Of course not every business is the same and different firms can run very differently from each other. However, what seems to be remarkably similar among design companies is client behavior and designer behavior.
Clients are supposed to be able to say, this is the material I have, this is my goal for this ad/logo/brochure etc. now do what you do best... That rarely happens. I had one time that I designed a full page ad, and the client said: "It's perfect... just make my phone number a little bigger," and they really meant it.
That was close to the response we would get from a regular client once you knew their preferences well, but even then there were almost always a half dozen small changes, or more. "I wanted you to focus on the steak dish this month, not the pie." "Can you do one with the website listed, and one without it." "I want to see one with my logo in purple and one with it in pink." "I need you to add our second phone number, and fax number, and can you make the vacuum cleaner bigger."
Some clients wanted to pick out the photos that were used, even though they had already picked the content of the photos for the photo shoot.
So it just happens sometimes that clients are weird, unpredictable, or just difficult to work with. Most of them had small reasonable requests that fit in with the needs of their company and advertising... (our phone number changed, we moved across town... we need you to replace our old logo with our new one etc.)
Occasionally you get the "I don't know what I want... but I know what I don't want... and I know that I will know what I want when I see it..." client.
"Just make me something and I will tell you if I like it."
It makes me cringe just thinking about it.
And as I mentioned in my first post on the subject you often get the crazy ego client that wants you to spend extra time just so they can have their ego stroked, or feel like they got their money's worth.
The worst case scenario is a combination of the two. These are the people that say "I don't like this... do something else."
"Well what don't you like about it? The colors, the photo used, the font, the style?"
Knowing what they do not like is actually important information, and even with these clients you could usually get something out of them. Such as: "well the style is all wrong. We are an elegant restaurant and this is too playful, and we don't even want to focus on that dish. I don't know why they took a picture of it and I was hoping for a script font...."
You see all of a sudden the person who didn't know what they wanted is giving you valuable info.
This is exactly what does not happen in these online design contests... and it is so endlessly frustrating.
It is like they are combining freelance design, with amateur competition, with ego mania clientelé, and gave you the worst of all three.
What is the worst part of freelance design? I think it is having to deal with subjectivity and whims of clients. You have to walk a fine line between meeting the needs and wants of the clients which can sometimes be at odds with each other. Ideally a designer could avoid those clients who do not truly value that specific designer's style and expertise, but that is generally easier said than done. It is actually impossible in design contests, because "clients" do not pick the designers, nor do the designers have any real knowledge of the "clients."
Second as a freelancer you do not always get to work with a team of other designers. In design contests it is every designer for themselves. What do I mean by that... well in the non-blind competitions and I would guess about 2/3rds of the contests are non-blind. Everyone can see your design and the contest holder has the ability to rate your design.
If you were part of a design team it would not be unheard of nor unreasonable for another designer to render the same concept differently. We know the client wants bubbles in their design that go from small to large and for one bubble to surround the word... There are many different ways this could be portrayed... It is possible they might like the style of another designer better or a different presentation better.... There is no problem with that because as a part of a team you are still going to get paid, especially if you derived the concept that is ultimately chosen... even if your application of it is not used.
In these contests the moment you get a 4 or 5 star rating all the other designers will start devising variations of your design. Or as 99designs likes to say "you do not own the concept but the implementation of the concept." Which means the other designers can use the same font, and the exact same idea, implement it a little differently... like using an ellipse instead of a bubble or a flat circle instead of a 3-d one etc., and it is permitted. But if their blatant copy-catting gets picked as the winner... you get zero and they get paid.
Not only that but sometimes the client will decide that your concept is the one they want... which means the other designers, if they want a chance at winning, have no choice but to devise an "implementation" of your concept if they want to stay in the contest. Your design in-effect becomes the new design-brief.
What is your reward if your concept is chosen but your specific submission is not? nothing.
I was in a contest once in which another designer put up a fairly generic design. Orange chromatic dots in a straight line over the name of the company in a black sans serif font.
It got 4 stars. The winning design, submitted by another designer, used the same font, the exact same color dots/font, the exact same shade and size of dots, but put them in a spiral pattern instead of a straight line. That is what the client wanted and paid for.
They see all these designers as "their design team." So it is perfectly natural to see an alternative to a design that they like.
The other issue is that you cannot submit the exact same design as someone else or it is considered copyright infringement and could get you banned from the site.
So the original designer could not at that point resubmit the spiral design as a variation of their own work because that would magically be copyright infringement of the designer who is blatantly ripping off the previous designer. I have seen some designers get around this by putting up dozens of variations of their own design the moment they get a high rating. The problem is that it is really not possible to come up with everything someone else might derive off of your work.
This brings me to the idea of a contest. You see the trouble with creative contests in general is that they are often a pass/fail scenario. You do not get feedback, you do not find out how to improve etc. You just find out that you did not make it. The upside is that there are usually specific standards that they have to publicly announce that they will be judging you on, and they generally have to make it clear how they will be judging it.... That's the benefit of a contest.
Also, generally other people are not allowed to copy your work or derive work from it, particularly after it has been submitted. Imagine, for example, a poetry contest in which someone could read your poem after submission and use one of your stanzas as your own, or a drawing contest in which they could see that you used a tiger in your drawing and then use one of their own. This is almost universally considered cheating in normal talent-oriented contests.
But it is not "cheating" in a design contest because you are all a "design team," and why else would they be rating your designs except for the purpose of telling the designers what direction you want them to go in...
Then you get to deal with the huge crazy client ego that seems to grow out of these contests. There is something about having that "eliminate" button. I don't know what it is but I have been in so many contests in which hours of my work was eliminated without comment, even when there were very specific briefs, that were followed exactly with very skilled designs submitted.
