Monday, January 16, 2012

IN WHICH I OFFER CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ON ASKING DESIGNERS TO WORK FOR FREE, MAKE PEOPLE UNHAPPY

This morning, I received a Meetup.com message for the Creative Suite San Jose group this morning inviting volunteers to do Photoshop work at the US Figure Skating championship. Here's what it said:

"The US Figure Skating Competition is in need of a few people who are skilled with Photoshop, to help with retouching photos at next week's competition.

PLEASE ONLY RESPOND IF YOU ARE SKILLED WITH PHOTOSHOP. THIS IS NOT A LEARNING POSITION. THEY NEED PEOPLE WHO KNOW THEIR WAY AROUND PHOTOSHOP. There will be computers on hand loaded with PS CS2 (I have not control over that).

Great resume builder, good experience and should be interesting work!"

I moved on down through my inbox, but the email stuck in my craw. "Wait a minute," I kept thinking, "since when is the US Figure Skating Agency (or whatever they're called) too poor to afford at least $20 an hour for this?"

Finally, I sat down and typed this very carefully-worded email to the group moderator:

"Hi,

I'm excited to begin membership in this group. I do, however, feel compelled to respond to this message as it troubles me that we are perhaps assisting in promoting "free labor" to an entity that (I would think) certainly has at least a modest budget and more likely, a healthy one.

There is a preponderance of solicitations out there right now that ask for design and graphic services for "resume-building" or "portfolio-building" ... some are more legitimate than others (public service, or a one person startup) but there are many others just looking to take advantage of young talent and pay nothing.

It would be different if this were an internship, where the individual actually gains learning in exchange for their effort. But the message states it's not a learning position.

Please consider this and let me know your thoughts, thanks. I am concerned we may be propagating a bad message to new artists: that they need to give their work away for a line item on their resume.

Cheers,
Stephanie Lucas"


I was expecting to get an answer somewhere along the lines of, "Dear Stephanie, Thanks for your feedback. We're going to see how other group members feel about this, bla bla" or "Dear Stephanie, good point, bla bla"...

Well, instead, I received a terse email response (with no greeting/salutation niceties I might add) explaining that she was "helping a colleague at Adobe with this," and that if I didn't care to participate that that was my choice, that she was not promoting "free work," and that "In the three years this group has been run, this is the first time I have asked for volunteers."

Helping a colleague..what does that have to do with any of my points? Did she even read my email? And how in the world was the message she sent to the group not "promoting free work"?

My personal views on this are pretty well expressed in my email to her so I won't belabor them. But suffice it to say that until people speak up about this kind of stuff it's going to keep on happening, and worse, kids are going to think it's normal if it comes from a vaunted company like Adobe.

And as a group moderator, I'd certainly expect someone to have thicker skin than this. Anyone who is paying any attention to trends in the graphic design market right now, has to know that anything that smacks of "crowdsourcing" is going to spur controversy, and much of it rightly so.

Your thoughts?

2 comments:

maxrad said...

There's a time for pro bono work. This ain't it.

Your church or kids' basketball team or some other worthy charity needs something done, sure. Habitat for Humanity? Team In Training? You betcha. They need the work done and can't pay for it themselves. Glad to help.

But an orgasnizations full of effette lifted-pinky white folks and their snotty children with a 12.5 million dollar budget*? I don' theenk so, Queekstraw.

* http://www.usfsa.org/About.asp?id=13

Stephanie Lucas said...

@maxrad: You know, I was sorely tempted to go look that up! Thank you for doing so. :-)