Legal Marketing & PR

Should a Web Designer Work on Spec and Provide Free Samples? No.

By Peter

A few times a year we are asked to work on spec, meaning we provide free concepts to win the project.  We always respond politely to this, but ultimately we do not provide free samples for a few main reasons (two based on the clients’ needs and two based on our agency’s needs):

1. Unknown Client. How can you design for an unknown client?  Seriously, this is the most important issue.  If you do not have a creative brief filled out, a goal for the site, a research period, and a get to know your client period, how can you design anything?  Your design will NOT be on point, it will suck, and be merely a canned template or a shot in the dark.
2. Unique Approach. Our agency is unique, we work on a flat fee AND we really do keep designing until the client is happy.  As a testament to this dedication, we have gone to 15 different concepts before and 35 revisions on one specific project.  So for us, the first concept may not be right, but we will ultimately produce the right concept; so why should our work be judged upon a single concept.
3. Time.  All of the prep and design takes an EXTREME amount of time.  Seriously, just researching and understanding a client can be a 10 to 20 hour project.  Then you have to design the actual concepts, which can be another 10 to 40 hours depending on what you are producing.  So now you have invested 20 to 60 hours of work (a full work week), with no promise that you will win the proposal at all (or even knowing your odds).  Which leads us to the business issue….
4. Business Failure. How can you work for free and sustain a business?  Even the most talented designers, and we have them, cannot win 100% of the time.  Every time you don’t win a proposal means that you are down time and money.  So then you have two choices:  (1) eat the time or (2) raise your rates.  Basically, most people are forced to raise rates for actual clients, to make up for the time you have lost on other projects.  This is not fair to clients who can trust in your skills.  This is no way to sustain your business.

Again, the main reason not to design on spec is that you have an unknown client and are simply guessing at what they want.  However, for your own business reasons, it may not be a good idea too.  If any other agency wants to know how we respond, this is a good example that has worked well:

If you wish to see a sample to get a feel for the quality of our work, our portfolio of 300-plus web sites is a great reflection of our design excellence. We are proud to show it off at www.paperstreet.com/portfolio.php. We do not design individual sample pages for prospective clients because of the in-depth nature of our development process, which includes a creative brief, tailored site structure, unique branding, and targeted market research. To skip this process would do a disservice to you and would not be a true reflection of our work product.  If your company is concerned about being satisfied with what they pay for, consider this: at PaperStreet, we keep designing until the client is happy.  Feel free to call up any of our clients to confirm that PaperStreet rocks!

It’s polite, helps the client understand the nature of the process, and why it benefits them to not receive free “sample” designs.  If you want to see what other people say on “spec work”, check out AIGA - http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work. Good stuff.

Full post as published by PaperStreet Web Design: SpeakOut on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).