The NO!SPEC crusade has recently launched its web site in an effort to educate both creatives and those who buy their services about the dangers and damaging effects caused by speculative work and contests. The initiative was developed by a group of visual communication designers across the globe who share a common passion for their industry, ethical business practices and wanted to take a firm stand on the issue of speculative (“spec”) work requests. The site can be found at www.no-spec.com.

Over the past several years, there has been a disturbing increase in the number of spec-based “contests,” particularly in the area of logo design. In addition, more and more companies are requesting that creative projects be done on a speculative basis. Spec projects are those that provide no guarantee of payment for those submitting work. In essence, a creative (graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, writer, etc.) is asked to invest both time and resources into the project with the client only paying for the design they prefer. In many cases all intellectual property rights to the work by the creative are also forfeited to the client.

Contests, or creative competitions, are a particular concern as they offer the allure of notoriety and potential cash prizes. The trend has even moved into the corporate world where large companies, with more than adequate resources to pay fair market value, are holding competitions to procure their creative needs. Typically, the winner receives a prize that is below market value for their design. In many cases the contest sponsor takes ownership and all rights to all submissions.

Through its site, NO!SPEC provides resources and information for creatives about the nature of spec work, how to identify it and how to take a stand against it. In addition, the site provides businesses with information about why making speculative work requests is both harmful to the creative community and potentially dangerous for their business. NO!SPEC also provides information about how buyers of creative services can ethically procure creative services.

The NO!SPEC initiative includes contacting designers, educators, businesses and organizations, creating NO!SPEC promotional materials, protest letters, and developing petitions. In the future there will be NO!SPEC material for educators to use in classrooms, and more.

With the international support of NO!SPEC, we ask that you please join us in promoting professional, ethical business practices by saying NO! to spec.

NO!SPEC crusade
www.no-spec.com
Contact NO!SPEC

[tags]design, business, graphic design, desktop publishing, web design, creative, communications, visual, photography, illustration[/tags]

PRESS RELEASE

November 7, 2005” The Professional Graphic Design Association (PGDA) has officially launched with the announcement of an elected Board of Directors from across the globe. Elected officers to the Executive Committee are Catherine (cat) Wentworth, (Bangkok, Thailand), President; Robert Wurth, (Lincoln, NE, USA), Vice President; Mark Astrella, (Maui, Hawaii, USA), Secretary; and Jeanette Wickham, (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), Treasurer.

The PGDA is an international non-profit professional organization with a client focus. Through their Code of Ethics and Professional Standards, the PGDA will target members and clients, educating both to the value of ethical conduct in the design industry.

The leadership of the PGDA has set ambitious goals for its first year. “I believe the international graphic design community has long awaited an association such as the PGDA” one that not only focuses on buyers of design, but the ethics and professional business practices of the design industry,” said Catherine (cat) Wentworth, President. “By providing an excellent one-stop business resource for clients, we plan to develop a top rated community of members who are concerned where the design industry is heading. As a result, we will create a much improved working relationship between clients and designers.”

In the coming months the PGDA will be running surveys out of the new PGDA blog to determine the combined needs of clients and designers. Each month the survey results will be analyzed and posted on the PGDA blog. Participation whenever possible is most welcome, as your opinion is invaluable.

The PGDA’s proposed short term aims and objectives:

• A strategy for creating professional, ethical, client-focused standards and making these standards easily available.
• A strategy for educating clients about the value of marketing and design.
• A strategy for the promotion of the PGDA to both clients and designers (grass-roots, viral-marketing, forum-postings, affiliations, use of membership fees for advertisements, etc.)
• A strategy for making alliances with related graphics and design web sites, organisations and business groups.
• Create a web site that clients can visit for more information about ethical design practices. The site is to be simple, non-threatening and easily accessible to clients.

