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There’s been much debate of late regarding speculative or ’spec’ work and the associated problems (and benefits) of it. Blogs have been buzzing for a while with negative rants by some high-profile designers regarding the practice and sites such as the infamous NO!SPEC project have gained backing from some big names which in turn has encouraged designers to say no to spec work.

But what exactly is spec work? Some people don’t seem to know. Why all the hoo-ha and what, if anything, should we do about it?

What is Spec Work?

The practice of spec work is the “undertaking of work for free, often as part of a competition”. In the words of NO!SPEC:

“Spec has become the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. In other words, any requested work for which a fair and reasonable fee has not been agreed upon, preferably in writing.”

In a traditional spec situation a prospective client encourages several designers to do a small amount of design work in order to help the client decide which to employ. While this in itself has its problems, much of the recent concern in working ‘on spec’ has been caused by the emergence and rise in popularity of sites such as 99designs and CrowdSPRING that actively promote clients finding complete solutions by running competitions. Such ‘crowdsourced’ design solutions are deemed damaging to the design industry by some.

As with most competitions there’s normally only one ‘winner’ compensated for their efforts, usually at a rate of payment much lower than a professional agency would charge. None of the other entrants receive anything at all. Despite the odds, many are still keen to participate and the competition sites are proving very popular.

Not all competitions are considered to be spec work. There was much debate on whether Carsonified’s (the company behind ThinkVitamin) competition to design a holding slide for its forthcoming Future of Web Design conference should be considered spec work or not. There is clearly still a debate to be had on what spec work actually is.

Why Do Clients Like Spec Work?

There are just as many designers keen to champion the practice of spec work as there are outspoken against it. However, clients are clearly the biggest supporters of spec work since, on the surface they seem to gain most.

It’s certainly low risk for them. Some (not all) of the clients using these site are not interested in design and simply want the cheapest reasonable solution. By commissioning work ‘on spec’ there is potential to get something for nothing without having to formally engage a designer in the traditional way; contracts, up-front fees, having to pay for meetings and design iterations etc.

“…I am a potential customer, not a designer. I am looking for something inexpensive and decent-looking. I don’t need to win a design award,”

says George McC, a client commenting on Graphicpush’s Graphic Push’s post on the ethos of spec work.

1) It’s Cheap
Many spec sites allow clients to set the price that they are willing to pay and a fixed deadline for submissions. Payment is only required for the chosen design, not those which are not liked and not used.

2) It Offers Greater Choice for the Client
Rather than be tied to one agency or designer’s style and ideas, spec work means you can receive a large number of designs, styles and ideas in a very short time.

3) It’s Guaranteed
Dissatisfied clients can choose to abandon a competition and reject the submissions if they are not happy and are not therefore obliged to provide a reward.

The Case for Spec Work

It’s not just the clients who feel they’re getting a good deal from the spec arrangement. A great number of participating designers defend the practice.

1) it’s easy money.
Certainly in the case of 99Designs and other crowdsourced projects, it can be easy to make money. Granted many of the designers taking part are either students or work in countries with less-strong currencies who see involvement as potential to easily make good money. One designer commenting on the same post explained,

“I entered two 99designs competitions. It took 1hour. I won £500. I bought an Xbox 360. Sorry if I undermined all you designers out there.”- designer commenting on Graphic Push’s blog post

2) It’s Good for Developing Skills
Some designers see doing spec work and entering competitions as an opportunity to get bigger, more high-profile clients and improve their design skills.

3) It’s a Quick Way to Get Your Name Out There
As a struggling designer there are few opportunities to get your name known in the industry. Doing spec work can be one of them. Once people have seen your work and like your style, then you can start to charge for your work.

The Case Against Spec Work

There are a great number of reasons why spec work is considered inappropriate by some professional designers. The AIGA, the professional association for design, advise against it.

“AIGA believes that doing speculative work seriously compromises the quality of work that clients are entitled to and also violates a tacit, long-standing ethical standard in the communication design profession worldwide. AIGA strongly discourages the practice of requesting that design work be produced and submitted on a speculative basis in order to be considered for acceptance on a project.” – AIGA.

There are many reason why designers think that spec work is a bad thing. Some high-profile designers simply dismiss it out of hand.

“Never do spec under any circumstances.” – Jeff Zeldman

While others give more detailed reasons why they dislike it.

