doesn’t make the logos open source in the way software is open source.
Derail away, FDB, it’s not an issue that’s limited to graphic design, and perhaps the more media that are discussed the easier it will be for non-creatives to get why it’s important (maybe).
Anna, there’s a pretty big difference between Pay-to-play and do-it-for-free.
I’m fascinated by the idea that the federal government still thinks design comps are a good idea. I mean, they had one for the flag and got heaps of crappy designs to choose from and the winner continues to irritate a reasonably large portion of the population (therefore failing miserably as a nation symbol), but they haven’t learned.
I still don’t think you understand how open source, or programming generally, works. I am here to answer any questions you might have. I will try to restrain my stereotypically nerdy impulse to be rude.
Also, are you honestly saying that what I buy from a designer is the idea? That all else is unimportant dross? Because I bet customers are picking uninspired but polished logos over deeply meaningful smudges.
Heh. ISWYDT.
Hey Jacques, you’re a techy fellow. Will you fix my broken, broken website for nothing? I’ll credit you for it.
What do you mean you want payment for it? It’s Drupal—that’s open source!
Anna — what I still can’t understand about all this is, Why are you against unpaid work per se?
Ah, I’m only joshin’. In other news, I have to stay right here and make sure he doesn’t leave the room, until you return. Unless I go with you, and he leaves the room while we stay right here, in which case he can stay in the room until we leave.
Jacques, I do understand open source. I have a lot of nerd friends, some of whom have made shit loads of money as software designers and all of whom support the idea of open source.
And I still say that your analogy is wrong; it doesn’t work.
I am not saying that the idea is the only thing you pay for. You pay big money to good designers for their ideas as well as their ability to implement them well. That doesn’t mean that releasing the working files for a logo makes it open source in the way that releasing the code for a software program makes that open source.
Sorry, David Irving (no relation), I missed your comment back there.
Actually I thought you expressed yourself fine, and I did understand your point. What I’m saying is that that too is a faulty analogy, albeit one that is very common.
It’s not about amount of time spent, or money spent. Bidding/tendering involve saying how you would do the work if you win. Design comps involve hundreds of people actually doing the job then only one of them getting paid for it (or not, in this case).
Designers get people all the time asking them to “show me your idea for our project (rather than a folio of previous work) then we’ll decide if we want to hire you”. It does sound reasonable, because on the surface it does sound like tendering for a job. But unfortunately it doesn’t actually work that way because all of the work needed for a logo happens before the logo’s finished. They’re kind of asking the architect to build the hotel before deciding whether they want to hire him; they’re asking the job network provider to provide the service for a year before deciding whether to fund them…
Liam @ 69 – Ask politely here with enough of the right information and you’ll probably get some free help fixing your system. In the old proprietary software development model you might have a free 1800 number to ring with the person funded through the sticker price on the software. In the open source world you can get help from volunteers giving back to the community – nothing wrong with asking for “work” without offering payment, most people just ask that requests are polite.
If you can’t get free help and its important enough to you then you start paying money. Some people donate money directly to projects because they know it will help and they don’t have time to give back in kind.
Anna,
What exactly makes a certain activity worth paying for? There are a whole heap of things that people do (or avoid doing) without being directly compensated that enable businesses to function more efficiently. What makes this so wrong, particularly when there is no guarantee that going for the paid option will lead to a better job being done or an adequate return on investment?
Thanks Anna, don’t mind if I do…
If I record someone’s album, the resulting product will be delivered in one of two ways:
1) They get nothing but a ProTools session with the raw multitracks (kick drum on one channel, snare on the next, etc etc). They can then mix it themselves, or pay someone else to do it, or come back to me and pay me to do it later. In this context, I am a recording engineer, and my expertise is there in all the shit I did with the recording room, mics and the mixing desk and associated hardware, which would be very hard to replicate without some knowledge and skill.
2) They get me to mix the music, and so get only a stereo file (or a left mono and right mono, but anyway…). In this case they cannot know how I’ve done the actual work of mixing – beyond guesswork. If I gave them the full ProTools session with all the automation and plugins running and their settings visible, I’d be straightforwardly giving away trade secrets, and also inviting a situation where they tinker with my work and muddy the waters as to whose work is whose.
If someone asks me to mix an album and then hand over the full sessions, I will ask not to be credited with the mix. Paid, but not credited.