The PGDA’s proposed long term aims and objectives:

• Present a Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Practices that are targeted toward clients and make these standards easily available. This will form the basis upon which PGDA will be built.
• Create an atmosphere where professional ethics and standards guide the working relationships between clients and designers.
• Develop a range of materials that educate both designers and clients about the value of adhering to ethical principles.
• Develop a range of materials that educate clients about the value of graphic design and marketing.
• Develop plans for the promotion of the PGDA to both clients and designers.
• Develop steps for recruiting students and up-and-coming designers into the PGDA.
• Develop alliances with related graphics and design websites, organisations and business groups.
• Develop an easily accessible website that clients can visit for more information about ethical design practices, designers can visit for membership information, and members can visit for discussions, promotion and information.
• Develop branding materials for the PGDA that allow members to announce their affiliation and declare their adherence to the ethical standards that the PGDA promotes.

PGDA Committees
The Design Organization Research (DOR) Committee, is the first committee to be established (created on 28 October 2005). It is researching details of the present design organisations worldwide to enable the PGDA to liaise for the benefit of all organisations and designers. The PGDA is not in competition with established design organisations, but has been established to complement them. DOR Committee members are comprised of Catherine Wentworth (Chair), Alina Hagen, Chris Gee, Chris Gonink, Danita Reynolds, Elisabetta Bruno, Erin Harris, Matt Beazley, Kenneth Paul Buras Jr. and Ruth Farrugia.

If you would like to volunteer your skills in any capacity, please contact the PGDA.

© 2005 Professional Graphic Design Association (PGDA)

Blogs, postcasts and all that stuff

More and more people are discovering the world of blogs and its power. Catherine Wentworth, project manager of Creative Latitude, is one of them. In her short of boring and lively article Blogs, Podcasts and All That Stuff, she describes her own experience with blogs and how addictive they have become for her:

Shortly after I’ve become a fallen blog lady, Black Sunday hit. CRASH! BANG! ZOOP!! Storms clouds thundered in from the northeast and the saga swept me up and carried me away. Before I knew it, I was blogging with the best, the worse, the average and the sane. Dipping here, linking there, I was hooked. Insanity reigned. It plowed a deep furrow in my time while laughingly rearing its power hungry head.

Read the full article.

Purpose, Aim and Code of Ethics of the Professional Graphic Design Association

In the past few months a group of like-minded graphic designers have been talking seriously about our profession, where it’s headed along with clients’ needs and expectations. The discussion has resulted in the formation of a graphic design organization supporting the ethics of our business, but focused on clients. The Professional Graphic Designers Association (PGDA).

With the recent events in the design world, it’s apparent the time is OVERripe to bring the PGDA to the industry.

To begin, we’ll be posting online surveys targeted to clients as well as designers. From the information gleaning in these surveys, we’ll tweak the PGDA mission, scope and goals prior to solidifying the organization’s structure. shown below.

Click here to take the Client survey

Click here to take the Designer survey

Follows the PGDA Code of Ethics.

Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Practice

Professional Graphic Designers Association (PGDA) Mission Statement:

“Our mission is to establish, through industry consensus, a code of ethics and standards of professional practices that are targeted toward educating clients about the value of graphic design, as well as creating a smoother working relationship between clients and designers.”

Aim

Following are the objectives for the formation of the PGDA:

1. A strategy for creating professional, ethical, client-focused standards and making these standards easily available.
2. A strategy for educating clients about the value of marketing and design.
3. A strategy for the promotion of the PGDA to both clients and designers (grass-roots, viral-marketing, forum-postings, affiliations, use of membership fees for advertisements, etc.).
4. A strategy for aliances with related graphics and design web sites/organizations and business groups.
5. Creation of a web site that clients can visit for more information about ethical design practices. The site is to be simple, non-threatening and easily accessible to clients.

Principles

In an effort to create a smooth and productive working relationship with every client, members of the PGDA strive to:

1. Always act in the best interests of the client and the client’s business.
2. Always work with contracts for the mutual protection of themselves and clients, abide by said contracts, and never unreasonably withdraw services.
3. Always engage in ethical business practices, which include maintaining honest and forthright communications with clients, avoiding hidden fees or costs, and avoiding unsolicited electronic marketing.
4. Always document all agreements with clients and keep accurate records.
5. Always protect the privacy and rights of clients by never inappropriately disclosing information about a client’s business, and avoiding conflicts of interest.
6. Always represent themselves, their skills and the PGDA accurately and professionally.
7. Always promote client education of best practices in the areas of design and/or marketing.

