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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On October 20 2011 16:19 ven wrote: Yes it is quick and easy. And it's also effortless. It's all natural talent, no? You're either born an artist or not. Kind of greedy trying to exploit that or rather the ones without it. Shame on you. Hmm not sure if you caught my sarcasm. | ||
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Treadmill
Canada2833 Posts
Our generation is expected to work for free and then people wonder why we don't have jobs or money. Sorry, thats a little political I guess but its where my mind goes thinking about this. | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On October 20 2011 16:44 Treadmill wrote: This got me thinking in a wider context. There was a prominent article earlier this year (though I can't remember where exactly) talking about unpaid internships. When you mention the idea of designers being convinced to do work cheap because it would look good in your portfolio, it reminded me a lot of the notion of people in other fields doing unpaid internships because they'd "look good on your resume". Our generation is expected to work for free and then people wonder why we don't have jobs or money. Sorry, thats a little political I guess but its where my mind goes thinking about this. We DEFINITELY read the same article at one point or another. I read it a few months ago via Hacker News. (and I actually referred to it in a later post in this thread  )http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=277305#12 SO TRUE though that we all tend to undersell ourselves in tough times (and designers in general tend to have harder swings than most of us, so I guess they tend to be more prone to this behavior). I guess I shouldn't really say "don't do it!", because I can totally understand the human nature of "why" they're doing it  . Doing something for free for someone probably pads the self esteem more than doing, well, nothing, for nobody. Do you think 99Designs can improve this whole situation by forcing businesses to make proper offers to designers? | ||
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Treadmill
Canada2833 Posts
In most of the other "arts industries", unions came into existence specifically to try and prevent this kind of abuse. Musicians' unions, actors' unions, screenwriters' unions, and so on. I know a decent number of people who are actors (and a few classical musicians) and the rules are really strict, but noone really complains because they have to be. Eg, orchestras have a mandated amount of time between breaks and its often kept right to the second. I suppose that graphic designers never managed to unionize. The problem is that when people get involved in something not because it pays well but because its what they want to do (which is almost universally true for the arts) its really easy to accept a shitty deal as being better than nothing, or to accept abuse etc. The same applies for internships too, they're generally in fields where people go because its what they're interested in (I have a friend who interned in the Canadian embassy in Latvia; he wasn't paid but this was, of course, justified by being such a great "opportunity". Actually I think he had to pay to get into the program he was doing). | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-on-unpaid-interships/ I didn't know the history about artists and unionization. That makes sense though. In general I'm not a fan of unions but in this case it's honestly hard to object to their purpose. Graphic designers (particularly digital) are such a new incarnation that perhaps they really haven't gained enough momentum to unionize. I'm not sure if it's practical or beneficial, but it is surprising that we don't hear anything about it. | ||
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d3_crescentia
United States4054 Posts
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Bloodash
Netherlands1384 Posts
this thread is so full of earthshakingly bad stories it boggles the mind; (not necessarily about ripped off designers but just bad encounters with customers/ clueless people) http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=43177&highlight=worst comments Example: + Show Spoiler + The very first freelance job me and my partner ever took on, the one which lured us to leave our jobs and go freelance in the first place. The brief is for us to work for 4 weeks to make some short animation clips of 3 hospital rooms, about 10 seconds each, to run as part of a presentation for cds they send out and for their sales guy to use on the projector. In short they want a hospital reception, stock room and operating theatre to show some key bits of new technology. So, based on this request we leave our jobs... The first problem is that they say they want us to work at their site, even though its entirely doable from our home studio, but they insist, so we get them to book us a hotel room. Then the problems start, the only machines they have are 300MHz 128 meg ram G3 macs, this was just as the G5's were coming out by the way, so they were a piece of shit even back then. We tell the boss its impossible to get what they want on these piss poor excuses for computers, theyll have to get us something remotely modern if they want the job doing; so with this, they go out to a pc store and buy two craptastic machines which arent that much better than what they had. ie. it was an onboard intel gfx card. After telling them these suck too, we basically inform them we're returning home to finish the project, because otherwise its not going to happen. At this point the boss goes on holiday for 2 weeks but refuses to give any member of his company permission to help us with the project, at this stage we still havent been given the mockups, storyboard etc, we have no idea what they actually want to happen 1 week into the 4 weeks. This is where the fun