Working on spec essentially means you produce something at your own cost in the hope the customer may like it and choose to pay for it. As such, when working under spec work, you are taking a big risk with your time and effort. A lot of spec work can be custom work so it is not likely it can be reused easily – if the customer does not like it then it gets filed with all the other shattered hopes and dreams.

There is quite a bit of debate as to whether spec work is right and just and in the technology industry, including web design, logo design and graphics design in general, spec work can be quite common.

This debate reminds of a project I once worked on whilst employed at a big corporation. I was busy developing a bespoke Intranet for roll-out across the whole of Europe and I needed a really WOW visual design to go with it. Many of the people I needed to engage with on the project did not speak the same language as me so the design needed to cross borders and cultures – not just appeal to those of us in the UK (and later US). So, I talked to the powers that be about using professional designers to complement the technology development.

The initial response given was to get a number of design companies in on spec work and get them to utilise their experience for free and and we would look further at the best one – maybe. As I was closely involved in the behind the scenes software development stuff (this was before Cascading Style Sheets really took hold) this just did not seem right to me – there was a lot of work to be done and getting people to work for nothing in the hope they might get a 1 in 3 chance to work with a big company on a maybe grated on me quite a bit especially as there was a lot of enthusiasm for this project. But, to the powers that be this was seen as nothing more than just a bit of drawing graphics and using people on spec work seemed to be the norm.

Interestingly, one of the design teams involved was just starting out, but had an interesting take on the project, and they later indicated they would have considered producing spec work free of charge for the chance of working with our company.

Fortunately, after a fair bit of cajoling, I did manage to convince the purse strings to pay for three concept designs and guess what – the designs were all great and each was quite different. Obviously, we did not use two of the final designs but at least they got paid for the time and effort they had put in to the project and I imagine they left with a positive impression of this big company.

My point here is that unfortunately we sometimes forget the amount of creative work which goes into producing a finished article. The flip side is sometimes we are also keen to get our work noticed so may be prepared to work for nothing or on a maybe.

There are many people who are quite happy to produce work for free and never expect payment for their work but for those who rely on income from this stream it does not seem right – and yet it still goes on.

In the past I have interviewed candidates for full-time technical positions who have offered to work for several months free of charge just to get a foot in the door – I have never took one of them on with this premise – I doubt it would even be legal.

What has been your experience with spec work?

Read More About Spec Work

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• Spec Work – What is Spec Work?
• A conversation about spec work | David Airey
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• crowdSPRING’s Attempt to Make Spec Work Acceptable — Designorati
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• Spec Work Analysis: Here To Stay –But Not For Everyone