Designing websites for a living, or for extra money, is an exceptionally popular part of life for people all over the world in all age groups. There are kids and recent school leavers either doing it as a hobby or full time, as well as many people with intentions of making it big in the industry after growing bored of their nine 2 fiver..

I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately, with the drowning flood of insurgents bombarding the market with half baked proposals with ridiculously low price tags. It seems to be happening more and more frequently, and with these newbies not fully understanding the nature of design as a business, the commodity market continues to spread like a disease.

I Repeat, Design is NOT a Commodity

Designing a web presence, not only visually appealing, but designed to perform and communicate effectively is not something I can offer on a half price special, or a buy 2 get one free business model. You will invariably end up with work that is squeezed out of the lower creative orifice. Something that makes the designer or the client go “oh cool!, but ultimately not perform, or in more severe cases, actually damage the company reputation.

Spec Work and Free Pitching

I’ve had a bit of a lengthy email conversation with Cathering Morley from no-spec.com and contrary to my previous article on spec work vs pitching, she has convinced me how damaging the practice of spec work and free pitching really are. I mistakingly perceived pitching as a necessary evil where a portion of the work should be a sacrifice of time to land a possible large project.

An excerpt from one of her emails:

“I’ll bust my butt doing my best for them, but I want to start off right. I want them to respect what I do as much as I respect what they are doing.”

Catherine effectively convinced me that not only was I wrong and it will waste my time on the whole, it’s also an irresponsible and damaging practice. What you’re effectively doing is giving your uneducated, un-researched “opinion” of what the client needs and leaving it to them to choose the prettiest of the bunch.

The portfolio should represent the quality of one’s work, and a frank, honest discussion with a designer and the possible commissioning of him/her for a paid pitch is an ethical and effective plan of action (should you not be 100% certain about them).

If you don’t like the resulting work, talk to the designer. Maybe the brief was not clear enough. Maybe the designer went another route to that what you expected. Worst case scenario is you pay them for their time and use it as a learning step towards reaching your goal. If you choose a good, professional, reputable designer with trade references, you’ll likely not have to do this. Pick someone amateur or unqualified, then you probably will and spend more money either taking ages to get the desired result, damaging yours our your company’s reputation or having to pay somoene else to fix their mistakes.

Design Business & Ethics

AIGA, the professional association for design have published a series of brochures explaining the necessary ethics and business acumen of both the client and designer on a professional level. Well worth downloading, reading and keeping as reference.

One thing I read in the client document mirrors mine and all professional’s thoughts on the topic:

“Unlike so much in today’s business world, graphic design is not a commodity. It is the highly individualized result of people coming together to do something they couldn’t do alone. When the collaboration is creative, the results usually are too.”

Download the client’s guide to design brochure here (216KB PDF).