Heh, that’s open source development! No trade secrets but you get to see other people’s secrets in compensation and use them as well as yours when you create something making it even better. Its about who really understands whats going on and deciding when and where to use what formerly used to be secret. There is also the muddying of attribution as more people get involved. Forking of projects where someone will take what others have done and branch off in a different direction also occurs.
But in the end I think you end up with a better product. Instead of being stuck in a small team of people you get to use the knowledge and experience of the whole, often worldwide, community in exchange for your own contributions.
There seems to be a lot of argument that confuses the real benefits of free/collective labour in particular contexts vs the systemic exploitation of over-enthusiastic amateurs (or even professionals) through crowdsourcing. If this gov 2.0 intiative is to have any positive benefit then it needs to lean more to the targeted free labour end of the spectrum with real positive social benefits and not the exploitative crowdsourcing end of the spectrum.
We have a blog at work for one of the magazines. I came up with an awesome idea for a ‘character’ blogger that would appear to be a single person but would allow everyone not related to the mag to publish blog posts and help the freshly relaunched site (with blog). Unfortunately management has not paid anyone extra money for particiupating in the blog (including me) so it is only maintained by those people working directly on the magazine. Although I would love to help my friends on their magazine’s website, I don’t get paid to do it and therefore will not give my labour away for free.
My own personal blog has transformed from being a space to think complex thoughts out loud (so to speak), to help me think through them, into a space to think thoughts that are useless for my work and of only real interest to myself.
But that’s the thing, Glen. No one’s paying you, so you don’t do it. Sure mgmt may have silly expecations, destined to be disappointed (this happens at my work in one area or another every other day), but I don’t see the pexploitation, unless you’re going to get fired or cautioned for not contributing.
Same deal with this. Yes the wording etc. is asking something for nothing, but people are free to say no, and not in the “free to starve, free to steal a loaf of bread and get hanged” sense, either.
Yes, quite.
My point (perhaps I forgot to make it… *checks*… yes, probably) was that the work, however creative, that goes into writing software, is ultimately done to create something to be used again and again for a variety of different end-user projects, which may eventually require it to branch off into separate forms. It’s perhaps a shame for software engineers, but that’s the reality – their work stands or falls on its utility, that’s all, and that’s it.
This is a totally different thing to creating an aesthetic product. If someone wants to release their music under creative commons of one kind or another, fine. If someone wants to let other people do totally different mixes from scratch, then fine. But if I want to record/mix music and make a livelihood from it, it needs to be clear what belongs in my portfolio and what doesn’t. Or who would hire me?
patrickg, you (I assume) and I are not the equivalent of a fresh journo graduate or young graphic designer.
Another example of not-quite-exploitation end of the spectrum but still crowdsourcing is the ‘come up with a flavour’ from Samboy (I think?) potato chips competition currently running. They are paying the winner cash + a share of profits from the sale.
The government offers no renumeration for this gov 2.0 nonsense and in fact seems to almost pride itself on being hip to the new forms of extracting surplus value from ‘free’ labour.
Since when is “graphic design” ‘creative’?
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Since Neville Brody. Since David Carson…
Gustav Klutsis, Saul Bass????????
This is a totally different thing to creating an aesthetic product. If someone wants to release their music under creative commons of one kind or another, fine. If someone wants to let other people do totally different mixes from scratch, then fine. But if I want to record/mix music and make a livelihood from it, it needs to be clear what belongs in my portfolio and what doesn’t. Or who would hire me?
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FDB some really interesting beige people from Kevvie’s crew want you to do the sound track for their wedding. They’re fascinating people. You should hear their thoughts on capital account managment systems. They’re not fussy. It just has to sound exactly like the most over-produced crap from the 80s. And also could dress like Milli Vanilli at the event.
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No we can’t pay you but just think of how proud you’ll feel.
Anna – But unfortunately it doesn’t actually work that way because all of the work needed for a logo happens before the logo’s finished. They’re kind of asking the architect to build the hotel before deciding whether they want to hire him
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Exactly! If I had $5 for every shyster who wanted ideas free of charge I wouldn’t need to charge for ideas anymore.
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Sorry about the shit-train of posts. I’ll stop now.
Uh, actually, that’s exactly what makes it open source.
It is trivial to identify which programmer has contributed what code, thanks to technology that has appeared in various forms since the 1960s. Contributing to an opensource project is one way to build a publicly-verifiable portfolio that anyone can pull up.
