“We produced some branding work, name generation and packaging concepts for a start up business in order for them to secure funding and investment to take a product to market. We agreed that if the product was successful in going into the production stage we would be the sole design agency and all work done to that date would be billable.

“It turned out that wasn’t to be the case and in fact our initial brand and product packaging ideas would be taken to the manufacturer for their in house designers to work with, and we wouldn’t be paid.

“A month or so later we find our work featuring on the website of the individual, with no accreditation or mention of our contribution. They even took our ideas and found themselves on a well known BBC programme.”

Sixth Story design work

Read the full post on the Sixth Story blog: The dangers of speculative design.

Via @MatDolphin.

“People are free to decide what they do with the efforts of designers of any stripe – that’s entirely ok. But when a publicly funded organisation (whose entire justification for their funding, and thus their existence, turns on promoting and championing design) chooses a crowdsourcing model, it’s incredibly disappointing to say the least.”

Quoted from this considered piece on desktop magazine:

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Written by Clinton Duncan.

The contest has since been pulled from the crowdsourcing website, due in part to the quality of many of the poster entries that were submitted (archived here on Limeworks).

RT @nospec http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/artworks-submission Obama is now crowdsourcing a poster, about job creation. Irony.

Obama, if you aim to support American jobs, then perhaps paying designers to create your campaign posters would be a good start.

@LogoMotives Petition: Stop the US Department of @Interior from Crowdsourcing a Logo | @nospec #nospec | http://bit.ly/NOSPEC-DOI

OVERVIEW
The U.S. Department of the Interior currently has posted a design brief on crowdspring.com (http://www.crowdspring.com/project/2296807_logo-us-department-of-the-interior/details/) asking for graphic designers to work for free in order to try to ‘win’ the prize of being paid for logo design and branding work. This is outrageous, especially coming from a branch of the U.S. Government.

We are against crowdsourcing of logos due to the harm it typically does the company or organization as well as the damage it does to the general public’s understanding of the Graphic Design profession and the amount of work that really goes into logo development and branding. A branch of our U.S. Government supporting such practices is upsetting to us all. While crowdsourcing may appear like a win-win scenario on the surface for any company or organization, there are many reasons this may backfire and cause more harm than good.

Read the rest here: Stop the US Department of Interior from Crowdsourcing a Logo

The petition is there. Our signature is too. Yours?

SPAA: stands for Sports Photographers Association of America.

No More Spec Shooting!
Sunday, February 20, 2011, 1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
After more than 10 years of speculative shooting of several youth sports, Ben Chen was tired of spending 100 percent of his resources on 10 percent of the buying customers. So he began to shoot only when parents had prepaid for their kids. Chen has helped his already successful youth sports business become even more profitable. Come and learn how this is done so you can also say, “No more spec shooting!”
Speaker: Ben Chen, Action Snapshots Inc.

Good luck Ben, and please get back to us when the conference is over.