Gone instantly... without any explanation, or criteria for what they are judging on.
So you don't get the benefit of even finding out what they don't like... only that they don't like your design... for some reason. Then if it is a visible contest you can only try and look at the designs they have rated or not-eliminated as some criteria for what they are actually wanting.
Sometimes these designs are very different from the "brief." Of course that wouldn't matter if they were your client... clients change their minds... but contest holders are not supposed to get to change their minds. They are supposed to have to stick to the guidelines they set out or its not really a contest. That is like changing the rules of a game in the middle of it.
So we are supposed to function like designers and be willing to give revisions if requested, as if they were our actual client... some clients request this... But even then, it is a delicate issue. If you rate my design one star and then ask for a different color... well what's the point? Will you like it that much more in blue instead of red and I've already wasted several hours on this... the prize is 250... do I want to waste a few more?
Honestly every time I have ever done a revision of my design at 99designs the "client" liked the new design less and generally rated it lower. Plus there is another issue: sometimes they don't exactly ask properly for you to revise it. Why does this matter? because you are not their design team and you are not getting paid. Since they are holding all the money, and all the cards most clients end up on a weird ego trip where they suddenly envision themselves your boss whom you are supposed to be bending over backwards for.
"I need to see this is 3 different colors." "You need to design some kind of symbolic icon to go with this." etc. My response.... "um I did as much as I am willing to do if I were getting paid $200 dollars for this design. Which I am likely not, seeing as you want some specialized icon designed which was not mentioned before."
Likewise your designs get dismissed sometimes with snarky comments. As if you were somehow foolish to think that that would be a good interpretation of their brief. Often when designers complain that no feedback was given on their design the contest holders says something like "the designs submitted varied greatly in quality and the ones eliminated didn't warrant any comments."
So is it a design contest in which it is reasonable to get eliminated with no real feedback... pass/fail style?
Or is it a designer-client relationship in which finding out what they do not like about your design is just as important as finding out what they do like.
For as a contest they get to change the guidelines without notice, extend the length of the contest, edit the brief, judge without any criteria, end the contest on a whim, and even withdraw the contest without awarding anyone. I have seen contests that did this after awarding designs 4 and 5 stars. They loved the designs and still didn't pick a winner.... mmmhmmmm.
If it is a client-designer relationship then I should get paid for work that is derivative of my own, I should get some feedback after I have spent hours of work for you even if it is simply to tell me what you do not like or how I failed to achieve what you wanted, and finally I should get paid for my time even if the client changes their mind about getting the logo.
Imagine if a client came to you and said... I love this design, and the concept is great... let me talk to 20 other designers and see what they will do with this concept before I agree to going with yours.... and BTW if I like their design better I will pay them and not you.
Meanwhile the one contest I have won thus far, the client didn't even know what file types he was asking for. He promptly emailed me to tell me he could not open the illustrator file I provided, that he had specifically asked for, because he did not have the right software. This guy wanted 7 different file formats btw. So he requested that I email him the software for opening it.
That's right he wanted me to email him software that was worth more than the award for his contest... seriously. I told him to download adobe reader.
Even nicer clients, who mysteriously do not end up on an ego trip, are still like your worst lunatic client. The one who thinks you should bend over backward for them even if they don't pay you, who has absolutely no sense of fairness or loyalty to you, and who will stab you in the back at a moment's notice. It's like having a contest run by a child that doesn't know what they really want, and has no clue what design is all about, and thinks any whim that fancies them is just fine, even refusing to pay anyone.
Meanwhile the commitment designers show by submitting a well rendered design that followed the specifications of the client is almost never honored. Why would it be... if 50 designers submit designs who has time to comment on them all, or even bothering to thank them before eliminating their entry.
And the worst part is, truly inferior designs often win over the more skilled ones. I actually created a custom text for one contest. I was really pleased with what I came out with. It was simple: two colors conveyed the idea very clearly, and was the exact sort of font they were looking for... I couldn't find one I was satisfied with so I rendered my own... with my pen tool, illustrator, and lots of time.
Someone else put the same words in a generic sans serif... in black with an orange rectangle over it to represent a "sales tag." It got 4 stars... mine got 2. (BTW it was a good thing that I lost... I noticed afterwards that they requested the winning logo be put into a business card design, website header, and stationary design, all for the same prize $200... seriously). I lost one to a design that was a messy recreation of the Ubuntu logo with a couple of large dots in the middle, it wasn't clear what the dots were for but it didn't really make any sense in terms of that contest.
There is often no rhyme or reason to any of the "client's" choices. But why would there be? They do not have a skilled professional walking them down the path helping them choose the right style, font, icon, colors for them. No one is helping them make an informed decision on what will best serve their needs. Their design team is a team in the same sense that a bunch of betas in the same bowl are a family, and the only incentive a designer would have for helping the client is some guarantee that they would get paid... a guarantee they cannot give them until the contest is actually won... and the final design is picked.
So ummmm... no you aren't "slapping other designers." If other designers can't convince clients to go for a real professional designer or design team, over the proverbial cock-fight of the design world, then they are a huge failure at marketing themselves, specifically at knowing what makes them, their skill set, and a working relationship with them valuable and great.
If they can't do that much for themselves how exactly will they be able to pull it off when designing a logo, a brochure, an ad, or a website? How are you going to help your client figure out a direction for their design that will appeal to their target market, if you can't communicate your own basic value as a professional to other human beings? Come on the slapping other designers thing is weak. Especially since many of the designers on these sites are from less developed countries.
The only designer you are slapping or perhaps should be slapping is yourself when you participate in these contests. Though I do think you may be doing a disservice to the "client" as well. It just kind of feels like doing a massage without knowing the contraindications for massage. Fever... what fever?
0 comments:
Post a Comment