And are you saying that a sound mixer’s work doesn’t live and die by utility, in this case entertainment, to the end listener?
just a note to say everything Anna has had to say is spot on. And the problem with “people doing things better for businesses for free” desipis @ 74 is that the only people who actually benefit are the shareholders….
the top one percent of the world’s adult population (about 37 million people) owns 40 percent of the world’s wealth, while the top two percent owns over half and the top 10 percent owns 85 percent. Wealth here defined as physical and financial assets minus liabilities….
it’s really that simple…open source – fine and dandy…exploitation – completely unacceptable….
“And are you saying that a sound mixer’s work doesn’t live and die by utility, in this case entertainment, to the end listener?”
Jacques Chester I use sound mixers and sound editors all the time for film production. It’s nothing to do with entertainment for the end listener. It’s all to do with telling a story using sound. Not just music, either. Different sound editors and mixers (and they’re often different people) have different styles and aesthetics. Who I choose to work with has absolutely nothing to do with whether they know how to use the software – usually Pro Tools. That’s the easiest bit and I’d expect a first year media studies student to know that. It’s what they do with those skills – how they play with sound, their sensitivity to storytelling and the needs of the film. I imagine that FDB is talking about these sorts of skills.
I was intending a narrower definition of utility than that Jacques. What Fine said, but also at a simpler level…
While aesthetic products like those of a sound mixer may be used in different ways, their core function is to be consumed for entertainment. The same cannot be said for source code, no matter how purdy one such as you might sometimes find it.
Fortunately in the case of the government the shareholders are us
FDB @ 89 – unless you’re writing computer games
On the other hand I can see how its easier to see how open source code can be easily reusable and built upon by others. Having a critical mass of it may mean that the price that people pay for software drops, but it also allows the wider community to do things which were formerly not feasible. Would blogs like LP even exist without open source software or would it all be too expensive?
Are there similar benefits to be gained in areas like the digital arts?
Fine @ 88 – it sounds like the sound mixers would have very little to lose by releasing their trade secret settings then. Whats valued is their ability to decide when and where to use those settings. And if everyone can draw on a publicly available pool, rather than just what they’ve managed to discover themselves isn’t it more likely we’d end up with better end product?
Chris, I guess the idea of ‘settings’ is an odd one to me and I don’t know quite what is meant by it. The sound mixers I know spend time training new people and give lots of free advice. I guess I’m speaking from the perspective of a producer who has no interest in how they get their effects, only that they get them. It’s true that sound editors give me a copy of their wav files on CD. I need a record of them and they’re eventually preserved in the National Film and sound Archive, but again I never use them for anything.
“Are there similar benefits to be gained in areas like the digital arts?”
Oh, for sure there are. Quasi-open source stuff like creative commons licensing has the potential to open up some great areas for collaboration and “cumulative” artworks. But I’d argue that creative expression still has at its core the spontaneous bringing into being of something “new”, which has much potential to be corrupted into something it was never meant to be by sampling or reworking. Now that’s fine for the new artist, who need not be overly concerned with the original creator’s vision, but you can see how it’s not so straightforwardly “good” as open source software development. Eye of the beholder and all that, whereas if someone adds a feature to a program without creating bugs, or makes it run faster, nobody can really argue about whether it was a good thing or not. If it “works” then it’s good.
Fine @ 91 – I wonder if anyone is archiving how these sound engineers get the effects they want. Maybe thats too domain specific and geeky.
FDB @ 92 said:
Thats not how it works in the more mature projects (or generally by projects lead by the more experienced programmers). Aesthetics are important when it comes to code development which is probably why many programmers consider software development to have strong creative components. Its difficult for me to describe here, but I think good programmers have a sense of whether a code change “looks good” regardless of its effect. Its common for programmers to reject ugly fixes even if they “work”. At the core there are often issues about maintainability, readability etc, but elegant programming solutions look and feel good too.
The issues around corruption of code also exist for programmers – which is why some projects end up creating licences requiring renaming of software if its modified by others. Perhaps renaming is harder to do with the traditional arts.
But at the core the sentiments are fairly similar – creators have a vision of where their creations should end up – and by open sourcing it they give up that control for what is hoped is wider community benefit. For those who have always worked in a proprietary manner, it takes quite a change in mind set to go this way (there’s still lots of proprietary software around).
