Jacqueline McCarthy, on the Executive Committee of the Graphic Artists Guild, posts her Little White Lies My Clients Have Told Me - Part 2 where whe’s been told, “Just fool around with it a little. If you come up with something I like, I’ll pay you.” Jacqueline goes with her rant, “Wow, total creative freedom! I’ll just work up some designs and they are sure to like one of them, right? Well, there is a chance they could like one of your designs, but most times these people are window-shopping. They have likely done this before with a different designer and will do it again in the future. And you probably won’t get paid for your time and efforts.”

That statement sounded all too familiar. When I was a little wet behind the ears and green to freelancing, I remember experiencing the very same scenario. What usually happens is they steal your ideas and just hire someone really cheap to finalize the project.

Early on in my web design career, I remember emailing Neil Tortorella, a veteran graphic designer, about spec work which prompted his article, “The problem with spec work revisited.” To quote a little from Neil’s article, “I explain to clients and prospects that I deal in ideas, concepts and hours. I don’t make widgets and that can be hard for some clients to understand. Particularly if they manufacture a product. They know it costs X amount to make it and takes Y amount of time to produce it. I may come up with a killer idea in a couple of minutes. Or it may take several days. But, either way, I go through my process and do the research, explore concepts and work out the bugs. My first idea may be the best, but I don’t know that unless I go through the design process.”

Freelance doesn’t translate to free work! You won’t respect yourself if you do spec work. If you ask your potential clients, “What’s your budget for this project?” and they don’t have an answer… that might be a red flag! Clients should have a budget range that they would be willing to invest for their projects whether it’s a project for a brochure design, copywriting, blog design, search engine optimization, and web site design. Some budgets simply require a little more creativity and flexibility to accomplish business goals but without a sense of the budget, who can really recommend solutions?

Want to learn about the pitfalls of spec work? Visit No!Spec, today.