Paint & Pjs Snowman and "Exposure vs. Exploitation" [eye-opening article from Muddy Colors blog]

Paint and Pj's painting for this year. Haven't decided if I'm going to add text or not.

Here's a close up of the cutie snowman.

Saw this great article on Muddy Colors. I've come across this trouble so often that I wonder why even I have started to devalue my own work. Now I know that part of the reason that it happens to me with the regularity that it does is because I'm in a "cul-de-sac" design career - and to exasperate the problem, I work full time at a non-profit where the norm is that people volunteer their time/talents.

"Photo by JS Choi of he-who-will-not-be-named doing his brilliant thing at Illuxcon. So perfect and hilarious."
Picture and quote from Muddy Colors Blog

This video perfectly illustrates what it would be like for someone to try to treat other businesses and professionals like many clients try to treat artists and designers.

And I highly recommend that you read the whole article at Muddy Colors but below are some interesting excerpts from Greg's article that I particularly identified with and found myself giggling about because it was so right.

Below is an actual conversation... posted here mainly because it is almost the exact same conversation I have had over the last few weeks with different clients. It's nice to get contacted for work, but this isn't work. There's clearly a hunger our there in the world right now for art - mainly for promotional purposes, and that can be a good thing for us all no doubt. Doing a high profile thing for free sounds like a workable idea and sometimes it can be, but know what it is you're actually agreeing to, and what they are truly doing. Much of it is spearheaded by the notion that "Great Exposure" is the same as actual currency - that it is in and of itself, pay. It isn't.

ARTIST:

"Do you work at your job for free?"

CLIENT:

"Of course not."

ARTIST:

"But you assume that its okay for me to do so."

CLIENT:

"Well the exposure is going to be huge for this. So that exposure could be considered your pay."

ARTIST:

"Look I can't pay my mortgage in exposure bucks and can't really take away the time to do this from existing jobs that respect what I do enough to pay in actual real-life dollars. I've got a family to support, you know?"

CLIENT:

"But it can help you get more work and get noticed, you know?"

ARTIST:

"Sure... like this job right?"

CLIENT:

"Right."

ARTIST:

"So by 'exposure' you mean to say like the kind of work I already have and that got you to notice me for this job that you don't want to pay me for... That might lead to another job I get to do for free?"

CLIENT:

"Well when you put it like that..."

ARTIST:

"Is there another way to put it?"

CLIENT:

"I guess not. So do you want to do it?"

ARTIST:

"I think I'm going to pass."

CLIENT:

"Well I am sorry to hear that. Are there other artists you might recommend that might be interested in doing this?"

ARTIST:

"I'd be happy to. Are you going to pay them anything?"

CLIENT:

"As I said before, we just don't have it in our budget."

ARTIST:

"Then I can't think of anyone."

Here's the deal. Exposure to a wider audience is of course a good thing generally speaking, and that's the bait. There's some value and truth in it especially in the early days of your career where you absolutely should do things to grow your fan-base and readership. This has an actual long term value if done right, and can really boost you forward. But it's hard to quantify and requires certain elements to line up to actually be something to grow from. However, when you are approached by a company to do art for them to help push their game, movie, whatever... not a pinup on their tumblr blog, but actual art-directed work, and they claim not to have money to pay but that's okay because it will be great exposure... stop and think about what's happening. When "Great Exposure" is offered up in lieu of money, your hopes and needs, maybe even the enthusiasm you might have as a fan of the thing you are being asked to do work for, are being exploited to provide free art they can use to make money from. That's what's happening from a basic clinical perspective. They're getting paid, but you are not, and yet both of you are working. Why is that? Are they actually incapable of paying you or are they choosing not to? Are the circumstances that burned through their budget just in time not to pay you something you need to feel responsible for, by not getting paid? If you accept this now-free work for their profit, how will you pay for your bills? What happens if a paying gig comes along in conflict with your now pro-bono commitment? And most importantly: recognizing what is actually happening here, decide how you feel about doing it, and why. If you're going to do this anyway, do it with your eyes wide open going in. It's your choice to make- no one else's, but I'd prefer you didn't.

Working this way encourages more offers like this, and that isn't working in a professional sense. And usually it encourages more of the same. Which is not what you're after. It's bad for your peers and community because it reinforces their idea of how your work is valued- economically speaking, (which is not very much at all). Like leaving food out of for mice: you attract more mice, not more jobs. For some reason the arts are the only industry I know of where this presumption is considered such a common business practice the response when you bring it up to others, is a shrug. The easy clarification of this situation is to reverse the question and apply it to other goods and services in a  fairly hilarious way [see the video above].

It's a tempting potential, but easily creates a dangerously tricky cul-de-sac for your career, rather than the launchpad you're being sold. You may find yourself ten years down the road where you are in pretty much the same spot doing this kind of thing over and over. Exposure can lead to more work, but often once you set your work rate to zero, expect more clients to hope for the same, or a nibble above if you're lucky. Why wouldn't they? I have always seen dividends from the jobs I took were exposure was a factor, but only the jobs that were professionalized by being paid for them. The free stuff has not once brought in a single actual quantifiable return except in extremely rare and specific cases. The paid gigs that are also great exposure work because you are taken seriously as an  professional-ass artist, and by investing in you, it behooves them to at least justify the expense by making it successful and put to good use. Everybody wins, and everybody gets to work for a living. It's the way most of it functions, and all of it should work. That's not collectivism, it's just mutual self interest. The flipside is this new flood of Work-For-Exposure gigs- The work merits no value from them and so you may find it treated as such- or at least not necessarily in the way you think should be.  Not being invested in the work means it doesn't matter if it succeeds  because it doesn't cost them anything if it doesn't... so who cares, right? Most of the time someone asking you to do free work and thank them from the exposure is taking advantage of you. Many are just messengers- and some genuinely do not see what the big deal is. It's not always a crass manipulation or conspiracy... but the end result is the same. Who cares who lit the match if the house has burned down?

The rest of the article goes on to explain that there are times which doing pro-bono or spec work will benefit you [just like a lawyer, there are appropriate times and inappropriate times to offer free services] but in general when you do jobs for free you attract clients who want work for free and who have no concept of what design is worth.