Jacques, you seem to be the one who doesn’t get the graphic design process and why your analogy is faulty. You’re being too literal with the technology links, so you’re missing how the analogy should actually work for a logo to be open source. Lots of designers design their logo on paper, then scan it in. So the “working files” would be a scrap book.
A logo is an idea, a mark, a brand that distinguishes a particular company, program, product, person etc from everything else. A symbol on which to build a brand reputation and to act as something to identify a history of doing a particular thing, and a promise to do that thing in the future.
For a logo to be open source, the rest of the world would be able to use it to build on it, take it apart, and use it for whatever they want. If the Nike logo was open source I’d be allowed to, say, draw it resting on a couch to make a logo for ugg boots or pyjamas. As far as I can tell, they’re not talking about making the taskforce logo open source. They would probably try to stop someone from setting up a site criticising the taskforce using a site design and logo that looks similar, whether they credit the designer or not. Sure someone could open up the psd file and decide to make a logo that uses the same number of layers, but so what?
You’re effectively trying to argue that because the words in a book are released to the public that the Harry Potter novels are open source. The process isn’t the product, and you’re ignoring the fact that for a logo, most of the process is in someone’s head.
Anna;
I appreciate you clarifying your analogy. But I still don’t agree with the argument that this is exploitation. The fact is that you have recreated arguments that we programmers had long ago. I simply don’t think design is as different as you say it is to somehow break the connection with what programmers did in the past.
However, I am derailing your thread by going around in circles on this, so let’s call it a day.
Oh OK, one last comment.
As Chris pointed out, that’s not quite true. Coders talk about elegance, readability, maintainability and other such “non-functional qualities”. There are lots of them — dozens in fact — that we are juggling as part of the work. We aim at beautiful code.
Even amongst ourselves we cannot determine if what we do is science, engineering, craft or art. It has elements of mathemtatical purity, discovery via scientific method, engineering know-how, prideful craftsmanship, poetry and painting. Others have related it to architecture, building, construction, farming, writing literature or growing pearls.
You’re not derailing at all. I think it’s important for everyone involved in creative industries to do more to understand each other’s fields.
I’m also not against making design more open and agree with FDB at 92.
It is important to note that part of what makes a logo “worth the money” is that you can make it your own and no-one else’s. But at the same time, releasing working files in some cases, and blogging about design and writing tutorials etc, is a great thing that helps the whole industry do better things.
I also think there’s a huge difference between designers doing that themselves, and governments and corporations relying on/expecting it. Especially Labor governments. This helps explain what I’m getting at.
You can do that as much with a logo that you get for free through a competition as you can with a logo you pay someone to develop, so I’m still not seeing the advantage of paying.
Well, exactly, Desipis! There isn’t one! As Anna has points out, if the system encourages people to work for nothing to the extent where you have people working for nothing and producing stuff to a professional standard, you’d be a mug!
If the Nike logo was open source I’d be allowed to, say, draw it resting on a couch to make a logo for ugg boots or pyjamas.
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If the Nike logo were open source it wouldn’t be the Nike logo. Logos are trademarks generally. If the logo is a trademark then it’s associated with a particular brand. Any sign that signifies something in particular is inherently associated with that something. Therefore crosses are linked to Christianity, ‘A’s with a strikethru and a circle are associated with anarchy etc. The relationship between the sign and the signified (sorry about the structuralism) is what makes a logo, a logo.
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And open source logo would be a floating signifier. It wouldn’t be a logo.
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BTW I seem to recall that the person who designed Nike’s swoosh way back when got $25 or some such for it.
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Also I hate designing logos. I’m sure you all wanted to know that.
Perhaps some of the disagreement is just cultural- the open source culture would still be considered a bit radical. For example I think there’s a middle ground here where government and corporations will ask, but not rely/expect contributions. #1 rule in working with the open source community – don’t do a dummy spit if no one implements a feature you want or when someone ignores your request for help. But I see running a competition as an organisation politely asking if there are people interested in contributing. I don’t think it will end up in the government relying on free contributions.
But just suppose there is a surprisingly large pool of talented amateur (defined as “doesn’t do it as their primary source of income” rather than attributing a skill level) designers who out there eager to create an endless supply of professional logos. Why would it be bad thing for corporations or governments to give them an outlet for their creativity without paying them? Especially when its the government, they are essentially giving their time and effort to their fellow citizens.
