One of the biggest questions of design, To Spec or not to Spec. For those of you not familiar with the term, Spec work is short for Speculative Work, any job for which the client expects to see a finished product before agreeing to pay. It’s like ordering a Big Mac then refusing to pay because the required big doesn’t meet (or meat) your expectations.

It is one of those problems that just will not go away, and I suspect it pops up in different fields of creative form. All the thought that goes into most creative forms, is hidden from the hoards of consumers that just look at your work and sum it up with a simple “I could do that.”



And that is my theory of spec work. People don’t understand design, all they see is some basic scribbles on a page and conclude that they should only have to pay fifty bucks for it. Try handing a quote of several thousand dollars to that same man and he’s going to laugh so hard his shins will snap and rocket to the moon.
Design work is largely immaterial, 90% of any project is nothing more then mind games. Playing with colour theory, experimentation in different forms of gestalt, rules of proportion balance and emphasis, and when the rules can go sod off. Clients and consumers never see or understand this side of design.

There is also the problem of end results. If you order a Big Mac you know that your receiving a burger that resembles the taste of hamburger, you buy a car you get a big metal box that moves fast. People have basic assumptions about what there getting except with design. They might like a piece of art but they don’t know why, and it’s are job to help deconstruct the mystery for them.

Well I have a craving for a Big Mac now for some unknown reason, What do you think?

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