It’s Uninformed Work
Design is about much more than individual taste. ‘Spec’ work encourages clients to look upon design as a commodity whereas good design is a process of understanding and solving a problem in the most appropriate way.

“While good design invariably has an eye on aesthetics and a concern for technical accuracy and perfected details, graphic design, (whether for web, print or screen), is essentially about solving problems. Each project has its own set of unique problems to address.” – Mark Boulton, FiveSimpleSteps

Spec work often ignores the problem-solving, considered design process in favor of promoting a ‘beauty-contest’ of finished work, with the winning entry appealing to the client and not necessarily solving the problems at hand.

It Devalues the Profession
Commissioning work for no payment could be considered immoral, it is certainly degrading and minimizes the value of the design and the value of the designers intellectual property.

“At the very outset of my career, I did several projects on spec — and I’d never do it again. Our ideas are the most valuable things we bring to the table on any project and, once given, there’s no taking them back. Spec work sets a dangerous precedent.” – Daniel Burka, Digg.com

It Encourages Plagiarism
While many feel that spec work reduces the risks for the client, in fact the opposite is true. It has been suggested that many participants use stolen or copyrighted material as part of their submissions. Plagiarism is quicker and easier than designing from scratch, especially if there’s a risk that you might not be paid.

It’s Unprofessional
The client-designer relationship is largely unmoderated, thus both parties are at risk due to the potential for unprofessional conduct. Stories from unhappy designers abound who feel they have not been fairly treated by a client and from clients who have been harassed by unprofessional, unqualified designers. Many suggest it’s often more trouble than it’s worth.

Is There a Solution?

While the demand for poor quality, cheap design work prevails the problem is unlikely to go away. The only way to eradicate this from the design industry is for designers to refuse to do spec work, en mass. For this to happen though, designers need to agree on what is and what is not spec work.

Maybe what is needed within the graphic/web design industry is a global, dedicated body to educate and support clients in their search for appropriate designers. How do you think the issue should be resolved?

Further Reading:

Graphic Push – 99Designs Bullshit

Paul Boag – Why Speculative Work is Wrong

Jeffrey Kalmikoff – The Fine Line Between Laziness and Crowdsourcing

Ross Kimbarovsky – CrowdSPRING’s reply to NO!SPEC

Andrew Hyde – Spec Work is Evil

Dev Lounge – Spec Work, Good or Bad?

Main image: Kyril

Campaign Monitor is an online email marketing application that enables designers to create, send, manage and track branded emails for themselves and their clients with ease. Freshview, the company behind Campaign Monitor recently updated the software, adding additional functionality that enables designers to not just run campaigns but actually re-sell it as if it were their own product. They’ll even let you rebrand the application interface and set your own mark-up on the pricing!

37signals uses Campaign Monitor for their HTML emails

HTML email? No thanks!
Along with every other designer I know I’m not exactly the biggest fan of HTML emails. The sheer number of email clients and their sketchy CSS support dredges up memories of web development in the late 90’s. Tables? Inline styles? …and that’s just to get it displaying correctly across the many (many!) email packages, not to mention managing the recipient email addresses and tracking the campaign results. It all sounds far too complicated, expensive and not at all what I got into this web design malarkey for.

Clients do love those branded emails though, so it looks like they’re here to stay. Let’s be thankful then for Campaign Monitor.

First impressions count
Two things struck me immediately about Campaign Monitor (before I had even signed-up for an account). The first was the pricing and just how much you seem to get for very little cost (you can actually do an awful lot for free). Unlike many other internet applications there’s no sign-up or monthly fee; you simply pay whenever you send emails to more than 5 people, which means you can thoroughly test almost everything about the service before committing. The pricing structure is very straightforward – you pay $US5 plus $0.01 per recipient, so sending an email to 500 people would cost $5 plus (500 x $.01) = $10. You also have the option of invoicing clients a marked up cost.

Get paid when your clients send html emails

The other thing that really stood out was the wealth of resource and support information offered across the CM website. Rather than just promote the product it offers information about best practice for designing and sending HTML emails, a run-down of CSS support offered by various email clients as well as tips on how to pitch and charge-for email marketing campaigns. The content across the site is really well written and leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling that ongoing support from these guys won’t be a problem.