Talking of logos just how many commentors here have ‘cat’ logos? Do the cat logos outnumber the dog logos? Is there a political correlation?
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I like Klaus’ cat the best, it’s blue.
Helen @ 99 – lots of programmer mugs out there then!
Just because you don’t get paid doesn’t mean you get nothing out of it.
Chris
I didn’t say the programmers were mugs to provide the service, I said you’d be a mug to pay if you were getting an equivalent or better product for free.
Example: Me – I get WordPress which is fun and stable and does most of what I want it to, for nix. It outperforms many expensive pieces of software I could (cough) mention.
We are also examples the other way: Miranda Devine and Catherine Deveny get paid to publish their rants; I undercut them for nothing!
Helen @ 105
Sorry I misunderstood. That being said, many companies and individuals do contribute cash (or in-kind products/services) to open source projects without strings being attached. There’s one programmer in Australia that had free pizzas for many years as people would who use something he wrote and distributed freely would ring up his local pizza store and add credit to his account
Re: Wordpress – its likely that the proprietary software equivalents would be even
more expensive if wordpress and similar open source products didn’t exist.
But would he have been happy to keep that arrangement if the Govt had called and asked him to program something for them, for a pizza or two?
Mindy @ 107 – I think you’re missing the point. He wasn’t doing it because of the free pizzas – people were just giving him the money as a sign of appreciation, thanks and encouragement. Governments and corporations are free to use his software without paying, and they do. Probably even asked for improvements and bug fixes without offering payment.
Ask a random open source programmer to work on a random project for free and you’ll probably get a no in response. Ask them to develop something they’re really interested in and they have the time or ask around and find a group of people who are already working on an open source project doing something similar then you’re much more likely to get a positive response to your request. Want it done on your schedule or in a specific way? Then you’re likely to have start forking out money and employ someone.
But isn’t asking for something to be done to their schedule and in a specific way, for free, exactly what the government is asking?
Mindy I should have added to the end:
I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out if enough people are interested or not and whether they’ve allowed enough time for it to be done. But I still don’t see the competition as an insult to designers or not valuing their work.
Not this time Chris, it only happens when the govt, or a corporation does it for a second time and then says “What, you did it for free last time”.
Sorry Chris, I just don’t see how this is a competition? Except by using the word in it’s most mechanical sense.
So thousands of these so-called ‘competitions’ are being held annually, and people are now legitimately able to put “winner” of the ’2009 Blah Blah’ competition on their CV’s… even though, the judges are merely clients and not highly regarded industry professionals? This devalues and degrades properly constituted & judged Design Competitions and Design Awards and secondly overstates the competency of the so-called ‘designer competition winners’ to other potential employers and clients.
Yay for Standards!
And again, if people can’t see the difference between what goes on in the overall market in terms of providing services for free or bartering or Gift in kind etc – ie. between consenting adults, and what a Govt Dept does, especially when Government Departments form a huge backbone for the graphic design & printing and web graphic industry, then you ain’t going to get it now.
The Taskforce organisers even stated that they could have given it to our in-house departmental designers . So the work is not even being out-sourced but crowd-sourced and I said, a competition fig-leaf applied.
Graphic designers (including up and coming designers and graduates), have a huge and legitimate stake in making sure these practices do not become entrenched in Government nor in any listed companies and across major brands etc etc. As to what happens outside, it’s always been a graphics- free- for-all, always, as it should be.
Under the old ‘bull” labour system on the wharves, someone at least got paid for a day’s work.
Mindy – What, you did it for free last time
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Followed by the vital third chapter advising creatives entering the marketplace for the first time… What, you did it for free last time!!
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How’s Mork btw. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
Thanks for that; here I was writing about graphic design like I don’t know what a logo is. /snark
I didn’t mean to snark Anna. I’ve been a graphic designer, still am for fun. But that came from those few years when I was deluded enough to think I should be an IP lawyer.
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Logos are inherently connected to trademark. Free floating signifiers can’t really be logos. If you could put a swoosh on everything it wouldn’t make sense to use it as a logo. The process is cultural as well as legal I guess. Haven’t thought much about it in a long while. But I don’t think the Christians took out copyright on their fish or their crosses and yet…
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The fourth chapter of Sharm Watary’s book concerns vocational fufilment btw. It’s called: How Much of Your Soul Do You Really Need.
