Designer's fury over unpaid graphic design role

scotty

Ultimate Member
Saw this article today.

If you're a regular on here you'll know that this sort of thing really boils my piss.
It's really good to see that a design body (AGDA) has decided to speak up against this kind of thing.

I see a lot of these asking for the moon on a stick and giving little or nothing in return.
(Link to original 'job' posting)

I've posted similar before and I often get tempted to click the 'APPLY' button just to tell them my thoughts in the covering letter.

I don't understand why people think this kind of thing is acceptable?
 
Agreed, though I think exceptions could be made for roles where the 'experience' or 'exposure' was actually legitimately valuable.
 
There will always be a grey area Wac.

I think in any case where you're asked to do a job of work then you should be paid, especially if the role requires "professionalism" in the description.
There will always be a need for people to gain experience but's hard to draw a line between what is education/experience and exploitation.

Fact is, a lot of these ads are asking for a full skill set and minimum experience.
If you already have what they're offering? o_O

The carrot of "exposure" is pretty much bullshit though.
I very much doubt that many volunteer roles are going to put you in Design Week.

Imagine if I advertised for a mechanic to fix my car with the offer of exposure as payment I'd be told to f@ck off!
Why in design is this okay?

@Paul Murray

Thing is, people do apply because they're hoping to gain from it.
Uni's endorse this as making internships essential to a course.
Fact is, most of the time they'd be better off working at McD's for the actual design experience they get.
 
We get a lot of people sending in emails looking for work experience, which I suppose this is.
In our case, we're a small company and can't really 'babysit' someone who doesn't really know what they're doing.
But I know that a lot of these up and coming designers are desperate to just find out how it works in the real world.

As a large organisation, profit or not, they should at least pay expenses and have some basic perks.
Strangely, at least it says "The volunteer is under no obligation to attend or perform work."
 
There are many companies who give things away for free to gain exposure, particularly in the world of bloggers and the like.

The distinction is; a few nights in a hotel, a free meal, some product samples, a free game (etc.) aren't/isn't the complete product. A piece of bespoke graphic design is the entire product and I think people overestimate the value of 'exposure'.

Some local company offering exposure is worth nothing really. It's much better to do great paid work and have people ask 'oooh, who did that?'

Will people always try to get something for nothing? Yup!
Do people undervalue design work? Sadly
Is working for free for exposure worth it? Almost never.

That said I would do a free banner for Coca-Cola in order to use their logo on my 'Clients' gallery ;)
 
Back
Top