How to Educate Your Clients Part 3 – Spec Work
This is Part 3 of the 4-Part series, How to Educate Your Clients, where we will examine the important role that education plays in your Freelance Illustration business.
(Update: You can also download an audio version of this popular series here.)
Spec Work
To many Illustrators, these are the two filthiest four-letter words in the industry.
Part of the reason is that every day clients are asking artists to create work without guaranteeing that it will be used, or more importantly, that they will be paid.
The fact is, spec work is never going away. No matter how much you may disagree with the ethics involved, some clients will still be requesting this lowly form of free work until the end of time. You can, and in my opinion should, avoid doing spec work like the plague that it is. Many professionals claim that it devalues the industry, and to those who would debate this, I would say that at the very least, it certainly devalues your own worth as an Illustrator and hurts your business.
There are two main reasons that spec work will always exist:
1. There will always be Illustrators who will agree to do spec work.
2. Most clients who ask for spec work don’t know or understand that it is bad, or why.
While all the education in the world won’t alleviate the hunger that drives artists to accept spec work, there are healthy ways to refuse to work for free while teaching your potential clients at the same time.
Some Misconceptions About Spec Work
Some creative professionals will react to a request for spec work by attacking or insulting the person asking for it. I understand the anger that spec work evokes, but this response assumes that the client is knowingly trying to take advantage of hungry artists. While this may or may not be the case, I propose that it’s a better idea to give the client the benefit of the doubt.
As Illustrators, we hear the term spec work spat out of each others’ mouths everyday with enough distaste to make our mothers cringe. Because of this, it’s easy to forget that many of the people who ask for spec work have probably never heard the term before in their lives. They simply don’t live in our world.
Therefore, rather than persecute them, we can take the opportunity to educate them and maybe even get them to pay for our services.
How You Can Enlighten the Lost
Before I share my own personal approach to educating my clients, I’d like to highlight two resources where you can find more information:
- No!Spec (no-spec.com) – A campaign that takes a very aggressive stance on spec work and strives to spread the word.
- AIGA – The professional association for design shares its position on spec work and offers a sample letter to send in response to spec work.
Now I’ll share an example of how I generally respond to a client who requests spec work via email:
Thank you for contacting me. I would love to discuss your project in greater detail. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to create work on speculation, because my time is reserved for my paying clients. That being said, I stand by the quality of the work in my portfolio, and if you’d like to commision me to create comps before you commit to hiring me for the overall project, I’m happy to negotiate a reasonable rate.
I look forward to the possibility of working with you.
What I like about this response is that it assumes the client’s innocence, asserts the value of my time, and opens the door to a fair, contracted relationship. Of course, if they are not interested in these terms, they will simply move on. At the very least, they will hopefully get the impression that if they want something of value, they are going to have to pay for it, without me having to confront them in a negative way.
More often than not, clients with good intentions will in turn hire me to create comps, and sometimes more.
Assert and Avert
Whatever strategy you use, taking the time to educate potential clients about spec work will help to encourage them to pursue ethical business practices and turn away those who would rather waste your valuable time for no pay. In the meantime, you can make this task a little easier by asking your fellow Illustrators to do the same.
How do you respond to requests for spec work? Please share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Related Posts:
- 10 Tips on Contracts and Clients
- How to Spot a Problem Client
- Things to Consider When Pricing Your Work
- Is Your Art Rep Doing Anything For You?
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I like that sample response a lot. It makes the point without being a d*** about it.
So many times the jobs I would like to do seem to be posted by people expecting spec. Maybe people think good cartoons are just too easy to draw or they aren’t expecting much.
Also, does anyone have any opinions, experiences with the so-called design contests that also seem to be so popular?
That’s a good question, Nate.
I think contests can be a good thing as long as the artist retains all rights, benefits from the exposure, doesn’t have to pay unreasonable fees for entry. Some contests, however, are just veiled requests for spec work. As in all cases, the Illustrator must decide which competitions are ethical and fair. Where do YOU stand on this topic?
