Graphic Design Hero: Tells off Craigslist
Required reading for all designers:
This disgruntled designer puts the God’s honest truth down for all to read.
Read the original post, removed from Craigslist, below:
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Every day, there are more and more Craigs List posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.
But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.
To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One?…none?
More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.
And this is not really a surprise.
In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.
So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?
Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him a few bucks for materials. What a deal!)
Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?
If you answered yes to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered no, then kudos to you for living in the real world.
But then tell me: why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?
Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.
A few things you need to know;
1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.
2. It is not clever to seek a student or beginner in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be students, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a student once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.
3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their portfolio. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.
4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.
5. Students DO need experience. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the experience they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?
If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.
6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration.” They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely. For more information on this subject, please visit www.no-spec.com.
So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec”gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them.
And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free: please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.
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Evolution of Design
I’m elbows-deep in web updates and new site design work orders at the moment, but I came across some good reading I thought I’d share:
- Real hackers don’t use CSS, a post on Friendly Bit – pretty much encompasses the learning curve and thinking process I went through while learning web design.
References and Resources
Today’s post is some of my favorite links I regulary visit.
TWiT – This Week in Tech web site. TWiT podcasts brought to you by Leo Laporte and on occasion Screen Savers/TechTV vets as guests. A great way to keep up with tech industry news.
A List Apart – Articles about web design, web development, and tips on how to follow web standards/good habits to put into practice.
Kirupa.com – A Shocked Resource for Making Designers Better Developers! Tutorials, forums, and other resources for Flash, .PHP, .NET, Photoshop and CSS. I have benefitted greatly from the Flash tutorials in particular.
Chattyfig Listserv Groups – I’m a lurker on the Flash Newbies and Flashcoders lists. Get answers to your questions straight from the pros, without having to wait for someone trolling a forum to be a good samaritan. Just be sure that you have searched the archives for your answer first (especially for common problems!), then if that doesn’t work, politely pose your question to the list.
W3C’s CSS Validator tool – Make sure your CSS is up to snuff.
Lifehacker says Don’t live to geek; geek to live. Learn how to make your projects more efficient or find a time-saving application you never knew existed.
Get Rich Slowly – Practical financial advice. (No, it doesn’t really relate to technology, but everyone has finances to track.)
The Headaches and Triumphs of Hybrids
I have been working on Branch View Angus all week. It was left to me as a hybrid template – part tables, part CSS for the layout. This is all part of our plan to transition in to pure CSS sites. All I had to do was plug the content into it. Or so I thought. Although the template’s CSS validated according to W3C ‘s CSS Validation tool, Internet Explorer 7 was blowing up the layout.
Only after plugging in all the content to the site did I realize I had not checked the layout in I.E. 7. I thought all would go well, since the CSS had validated. While Firefox always behaves, displaying bad HTML and CSS gracefully, I.E. 7 is unforgiving. Here’s what I saw when I tested it:
OS: Mac; Browser: Firefox; Test run. Looks exactly how it was intended. True to the design.
OS: Windows XP, Browser: Firefox 2.0; Test run. Ok, a small break in the navigation. Not bad.
OS: Windows XP, Browser: Internet Explorer 7; Test run. Oh, boy. Problem with the nav, the images, and all the text. The contact info at the top is running off the page.
It took me all week to figure out what was wrong, but eventually I figured it out:
OS: Windows XP, Browser: Firefox; Fixed. Ok, but there was only one problem showing on Firefox. What about I.E. 7?
OS: Windows XP; Browser: I.E. 7; Fixed. Yay! The text has realigned, the images no longer shift, and the strange break in the navigation background is gone.
Turns out the main problem is using a table and CSS hybrid layout. I’m not sure I can adquately explain how I fixed all of it, but the main point is our assumption that using hybrid layouts would be a good way to transition in to pure CSS layouts were wrong. Hybrid templates come with their own set of problems. I believe I’m ready to take a hack at pure CSS layouts. I don’t expect the code will be perfectly clean, but I believe the structure of the layout will be solid on the first try – unlike the hybrids.
Related posts:
The IDM Major and Why it Worked for Me
I recently stumbled across this post on A List Apart. It advocates using a big-picture approach to implementing web standards in harmony with a web site’s intended design. The three major mindsets ALA named are The Writer, The Engineer, and The Artist. A short summary of the article:
Start by thinking like a writer. Outline the text with headers and sub-headers. Stop and consider the content. An artist sees text as an object, something to design around or add as an element of the design. A writer worries more about semantics, content and context.
After the writer, think like an engineer.
“When you construct a web document, think like an engineer. Your inner writer has selected an element because it has a certain meaning, while your inner engineer must consider the mechanics of that element and the structural integrity of the document it resides in. Markup gives content added meaning, but it also braces that content for use, gives it a supporting structure so it can do real work.” –How to Grok Web Standards, by Craig Cook
Markup your web document with the same rigorous standards an engineer must face, and you’ll find it will perform under pressure, update easier and depreciate gracefully.
Towards the end, think like an artist. Consider white space, fonts and how to arrange the design elements on the page. CSS can be challenging at first, but it gives more control when setting up a layout versus using tables.
Sounds easy, right? This article is not just about thinking on multiple levels; it’s the consequence of a growing need. Employers are no longer looking for someone who can do just programming, only writes, or is strictly a designer. They are demanding more. Job descriptions now ask for a programmer who can also fill the gaps with small design work, designers are needed who have familiarity with scripting or can write small amounts of code. Writers who know HTML and JavaScript are a plus.
The Interactive Digital Media major, with its cross-departmental requirements in Computer Science, Mass Communication and Fine Art is leaping forward to meet these new demands. IDM majors graduate with a mind disciplined to think from all three perspectives, unfettered by tunnel vision. I found it illuminating when I understood why people in other departments complete their projects the way they do; it makes translation between media run a little smoother. Any IDM major can contribute these things to a group:
- Know how a programmer would see a project compared to a designer and suddenly you are able to explain to a designer why their requests are much more involved or complicated than they knew; it gives an opportunity to offer alternatives the artist can be satisfied with while keeping it a manageable task for the programmer.
- Understanding the role a writer plays means recognizing which pieces of content are fluid and most likely to change, and as the designer you are able to create a look that focuses on the strengths of the content.
- Appreciate what a designer contributes and know why design elements are an important part of a web site, application, or project.
Were I working for a larger company with specialized jobs, I expect I would have fit in as a usability engineer. Usability engineers have to see with the eyes of a user, and then identify how a site is used and could be improved. Convincing the programmer, writer, or designer why a change is necessary takes finesse. It takes skilled persuasion to get the changes done, meaning a usability engineer has to speak with the programmer’s, writer’s or designer’s vocabulary to explain why the change is good and also be realistic about what can be changed.
Project managers often times fill the role of translator as well. As it stands, I work for a company with a small web department and wear many hats. The best part about it is knowing when I come to work I will not be bored. My day has structure – I go to 9 a.m. meetings and have deadlines to meet like everyone else – but the rest of what I do varies by the day. I design web site comps one day and build the layout in CSS the next. I update the content on multiple sites one day and program small Flash applications the next. I value change. Learning something new or being challenged by a project is important. It keeps me interested in my job and keeps me motivated during the days I have to trudge through tedious tasks.
When I found the IDM major I knew it was the right degree for me to pursue, because the class projects varied and were always challenging. If I wanted something predictable with a strong sense of job security and a schedule, I would have picked Accounting. So know yourself. Know your major. Your major strongly reflects the attitudes and type of work you will be doing once you turn it into a career. If you enjoy what you’re doing in your classes, you’re on the right track.