Members of the PGDA also endeavor to maintain the highest level of integrity in our profession, and promote the value and legitimacy of design and marketing by:

1. Never working on speculation or for the promise of future payments or work.
2. Never plagiarizing the works of others, or knowingly infringing upon copyrights or trademarks.
3. Never creating work that disregards the health and safety of the community, or is blatantly discriminatory or offensive.
4. Never using work for the purpose of self-promotion without the knowledge and consent of clients.
5. Never reselling or repurposing finished works to other clients.
6. Never sacrificing design quality or integrity, no matter how small the project.
7. Never misrepresenting involvement or failing to attribute proper credit for collaborative or work-for-hire projects.
8. Never using unattributed/uncredited text, articles or other materials the designer did not create for the purpose of self-promotion or self-marketing.
9. Never allowing skills and knowledge of the industry to stagnate or fail to evolve.

Furthermore, the members of the PGDA make the following promises for every project:

1. We strive for excellence in branding, aesthetic design, and visual communication, with the goal of improving the business of every client.
2. We strive for excellence in the quality of every project, so that they are free of mistakes and technically sound in order to achieve efficient production.
3. We strive for excellence in communication with every client and production contact so that every step of the project flows smoothly.

Benefits to Clients

1. A centralized location for information regarding ethical and professional standards within the graphic design industry.
2. Protection (in the form of working with members) from unethical business practices.
3. A forum for airing grievances and concerns or offering suggestions for the industry.
4. A means to find designers who have vowed to uphold the principles of the PGDA as working with members of the PGDA will ensure a smoother, more productive experience.
5. A means for education about the design industry, including best practices and benefits for professional-quality marketing and design.
6. A means for exposure of their business / service through case-studies, announcements, press releases, etc.

Designer benefits:

1. One compact site where clients can be sent to learn about ethical business practices.
2. The PGDA can be used as a marketing and promotional tool, and profiles/portfolios for paid members can provide additional exposure.
3. The promotion of the PGDA, through press releases and articles, will help to promote all members.
4. Low-cost membership fees.

Certification

The formation of certification, testing or any other criteria to “officially” recognize what constitutes a Graphic Designer is NOT part of the PGDA Mission Statement. The PGDA is intended as a resource for providing examples of ethical guidelines and “best practices,” all intended to better educate clients about the values and benefits of professional quality graphic design and marketing. The goal is to create a more trusting and smoother working relationship between clients and designers.

Part of what will help to establish trust, at least early in the life of the PGDA, is to remain as much of a resource as possible, rather than a governing or policing body. In that light, the “official” policy of the PGDA should be to remain neither explicitly for nor against certification. (Besides, we do not have the US$ half a million++ to jumpstart a project of that magnitude.)

Please note: for now, any updates can be found on Robert Wurth’s site at Freshly Squeezed Design

Special thanks to Catherine Wentworth for permission to reproduce this article and the PGDA’s Code of Ethics.

Discover the Value of Professional Design

A designer doesn’t just create pretty pages. A designer gets a cross a communication. The way this is done, the effectiveness of the communication and so on are very important in marketing your company’s image, your new product or anything else you wish to promote.

Effective communication is achieved by those designers with the skills necessary to produce one. Creative Latitude will take you through the designers’ world and will show you their value and how a competent designer can reflect in a competent company image.

From Creative Latitude: “Creative Latitude is about promotion and education. Nope, we’re not talkin’ readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic. We seek to find ways to educate people about the creative process and the business value we, and our particular discipline, offer. Creativity, whether visual or the written word, affects people. It influences their thinking. Savvy enterprises understand this and use it. Creative Latitude is a place for sharp business people to find collaborators for their projects and learn about various trade practices, ethics and processes.”

Find out more about this professional and at the same time somewhat irreverent site at www.creativelatitude.com.