Spec Work

From the “Here We Go Again” Department. No point in rehashing the dangers of logo design contests, save this simple “spec work is bad” equation:
A whole bunch anonymous people who may, or may not, be actual designers +
A very small chance of getting paid for their design work +
A web-based logo design contest on ANY [...]

Continue reading about Spec work hackery redux. More of our work copied & entered into 99designs logo design contest

Spec work. Design contests. Crowdsourcing. Does it really matter what label we hang on them? The dangers always remain the same. For years now, we’ve been barking about design contests, and their recently re-packaged cousin crowdsourcing, as an extremely risky way to have anything designed. By anybody. For anything. One of our major caveats is [...]

Continue reading about Roh-oh. Winning entry in Cadbury Chocolate’s design contest may have been plagiarized

Speaking of logo porn, have to lift a pint to the good folks at the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute for the most over-the-top, unabashed logo symbolism manifesto in the history of logo symbolism manifestos. Usually these “what our logo means” diatribes fall into the “who writes this shit?” category, but not this one. While a [...]

Continue reading about A most awesome logo symbolism manifesto, bananas & some random logo design stuff edition

In announcing their newly launched spec-work writing contests on Twitter, Chicago-based Crowdspring repeatedly twattered a quote from Mark Twain that goes something like this – “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.*” Granted, that sorta IS the business model Crowdspring are launching, but wasn’t sure that the literary giant was cool with his [...]

Continue reading about Snippets: The crowdsourcing, writing on spec & design contest follies edition

I originally wanted to title this post “Why Websites that Scrape Content are a Pain in the Ass“. Which is probably more accurate, albeit a little salty for a blog title. Because they are. A. Pain. In. The. Ass. As a professional who earns his living selling what amounts to intellectual property, I’m of the [...]

Continue reading about Publish a blog? Here’s why websites that scrape content are a pain. Why you shouldn’t do it.