Don’t Work For Free. Don’t Accept Free Work.

Here’s some­thing I don’t think gets men­tioned enough in the dis­cus­sion of spec­u­la­tive (spec) work. Artists like to say «you get what you pay for» and talk down about the qual­i­ty of the work you get if you get it for free, but it’s not true. It’s actu­al­ly real­ly easy to find peo­ple with tal­ent who are des­per­ate enough to work for free. The dif­fer­ence is not so much about the illus­tra­tor’s artis­tic tal­ent (though I agree that peo­ple that work for mon­ey will tend to be of high­er qual­i­ty) but about the illus­tra­tor’s abil­i­ty to advise and devel­op solu­tions on a busi­ness level.

I look at every­thing I do—including art—as con­sult­ing, which means the giv­ing of advice. A busi­ness should get their advice from peo­ple that under­stand busi­ness. Peo­ple who are stuck in the belief they need to be behold­en to an employ­er who will take care of their needs if they just com­ply with the employ­er’s wish­es are not busi­ness people.

I’ll say it again. Employ­ees. Are NOT. Busi­ness people.

Who are busi­ness peo­ple? Inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors. We all work for clients, but we also have to keep an eye on our own bot­tom line and we know (usu­al­ly by learn­ing the hard way) that every deci­sion we make has a trade-off and that if some­thing we get does­n’t do what we want it to do, it does­n’t mat­ter how pret­ty it is, it’s use­less. We know that it’s not just about mak­ing mon­ey or about mak­ing art, but about cre­at­ing some­thing use­ful in exchange for some­thing else useful.

This is a per­spec­tive that you can­not nail into the head of a per­son who draws a salary and gets their health­care pro­vid­ed for (they think) free. Not with a ham­mer. It’s a per­spec­tive that work­ing for our­selves we can­not avoid.

This may sound coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but any­one work­ing for free or for expo­sure is beg­ging. Yeah, their client is the one ask­ing for some­thing for noth­ing, but peo­ple work­ing for free are expect­ing that if they are just well-behaved and nice and do nice things for oth­er peo­ple that they’re going to some­how mag­i­cal­ly get ahead. They’re say­ing, «please take care of me; I’ll do what­ev­er you want.»

If a client comes to me and wants a paint­ing of a flam­ing skele­ton wield­ing a broadsword to put on the cov­er of their retire­ment-home com­mu­ni­ty brochures, I can have a con­ver­sa­tion with that client about how bet­ter to put for­ward the ideas that they want to con­vey. As a busi­ness­man, I know that my job is to give my client the best advice I can and then fol­low through with the execution.

I have no doubt that many of the peo­ple out there who think they have to work for free exceed me in artis­tic tal­ent, and are capa­ble of deliv­er­ing a much high­er-qual­i­ty paint­ing of that flam­ing skele­ton wield­ing a broadsword. But they will not be able to have that con­ver­sa­tion about how an illus­tra­tion for­wards the goals of their com­pa­ny, how it com­mu­ni­cates to the tar­get audi­ence. They can’t under­stand the idea of «goals of the com­pa­ny.» All they under­stand is doing what they’re told and hop­ing they get some­thing out of it.

The moral is: don’t do work for free. Moral #2: if some­one offers to work for you for free, don’t give them any real responsibility.