Why is the design community still arguing about spec?
May 26th, 2010I haven’t really taken one side or the other in the debate about spec work, because, honestly, neither side sounds convincing over the other.
On the one side, a majority of designers argue that spec work devalues the service of design – that crowdsourcing websites encourage clients to view design as something that is easy and cheap. Absolutely.
On the other side, crowdsourcing websites and users argue that the crowdsourcing development is democratizing design – that it’s allowing small, startup companies to gain a service on a low budget and amateur or entry-level designers to gain needed experience. Absolutely.
The question a lot of designers ask, and that was asked on DCTH last week, spurred from Chris Brogan’s 99designs experiment, was “What can we do to educate about no spec?” To elaborate: how do designers, as professionals, communicate and educate to the community and clients that spec work is bad.
Harlan Ellison’s commentary on spec was mentioned during this discussion topic, and it really illustrates how designers and creative professionals feel about spec.
But here’s the thing: whether spec is good or bad is moot.
These negative feelings we all have about where the design community is going, how we’re going to pay our bills, how our work is being devalued – it doesn’t matter. The creative business landscape, and even the traditional business model, is changing and will continue to change. It’s why the freemium model is working so well.
I did a quick search for spec on YouTube after watching Mr. Ellison’s impassioned speech, and found this gem. It’s a great panel, but skip to 2:15 when Jeremiah Owyang gives his answer. The impact of his statement really hits me as I think about spec: “Spec work is here to stay. You cannot stop it.”
Instead of fighting an uphill battle, the question we need to ask is “what now?”
Since spec is here to stay, how do we, as creative professionals, leverage our skills? How do we innovate what it is that we do instead of using a 20-year-old business model that is quickly losing its efficacy? How do we look at the innovative successes of other fields and businesses and apply those models to how we do business?
Adding a no!spec badge on your website solves nothing. Preaching to the choir solves nothing. We know spec is here to stay.
How are we going to innovatively work in this new landscape and continue to do what we love while paying the bills?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ross Kimbarovsky, Cindy Brown, Theispot.com, Theispot.com, UKRE8 Art & Design and others. UKRE8 Art & Design said: RT @seebrowntweet: Why is the design community still arguing about spec? http://bit.ly/dyNnmW #dcth #design #nospec [...]
I don’t agree that Spec Work is here to stay. I think rather we are in an interesting time where it hasn’t been adopted fully because there are still a lot of people willing to fight to keep it from being the standard, myself being one of them.
As for Jeremiah’s Comment, I like him lots and respect him more, but he isn’t a designer and as far as I know has never been so his opinion is nothing more then an educated outsider. If anyone is going to declare the war over I would rather it be from the folks who are feeding themselves from their art. Lets ask them if this is something we should be giving up on etc.
-saul
Hi, Saul, thanks for the comment! The reason I think it’s over at this point is because the only people still keeping up the fight ARE creatives. The clients I’ve worked with either don’t care or wouldn’t use a crowdsourcing service if they knew about it anyway. Those clients that use crowdsourcing wouldn’t use anything more expensive anyway.
I just keep thinking there must be a solution for creatives beyond shouting from the roof-tops about the negatives of spec (which I also acknowledge). I just don’t realistically see large-scale spec stopping unless the internet shuts down at this point. What sort of viable solution is there that goes beyond saying “spec is bad”?