I will admit to doing free work for two separate clients when they asked, for exactly that reason. I balked at first, but then weighed the money I’d get now vs. the potential exposure down the road.
In those two isolated cases, the gamble paid off very well. But it’s not something I’d do often or would recommend.
“Sort of, it’s complex. Let me spend as much time as is needed explaining details you don’t want to hear about the software I write for Linux systems until you decide to find a different mark.”
Those things are charities, not contests.
Design is a job (as most creative endeavors are). And while I have designed pro bono on many occasions, it was because I (meaning specifically me) was asked nicely, I was already a participating member, and I was treated like a professional otherwise.
Heck I get that from other sysadmins from small shops and they boggle that I don’t know linux/unix that well if at all or anything about switches/routers outside of what they do. I was working at this really really huge place. There was more than enough work for 20 admins to wrangle HALF the tickets/alerts for the windows boxes never mind free time to build the new ones or install the application software because the application folk didn’t have full access to the server, etc.
ETA or do and real automation scripting (and if we did it was basic stuff and then handed over to a team that would really make it nice and probably just run on a user request off a web page), or mess with the domain controllers, or work with exchange/share point, etc.
In the context of “digital commissions,” which it sounds to me like they’re talking about, a digital gallery is almost certainly the context-- you don’t get too many clueless doofuses talking like this in a professional capacity. Also in the context of digital commissions, it’s customary to retain signatures and links.
In a professional capacity, it seems kind of nuts. I do illustration professionally, and I almost always sign my work. If a client doesn’t want a signature, they’ll usually request that and pay extra. I can’t imagine a scenario outside of a digital gallery where I’d expect a link back, aside from maybe an online magazine illustration, which, now that I think of it, usually provide a link back.
Public universities are non-profits so technically charities, yes. Many of the things that faculty and students and staff do for free or for credit or for some other incentive are jobs.
Things you might dismiss as “spec work” are the bread and butter of universities. For example, faculty and grad students spend months putting together and submitting grant proposals which have a tiny chance of being funded. This is in addition to, not part of, regular duties, except that grant seeking is considered a normal part of the profession.
There is nothing special about logo design, it is another task that an organization can choose to do in-house or outsource, and if they choose to do it in-house they can select using their own practice the fraction of the community that gets to try for the job, and how the individuals will be selected.
I wouldn’t suggest anything different. If a campus decides to have their logo designed in-house, it should be voluntary (or perhaps connected to a job for which a staff member was hired) and done by institutional members (students, staff, or faculty).
A charity doing a contest often fares no better than a for-profit corporation. Cf. my comment about pro bono above.
Grants and proposals are not in any way comparable to a contest/spec work. Those who submit proposals don’t happen to be doing all of the science/whatever which requires the grant. If they could do that, they don’t need a grant in the first place.
If grants are required for equipment, facilities, or travel, faculty aren’t going to pay for all of that out of their own pockets first (assuming they even could). A proposal is a document which covers the potential to the funding agency so that work can be started or continued.
(I submit proposals as a part of my work. While they can be sometimes an investment of time—and are tightly controlled and templated for that reason—they never contain a complete or even the beginnings of a project.)
[quote=“coherent_light, post:147, topic:84477”]
Those who submit proposals don’t happen to be doing all of the science/whatever which requires the grant.[/quote]
It is nevertheless a significant investment of time and effort in order to obtain a chance at future funding; sometimes writing grant proposals occupies a larger share of a senior scientist’s time than any other activity. It is also very common for labs seeking federal funding to first do the work out of pocket for years (cf startup funds), and the funding is often a de facto recognition of work already done rather than future work.
Look, I get that you don’t like the idea of such competitions in your field, and I see how from your point of view it is tantamount to asking for unpaid work from the competition losers. Maybe you can try to see things from our point of view.
The reality is that when we pay (say) $100k for an outside firm to do a logo, first we have to go to the undergraduates and apologize for charging them $10/apiece for this. We also have to talk to all the in-house talent - the campus design department, the arts faculty, the undergraduates and graduates who would have liked the opportunity - and explain why they aren’t good enough to be considered for it. (OK,we don’t actually go to either group, these issues are raised afterwards by the groups involved; my school’s excellent arts faculty were rightly furious that they’d been denied this opportunity.) Then when we’re all unpleasantly surprised by the final product - which happens quite a lot - we get hammered by demands from the campus community, angry alumni emails and sarcastic newspaper articles, and decide not to go with it after all. At that point we then grovel before the legislators for wasting so much money, and they punish us by cutting funding for other, frankly more important academic functions, while the administrator who commissioned the rebranding project in the first place has already left to go do damage at another school.
