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?

Well?

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

1. Use HTML.

Even if the majority of your list recipients are on Blackberries, an HTML e-mail can be Blackberry-friendly without being a wall of text. This means using images where appropriate, using text where appropriate, and giving all images alt tags.

2. Get an E-mail marketing provider or software.

Really push the adoption of e-mail marketing software if your client has the budget. Without being able to look at your e-mail statistics, open rates, click-throughs, etc. you’re flying blind. There are also a host of problems when sending out e-mails through Outlook or Entourage – the alternative.

I personally recommend Blue Sky Factory since they have a really great system and wonderful customer service, but there are other providers with different services and different pricing packages. I posted previously about the topic, but here is the list repeated:

If your client insists on sending out the e-mail without software, they will need Outlook (Stationery) for the PC or Entourage (with SCHWIF2004) for the Mac, bare minimum.

3. “Can’t see this e-mail? View it online.”

It’s fairly standard to have a link at the top or bottom of your e-mail to an online version of the same e-mail. If the HTML e-mail does view incorrectly in the viewer’s e-mail provider, they can see the correct version online.

4. Tonight we’re gonna code like it’s 1999.

E-mail clients don’t read full CSS. This means that all HTML e-mails are created with table-based layouts, CSS applied with the style tag. Script tags in the header won’t work in most e-mail clients, so the class tag is out.

HTML e-mails also need to account for the client the e-mail will be viewed in, so the e-mail will need a small width. Most e-mails don’t have a width larger than 700 pixels. I typically design with a 650 pixel width.

5. Some weird extra notes about HTML e-mail code.

Avoid nested tables. Some e-mail providers will display them incorrectly when they’re nested too deep. I usually nest one table deep when needed, but no further.

Yahoo!mail translates all paragraph breaks into normal breaks. Use two breaks together to make one paragraph break if a large portion of your list recipients are on Yahoo!.

Not all e-mail providers allow for table padding or margins, so set padding and margins to 0 and use a 1px square transparent gif (spacer) to expand rows and columns.

Don’t overuse the spacer if a majority of your list recipients are on Blackberries. The img tag code displays in Blackberries.

6. CAN-SPAM.

Per the CAN-SPAM act, you’ll need an unsubscribe option and a physical mailing address on your e-mail.

7. Testing, testing, one, two.

Have your e-mail tested for e-mail client compatibility through your e-mail marketing service. If the option isn’t available or there isn’t a budget for it, set up dummy accounts on several common e-mail hosts and test the e-mail yourself. Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Outlook are fairly common providers.

8. E-mail marketing practices.

Keep your subject line, or the most important part of the subject line, to 50 characters max, including spaces. A lot of e-mail providers cut off the subject line in the preview beyond 50 characters.

Avoid the use of exclamation points, all caps, and common spam words like ”free” in your subject line, which can auto-Junk the e-mail.

The most important article or the call-to-action goes above the fold (i.e. at the top, before the user has to scroll down).

9. E-newsletter specifics.

Named-anchor links to articles in your newsletter allow viewers to both read e-mail contents and jump down to the article they’re interested in. Use them.

Give a very short descriptor paragraph with a link to the larger article online rather than each full article in the e-mail – no one wants to read a 4 page e-newsletter in their inbox.

10. Lastly: don’t use the term blast

You may be shunned in the world of e-mail marketing if you do.

That’s it: all of the weird and quirky things I’ve learned about e-mail marketing!

Have any additions or comments? I’d love to hear them!

The Good.

“Paula Scher studied at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and began her graphic design career as a record cover art director at both Atlantic and CBS Records in the 1970s. In 1984 she co-founded Koppel & Scher, and in 1991 she joined Pentagram as a partner.” She is both a renowned artist and graphic designer.

She also parodied Herbert Matter’s 1934 Swiss tourist poster (left) in a 1985 Swatch poster (right). The poster is still controversial in the design community years after its inception. It is also taught in design school today as an example of retro design and borrowing from the past.

The Fad (or movement, rather)

Piet Mondrian is known as the father of geometric abstraction.

Theo van Doesburg is known as the founder of De Stijl, an art movement in the early 1900s.

Mondrian helped found De Stijl with van Doesburg in 1917. The style is so specific that almost everything from the movement could have been created by one artist.

The Ugly.

If you’ve been involved in the design community online in the last few months, you probably remember the name Jon Engle. To sum it up, Engle took art work from StockArt.com, incorporated it into various logos he “designed”, was sued by StockArt.com, then drummed up outrage in the design community claiming StockArt.com artists had stolen the work from him. A good summary can be found at The Logo Factory. It was an obvious copyright violation.

Design inspiration vs. copyright infringement

There is a hard line between inspired design (the good, the fad) and copyright infringement (the ugly).

If a creative creates his or her own work based on someone else’s work and puts his or her own spin on it, this is not copyright infringement – despite how blatant an inspiration it may be.

If a creative takes someone else’s work and claims it as his or her own, this is copyright infringement.

Is (blatant) inspired design ethical?

It depends who you ask. It depends on the situation. Pablo Picasso said “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” Paul Rand said “Don’t try to be original; just try to be good.” Jim Jarmusch said “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.”

Finally, to steal a quote from another blog post, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
—T.S. Eliot

So…steal?

In Annelys de Vet’s The Right to Copy, Alice Lo summarizes in an epilogue, “the only difference between an amateur and a professional is the thinking and the knowledge of the context.”

The point is that designers and artists can take a rough idea and make it better, make it powerful, or give it a new meaning. Theft is theft, and copyright infringement is nothing to trifle with. The challenge with inspired design – blatant or otherwise – is only to start with the initial idea, but turn it into something new and different.

“Make sure your work will be copied. Stimulate your own imitators. Copy. Appropriate. Imitate. Assemble. Mimic. Use. Fuse. Misuse. Don’t be shy about it.”
—Annelys de Vet

Just don’t be ugly about it.

I did want the bulbs from the monitor for the project, but you’ll remember that the cathode ray tubes were shot. Luckily, I had an old scanner with a broken motor, but working cathode ray tubes, so I jury rigged it. Yes, that is a 9-volt.

Janey5 broke in 2007. I had her fixed. She broke again. I had her fixed again. She broke again (you see a pattern here). Finally Janey5’s cathode ray tubes burnt out, and you know what that means (maybe you don’t, but it means your monitor is done for, and on a laptop, that means laptop death).

So last summer, I had this brilliant idea.

The pictures don’t show it, but laptops are really hard to take apart. They are screwed and mashed together so tightly.

I only got as far as the disassembly last year, but I picked up the remaking a few weeks ago. I’ll be posting more as it progresses. Don’t you hate cliffhangers?