Thanks for sharing your no-spec response, that’s a great way to phrase things!
To Nate: definitely read the fine print on any sort of design contest and only enter if you feel comfortable with the rights you’re granting or giving away.
Good post, Thomas.
I think you’re right to treat potential (?) clients as if they really don’t get what they are asking for when they request spec work. Art-for-hire is something they probably don’t understand, so they don’t realize their request is unreasonable.
Kinda like how a lot of people see images that we’ve created (or music or software or other “media”) on the internet and think they can just take it. When I’ve called people out for pirating songs or software, many times it’s like they didn’t even think about the ethics involved. But more often than not, they do take the high road when they see the ethic issues.
Then there are those who make a business out of trying to get something for nothing…
And there are the ones who think they are providing you something valuable in exchange for free/cheap work (like publicity– um, yeah, right!).
This question is as old as I am in the business and that’s 20 years!
I want to share a great experience with all those hungry designers and illustrators.
My studio was approached along with 8 other studios to provide spec work for a National campaign and whose ever design they liked would get the job. Only 2 studios argued the point of spec work being a loss leader and unethical and we both were given a $10,000 budget to come up with the goods whilst the other 6 studios lost out.
It was a tight race to the finish and we did not win the job but we were highly commended for the work we produced and offered further opportunities. Most of all our work did go unrewarded as we were paid for our concepts.
So I say to you young folk, hungry folk, desperate folk… It pays to have ethics and it pays “full stop”.
Nicely put!
I found this through a Illustrator friend of mine on Twitter. While I have absolutely no skill in illustration, I’m a social media strategist.
I’m not an “expert”, “guru” sounds like something you stepped in.
I love every aspect of what I do and wish to continue to grow and evolve with the world as there is much to learn from it.
What I love about your blog, and this post in particular is that I’ve found you can sub Illustrator with most any freelance title and the words are still quite relevant.
This post hit home for me though.
I’ve found myself creating skeleton strategies in my proposals just to land the gig, only to find that the company did everything that I was saying in my proposal, only without me in the captains chair.
Worst part is, I know I’m not alone.
“Send me a proposal” is the exact equivalent to “Spec Work” and it stinks, because what does the client get?
LOTS OF FREE IDEAS!
Being Creative Professionals, our ideas equal rent, food, clothing, etc. And the thought that many, MANY, companies are willing to take this away, is not only shameless, but borders on unethical.
I love this post. Simply put, You are in control. You control your image, language, and education level, and I love the way that you’ve put that here.
I’m rambling so I just want to wrap this up by saying
Thank you
Thanks for your comment. I agree that these ideas apply to every freelancing field. Client relations are a crucial part of what makes a business grow.
I reply in a very similar way to those who approach me with these offers… there may be a few who will respond to paying for a commission, but most decline altogether or I will either hear nothing back at all. I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt, but my intuition about them usually serves me best.
Many thanks regarding the awsome post. I am going to keep an eye about your blog, i allready saved it to own list :)
I’m new to all this freelance illustrating stuff and I just offered to do spec work :( Afterwards I thought about what a rip it was and wondered if there was a better way. I’m glad I found your article to help me navigate this terrain in future projects.
hey, I know this is a late reply but a fee days ago I did some spec work and it was indeed for a client who didn’t want to pay and contacted several people.
I knew on beforehand that there was just only a chance, so I did it for my own benefits: the experience and the fun of drawing.
But I wanted to thank you for this article, I hope I can use that piece of text as a reply for future cases of spec. work. I tried to explain in a normal way why it’s not beneficial for me to do free work to the client (because I also had several cases before where people didn’t know a lot about the business), but I got an angry reply with “uh, good luck in the industry then, if that’s how you work”. It hurts to see and know that there are people out there taking advantage of inexperienced illustrators like that.
I get a bitter feeling when I see websites like Freelancer.com or even DeviantArt, but I understand now that there just are a LOT of amateurs on it, trying to get work for almost no reward. I can’t compare or compete with them because it’s a whole different world.