Do you twitter?

If you don’t have a twitter account, then you are missing out on the latest spec happening in the design industry.

Logo Design Love: It’s interesting to see the recent appearance of Spec Watch, a venture that educates about the very real risks of design contest websites and “their so-called communities”.

Spec Watch has been cataloging unpaid and refunded projects, and those terminated due to copyright violation.

Right now Spec Watch is mainly targeting the design contests at Crowdspring and 99designs, but who knows how their campaign will evolve.

To see what all the fuss is about, follow Spec Watch (SpecWatch) on Twitter.

(Thanks David!)

Paul Rand paraphrased by Steve Jobs

I will solve your problem for you. And you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve the problem for you the best way I know how. And you can use it or not – that’s up to you. You are the client. But you pay me.

Nice. Very.

CrowdSpring sinks to even lower lows…

This weekend, while Jay and I were busy updating no-spec.com, twitter continued to be all aflutter over the latest from CrowdSpring: CrowdSpring, Do What’s Right!

Background: Seems a CrowdSpring designer ripped off the work of Mike Erickson of Logo Motive Design (LogomotiveMike on twitter).

And while this is shocking enough – ok, not shocking as rips happen all the time on crowdsourcing sites – what has upset designers is CrowdSpring’s three strikes policy.

That’s right. A CrowdSpring designer gets to submit various ripped designs a total of three times before getting banned.

To follow the event yourself, here are the top searches on twitter:

CrowdSpring: Where have all the cheerleaders gone?

Ross Kimbarovsky: The voice of CrowdSpring on twitter.

Crowdsink: The twitter tag designers are using to publicise the problem.

And of course, make sure to read down through the original article: CrowdSpring, Do What’s Right!

Apparently this has been going on for about three weeks, but the designer in question is still submitting work at CrowdSpring. Amazing.

Btw – if you haven’t noticed, no-spec.com is now on twitter too: nospec.

So if you do twitter, go ahead and give us a shout…

LinkedIn annoys professional translators

Seems designers are not the only ones upset over being asked to work for free.

LinkedIn – the professional networking site with 41 million members where ‘relationships matter‘ – has today managed to mightily annoy professional translators who use the site by asking them if they would like to translate the LinkedIn site in exchange for a LinkedIn badge or ‘because it’s fun’.

Does this sound familiar?

…put me in touch with a professional, English and German-speaking painter and decorator with 15 years of experience, who will strip the old wallpaper off all rooms of a house consisting of 20 apartments and offices and will then paint each room, preferably each in a different colour, naturally by tomorrow afternoon, and FOR FREE, I will be pleased, on satisfactory completion of the work, to translate the term “LinkedIn” into a language of my choice.

Translators have responded by not only creating a dedicated group on LinkedIn, Translators against Crowdsourcing by Commercial Businesses, but by flooding twitter too. They have also asked to become a part of the NO!SPEC Campaign.

You can read all about it at MatthewBennett /blog.

Artists say no too: Use Their Work Free? Artists Say No to Google – NYTimes.com

A thank you goes to Tomás Cano Binder and Matthew Bennett for the heads up.

Translators, welcome to the NO!SPEC Campaign!