Stop Providing Free and Cheap Labour, You Oinker
Jin’s post Pay the Designer just provided me with a brand new design hero – Harlan Ellison, a well respected writer with an empassioned statement about free and cheap labour being detrimental to the creative industries. As he says, he wouldn’t take a piss without getting paid for it. Who’s he to work for free for Warner Brothers? Are they serious? Go to Jin’s post and watch the video, it’s brilliant.
Unfortunately this road to web design employment is rife with the claim that we need to build free portfolios before we’re employable. What? Work for a year gratis? Three? Five? Where is the point in time where we’re entitled to ask for a fair wage? And this expectation has become entrenched in web design and development, copy writing, graphic design, illustration – the works. It’s the three tiered system of corporate design agency (they’ll eat your leg as you leave having swallowed your wallet), the mid-range of freelancers who generally charge more realistic rates, and the bottom ninety five percent. Yes, from experience that’s a pyramid. Your experience may be different.
Without a doubt that 95 percent who are continually working for nothing and dropping prices is a detracting element of our economic potential. And outsourcing, as Jin points out, is another facet of the disease. Why pay for something if you can get it for free right? And it’s pointless getting into an accounting gun battle to match them. All you can say to prospects is yes go away and get your site templates from cousin Jim-Bob but when it doesn’t work for the business case you’re free to come back and discuss your options again. Professional work costs professional money.
Unfortunately the creative industries are rife with this expectation. We’re so often devalued, and so often because we’re undercut or undersold in the market. Without a market there isn’t a viable livelihood. For web designers, writers, graphic designers, illustrators… photographers. I’m not sure there’s an easy answer.
But if you’re someone working for free or at dramatically undervalued prices please stop providing free and cheap labour, you oinker! You’re just cutting out the heart of the industry your training to join. I love saying oinker. Oinker, oinker. Where’s me beer and chips, you oinker! Yep, been in a few hand to hand stouches over the years with the beer and chips at hand. In the younger days.