begins, we get the storyboards through... They want half a dozen modelled, rigged, animated surgeons accurately reproducing what happens in a medical video they have... Yes, they just threw character animation into the middle of an internal architecture job with just 1 week left to go. So, my partner manages to hack some poser models into some surgeons outfits somehow and we make it to the end, having technically given them what they asked for. Naturally they didnt like it and then decided we should give them every single scene file and project file so they can fix everything themselves (on their G3's naturally) We tell them if they want project files it'll cost them a lot extra, they threaten to not pay us. In the end we say screw it, subdivided every scene up to 10 million polys, saved every texture as a 0% quality jpg and slapped it on a cd and sent it off. Took the money, never spoke to them again, nor would we wish to. | ||
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Grettin
42412 Posts
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ironchef
Canada1350 Posts
 It's going to be a tough battle given: 1)the prevalent undervaluing and 2) artists arent in the driver seat and too often settle. I've seen industry veterans quote what they consider fair figures, and I'd imagine they are way higher than what most people feel they should pay, and what most artists would be comfortable asking for. (One Example) I was looking through Craigslist and it is funny how many jobs asking for illustrations and designs flat out say they wont pay anything(or much) on a for profit project... AND always add in the classic guilt lines like "only people passionate about art pls". None of those fake artists that want to eat or had to pay for schooling. As a side note, obviously there are exceptions where its ok to work for free- namely non-profit projects, trades/ favours etc- but in practice, a lot of the situations are just straight out exploiting people that are in a vulnerable position. | ||
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Boblion
France8043 Posts
On October 20 2011 14:39 thedeadhaji wrote: Free lance programmers seem to be at least decently compensated, but for some reason designers are shit on so constantly that I wanted to remind everyone to avoid the shit at all costs! I think it is because they really like what they do and they have more freedom in their work. Hence they don't feel the need to be paid as much. There are also more "designers" available than competent programmers. I mean programmers or a devs aren't artists, they have to make a good software or site or application for his client and that's it. They are more of the builder type. It reminds me a bit of low level equestrian jobs, where people work a lot but are paid like shit. Why ? Because they all love horses and many would do to the work for free if they had no other choices lol. Artists still make drawings even if they don't get a designer job. On October 20 2011 17:14 Treadmill wrote: The same applies for internships too, they're generally in fields where people go because its what they're interested in (I have a friend who interned in the Canadian embassy in Latvia; he wasn't paid but this was, of course, justified by being such a great "opportunity". Actually I think he had to pay to get into the program he was doing). I completly disagree with your opinion about internships, at least in Europe. People are expected to work for free here because: - They have thousands of others students available and the employment rate is terrible. - You, as a student have absolutly no experience and you NEED to put things on your resume if you want to get a proper job. Many people don't really enjoy it. But again we are not talking of artists here. They are not creative minds ( usually ). | ||
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ven
Germany332 Posts
On October 20 2011 16:43 thedeadhaji wrote: Hmm not sure if you caught my sarcasm. That's sarcasm again, isn't it? See, I'm good at it after all. Sorry for the confusion. For being rude, too. | ||
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haduken
Australia8267 Posts
The bottom line is, real clients understand the cost. So effectively you have New Clients who have no clue and go around shopping for cheapest but get burned in the long run. Cheap work means no support or expensive support. Clients that understands the cost but decides to low ball you. Well... lose the client I'd say. Not some one worth keeping. This is of course assuming that you are good enough to have that position. Not so easy in this economy. | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On October 20 2011 20:38 ven wrote: What I find regretful about all this is that it forces a lof of artists into protecting the value of their work and having a lot less freedom when it comes to hobby projects. That's sarcasm again, isn't it? See, I'm good at it after all. Sorry for the confusion. For being rude, too. haha np I wasn't sure if it was sarcasm | ||
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
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SpoR
United States1542 Posts
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
http://photoprofessionals.wordpress.com/ | ||
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UltimateHurl
Ireland591 Posts
A great talk on this is called 'F*ck you, pay me.' by an American graphic designer, it's for graphic designers but is interesting: http://vimeo.com/22053820?ab | ||
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HardMacro
Canada361 Posts
Market demand price = (forced) equal supply price = equilibrium Problem? | ||
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Count9
China10928 Posts
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Worst of all, it's by Moleskine, the darling of any designer. http://antispec.com/hq/moleskine | ||
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