True, which is why I’m arguing that you can’t see a logo design contest in the same way as an open source initiative, because the contest-holders are asking for something that can’t be public property if it’s to do the job it’s needed for.
It’s also ironic, perhaps, that the exclusive nature of a logo is actually necessary for the act of subverting it, too. You can’t use the Nike logo or the Shell logo against the company in protest if it isn’t a mark that’s exclusive to them in the first place.
There is at least one exception – Tux which is for all intents the Linux logo in that it serves the same purpose as corporate logos – you see it and you know what it means. Created as a result of a logo competition although it didn’t win, it was released under a very open licence (just give attribution if asked) and is not a trademark. And as a result this has led to lots of interesting derivative works used for linux related projects, conferences, games etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux
“I’m not against unpaid work per se. I’m against this kind of attitude that they are providing the opportunity to work for free as a favour to the designer rather than as as a favour to the person who’s getting the work for free.”
Clearly if someone is willing to do the work that is required to enter this ‘competition’, then they value the benefits (e.g. experience, exposure) at greater than the costs (e.g. in time, opportunity cost), and therefore the ‘favours’ cut both ways. What you are really saying is that you personally would never do the cost/benefit analysis and come out on the side of contributing for $0, and therefore if someone else does it is reflective of some undesirable attitude (on the part of both acquirer and supplier).
A lot of the comments here are really about private interests vs. the public interest. Clearly it is in the public interest to spend as little as possible on graphic design (so long as the results are still fit for purpose). However, a ‘competition’ of the kind being discussed here threatens the profits of private graphic designers (sorry, “workers”). If the net result is that the public can rely on amateurs or newly-minted professionals (using that term loosely) to produce acceptable graphic design forever more, then all the better for the public.
Finally, isn’t the inconvenient truth here that while truly great graphic design requires highly skilled individuals, graphic design that is merely ‘good enough’ (certainly for Gruen’s purposes) is actually very easy to come by, and thus its price is very low indeed.
BBB
Shorter BBB: why pay for it when there’s suckers who’ll do it for free.
Well, replace ‘suckers’ with ‘perfectly sensible graphic designers’ and you’re there.
Is the position now that only an idiot would enter without receiving at least a little cold hard cash? That’s the clear implication of your comment, Fine.
We really don’t need to label all entrants as ‘suckers’, you know. Better simply to recognise the obvious fact that for many graphic designers it will be in their interests (and in the public interest, by the way) to enter this ‘competition’, even though a by-product of their entry is probably to exert downward pressure on the profits of other (likely more well-established) graphic designers.
BBB
As Dr Johnson said, BBB (paraphrased, as it’s been a while since I read it), “Anyone who writes for any reason except money is a fool.”
As a member of the Gov2.0 Taskforce I have been following this debate. I’ve added a response to my blog, only to save time at a very busy time. The input of designers is welcome. We are asking people to participate as a matter of community service, as indeed the taskforce members are. If you choose not to, we respect your decision.
An excerpt from my blog post:
“With my Government 2.0 Taskforce hat on, my response is please participate, not so that we get something for free, but so that you can contribute to an important process of democracy. If everyone who will contribute to the taskforce over the next 6 months demands fees for their services there would be no task force members, no new ideas, no participation and no change.”
http://www.lisaharvey.com.au
True, which is why I’m arguing that you can’t see a logo design contest in the same way as an open source initiative, because the contest-holders are asking for something that can’t be public property if it’s to do the job it’s needed for.
It’s also ironic, perhaps, that the exclusive nature of a logo is actually necessary for the act of subverting it, too. You can’t use the Nike logo or the Shell logo against the company in protest if it isn’t a mark that’s exclusive to them in the first place.
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Very well put.
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I think you leave out the desirable and inevitable function of logos – to become the basis of the new religion. In the future we will all be slaves of a new Theocracy based on a Cult of Commercial Style over Substance. We will be happier, you know this to be true.
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Personally I hope it’s this one.
you can vote now for a ‘winner’ of the banner competition so go participate in democracy
Some of ‘em aren’t bad. I reckon #12. I ain’t voting.
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But, come to think of it, this is actually not a bad opportunity for someone. It’s going to be very tough for designers and such etering the market for a while.