A university logo is a piece of public art that is the public face of a campus; it is simply not reasonable to expect them to commit to it without having a decent idea of what it will look like, especially when any decision has to satisfy an immense community of students, faculty, alumni, and possibly the general local population. Maybe it is also unreasonable to expect to see a design before they pay for it, in which case they might have to consider going without. (I’m not sure rebranding has ever been demonstrably useful for a public university; the obvious example, Arcadia University, is not public.) If however there is a community of talented people who for reasons of their own are willing to submit some sketches in advance before being hired, that is a win for everyone who participates, especially if getting chosen comes with reasonable remuneration. Universities are full of people who as a matter of course work for less than market value, or for the chance of future payoff, or for love of the institution. It is our normal culture. Nobody off campus is forced to share this culture.
That’s what I get paid for.
[quote=“d_r, post:148, topic:84477”]
Then when we’re all unpleasantly surprised by the final product - which happens quite a lot[/quote]
I’ve no access to your situation, but as you describe it, it sounds like poor communication by and between stakeholders is something that should be worked on at your institution; dollars to doughnuts that’s the primary problem in receiving less than ideal work. But in your case, who can tell.
Ours was just one of many such cases. They pop up regularly in the CHE. A typical state university has tens or hundreds of thousands of stakeholders; it isn’t like a corporation, with a unitary executive. The proposed UC logo a few years ago drew over 50,000 complaints before it was withdrawn, not including the ridicule it got in the media, including here on BB.
There really wasn’t anything especially terrible about that logo system. It received a mostly positive reception for the first several months of its roll-out, and didn’t start generating complaints until the media seized on it and popularized the misconception that the logo was replacing the University of California SEAL.
So people were being told (again, inaccurately) that the logo on the right was replacing the seal on the left:
Whereas the visual identity update that was ACTUALLY taking place was more like this:
99 Percent Invisible had a good episode detailing the logo design and ensuing public controversy a while back.
My point with the UC example wasn’t to cast judgment on the new logo, but simply to point out that with a university logo (or any government logo) (a) a lot of people are paying attention, and (b) many of these people have a voice in the final decision. (a) might be true as well in the choice of a corporate logo, but (b) much less so. There is no way a design firm is going to be able to interact with the entire stakeholder base before producing their designs, and if there are objections it isn’t a fault on the part of the client (as @coherent_light suggests above).
Making the design options available to the public long before any commitments get made helps prevent costly mistakes and negative backlash, though I can understand a firm not wanting to commit resources to win a contract which they might not get. We have the same situation with contractors in my town, they do not want to come out and give detailed estimates before getting some assurance of the job.
And THAT is exactly why the process is often convoluted, expensive, and likely to result in a logo that no one person is entirely crazy about. Design by committee is a freaking nightmare. That’s why legendary graphic designer Paul Rand, who was responsible for many of the most timeless and memorable logos of the 20th Century, would only take on a design job if he could work directly with the final decision-maker.
People often hear a number and respond “$X for a logo? That’s insane!” without stopping to consider just how many work-hours were spent on research, focus groups, and mind-numbing client meetings alone.
Hence the advantage, in a university setting, of doing it in-house or as a competition.
Again, disagree. If you don’t like the result you get when you can hire experienced professionals then you’re even less likely to like something a novice was able to throw together in their spare time.
I say this as an educator, a professional designer, and a former student who occasionally entered such contests.
There are much easier ways to do it as well
Not everyone in the university community is a novice, and most are less so w/r to understanding the university’s needs than are the designers in outside firms.
Apparently I have more respect for the talents of the faculty, staff, and students in university art departments than you do. If I believed that my campus community in any field - not just art - lacked the talent to perform at a professional level, I would question whether we should even be teaching that subject.
Again, disagree. When you say “eh, I bet some second-year art student could do just as good a job in their spare time” what you are REALLY saying is that the degree they are working toward is a joke and the faculty in their program have nothing meaningful left to teach them.
I have faith that myself or my colleagues would have the skill sets to complete such a job, but we are generally otherwise occupied because we are full-time educators.
Yup. They didn’t pay me for my piece, but the editor that read it, translated it into Spanish, and republished it elsewhere did.
Where did I say that?
However, I certainly believe that many 2nd-year students have as much or more creativity as many seasoned professionals, and could come up with just as good - if maybe not as polished - a logo design, which professionals could then implement as part of a complete rebranding. I also know that students at various stages of their training are well-equipped to do many professional jobs, either alone or under supervision; our juniors who are ready to work as actuaries still have a lot to learn from us, but it isn’t necessary for that particular job. Our art departments also have graduate students, who are teaching 2nd-year students, and would jump at an opportunity work on something like this.
So am I, but I regularly supervise student projects, I frequently do service work for the department and university which relies on my professional training (sometimes with course releases), and at times I’ve done outside consulting, especially during the summer. All these things, together with my research, inform my teaching, so i do not consider them in any way antithetical to my job as a full-time educator.
ETA: And while I don’t think a student or faculty member, working in isolation, will necessarily come up with something better or even as good as a graphics professional all else equal, there is more chance of community buy-in with an open process which is inclusive of internal talent, especially a competition. Focus groups and meetings with administrators run up the billable hours but do not by themselves give the community a sense of buy-in.
