Irony Blog-ified
‘Notes on Design’ recently published a bucket-load of posts pimping design competitions, and the community isn’t pleased. Competitions for business customers are a scam, and garbage for designers, as I mentioned earlier this week. Well today they are running an article about the lack of respect for designers in the business community. Um…Notes on Design doesn’t get it. You can’t complain about a lack of respect on your porch while you pimp yourself out the backdoor. Not only do they fail to understand design, they apparently don’t get blogging and community either.
**UPDATE** I want to make it clear the issue is with ‘Notes on Design’ as an entity and it’s editors. They have lost control or failed to manage their editorial to the point that I reflects poorly on their professional authors and contributors.
Hi Jeremy,
I agree.
I wanted to let you know that I am not on staff with Sessions Design School, I am a contributing author. I obviously don’t have time to read all the posts on “Note on Design”, but my opinions and philosophies are not necessarily in agreement with theirs or others who post there… it’s an open forum.
I also wanted to make it clear that I do not approve of these “competitions” because they are, as you say, scams that actually hurt young designer who feel they must do anything to get their “foot in the door”. They are traps… it’s bad enough that when young designers do get paid, it’s usually not enough.
The best I can do is speak my mind against this practice when I have the opportunity. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Chris,
From your piece I understood that you were not an individual who supports this activity. Collaborative sites like designnotes need to make an effort to not allow one or two authors to taint the image of all the others with this kind of nonsense. I appreciate your comments and truly hope that they will stop promoting these activities when they realize it damages the integrity of the real professionals who contribute.
They must realize that, while it an open forum, soliciting free or spec work for commercial clients is neither an ethical or educational endeavor. It’s not a matter of censoring posts, it’s a matter of choosing quality authors who contribute in a professional and ethical manner.