Sounds Great, but What About the App?
Once you have signed up to use Campaign Monitor you are provided with a personalised ‘mycompany.createsend.com’ domain name. This is where you manage your clients, email campaigns, billing for each client and your own account settings which includes the white label customisation settings for the interface. You can choose from nine different colour schemes, add your own logo, add a log in form directly from your own site and even change the createsend url to your own domain if you want.

Just like the CM website, the app itself is beautifully designed with a clear, simple interface, that makes it easy to find your way around (which is no small feat given the amount of functionality it’s packing). It’s testament to this intuitive design and the friendly, succinct copywriting, that I never once felt lost or confused while using the application (there’s a good spattering of in-context advice and help links in case you do need assistance or further information as you go though).

Clients and Billing
The first page you’re greeted with is a simple dashboard which lists your clients and a run-down of latest activity. Adding new clients is very quick and easy with a short one-page form where you can set exactly how much access they can have to the system, what they will be able to see and do, as well as their billing details. You can choose to run things exactly as you please, from allowing no client access and sending your own invoice outside of the application, to allowing your client to do everything themselves and have Campaign Monitor charge them and send you your mark-up profit automatically.

Sub-accounts for each client are automatically generated. This is where you can track each client’s campaign, add email templates, create and send emails, manage their subscriber lists and view related campaign reports. These are also the pages that your client will see if you’ve provided them with access to their account.

Sending and managing campaigns
Sending a new campaign is straightforward, and presented as a four-part linear process that you are guided through step-by-step in a clear and logical manner. Once you’ve set the campaign title, subject line, sender and reply-to addresses you import your email design and content. Depending on how you choose to mark-up the html (don’t worry – it’s easy and explained clearly on the Campaign Monitor website) you can invoke a fancy new WYSIWYG editor that you or your clients can use to add content to the email and see exactly what it will look like in real time as you type.

Let clients add and edit email content in real time using the super-simple WYSIWYG editor.

Next you add your list of recipients and send it off. One of my favourite features was how you can choose to have Campaign Monitor test your email design and content to ensure it renders correctly in most email clients and will pass through spam filters and firewalls. This really stood out for me as an amazingly useful feature. As designers we all know what a nightmare it can be making sure our sites render correctly in all browsers, but all of the email clients; web-based, desktop and mobile too? No chance. The only complaint I have was that I found this to run a little too slowly (about half an hour) and still not all of the results came back. The guys at Freshview ensure me that this is being improved however, and I still think it’s well worth the extra $5 they charge for the hassle it saves regardless!

There’s a lot of little extra features associated with sending out a campaign such as automatic archiving of campaigns within each clients’ sub-domain but two nice little touches that really caught my attention were the ability to automatically convert your email’s css from an external sheet to inline styling at import, and automatically generating an online version for those recipients to whom the email doesn’t look right. I had assumed these were both things I’d have to take the time to implement as the designer, so was pleasantly surprised to find them built-in. In fact, I was hard pressed to find anything missing at all, and instead was frequently surprised by handy, unexpected little features like these.

And the Rest
When I first looked at Campaign Monitor I assumed sending branded html email was pretty much it, but that’s just the start! Once your campaign gets sent you can track all manner of information about who opened it, what they clicked, who marked it as spam and who unsubscribed, all presented in a nice Google-Analytics style interactive report. In fact, there’s integration with Google Analytics too, so you can track where on your site recipients go after reading your campaign!

Real time, interactive campaign information presented in a clear, familiar ‘Google Analytics’ style report.

There are a number of other notable features, and improvements over the previous version worth mentioning that I came across while trying out the system but didn’t get to explore fully, particularly around targeting subscribers, generating sign-up forms, subscriber management and the Campaign Monitor API. You can find the full list of features and find out more about them over at the Campaign Monitor site.

Is it Any Good?
You can probably tell by now that I have become a fan of Campaign Monitor. In the course of a week I’ve gone from dreading a client asking for a HTML email to being a lot more interested in the potential that branded email marketing has to offer both my business and my clients’. Campaign Monitor removes so much of what was a hassle before that I’m even starting to think I might start promoting it as service to my clients. I could even make some cash out of it too!

Software name: Campaign Monitor (White Label version)
Developer: Freshview
Price: $US5 plus $0.01 per recipient (but you can set your own mark-up)
Rating (out of 5): 5