(Not sure anyone in their right mind would hold a hiring process for anything other than hiring someone.)

I think the designers have the right to feel nervous about someone asking for free designs. Offering to pay a fee is a sign of good faith on your part. But I also understand your point that the potential value of getting the gig far outweighs the commercial value of any mock-up they might make to convince you they’re the right person for the task.

Payed pitches is somewhat common for major accounts in the advertising industry. Benefits both the agency and the client.

Regardless of the time or effort it takes to put together a quickie sample, the point is that they’re still doing *some* amount of work for no expectation of payment. Although b5 is a stand-up group, I have seen companies gather some spec prototypes from a handful of designers, turn them all down, do the same thing from another handful of designers, and now they have 8-10 pieces of creative work that they can do whatever they want with without shelling out a cent.

One of the things that I and other designers have to constantly deal with is the concept of cost vs. value. A designer may only do one hour’s worth of work on a project, but in that hour they could redefine the brand of that company, giving it more recognition, add unmeasurable amounts of value, and in turn, raise the profits of this company manyfold. The designer may only charge $150 for that hour of work but the ROI from the company’s perspective could be hundreds of times that, or thousands.

For example, I took on a web application design project for approximately $5,000 and while I was on the plane flying out to meet the client I put together the entire design for the app while in mid-air, in my seat, on my laptop. When I got to the client’s offices I showed the team my progress and they immediately loved it, signed off on it, and after another hour or two of work the entire project was completed and everyone was ecstatic. The application went on to launch to great reviews from mainstream media, netting them a veritable pile of new companies who wanted to purchase the product. The total amount of time I spent on the project was about 5-6 hours, so the whole project ended up working out to about $1,000/hr on my end. When you go to the doctor’s office you’re not paying a few hundred dollars (or thousand) for the 15 minutes he talks to you, you’re paying that money for the 15 years of training and experience needed to know what to do in that 15 minutes

Spec work is still a major problem for large ad agencies and design firms with big clients, because Nike or Subway want to know that their 7 figure contract is going to the design firm most able to do the work. One of the compromises I hear most about is that the client will pay an hourly rate for an initial piece of creative work, and then if it’s selected, they’ll go on to pay for the entire project. I think this is a great compromise because now the design firm is fairly compensated for the work that they’re doing (however insignificant it may be) and everybody’s happy.

As for snooty designers who may feel ‘above’ a client’s request for a new project, I think that there’s no point in being an ass about it. The vast majority of projects I get pitched I turn down for various reasons, but I’m never an ass about it, I never make the client feel like their project is unimportant like it sounds some designers from Sitepoint did. Although many of the best and brightest designers are all booked up now, like Martin said there is still a lot of talent outside the U.S. if you’re willing to look a bit more and investigate. One of the world’s best corporate branding firms is located in Romania: Grapefruit.ro.

Sorry for blowing up your comments Duncan, huge props to you guys for compensating the final 6 on their preliminary design work. Not many companies would do something like that so it’s cool to see.

There’s lots of talent out there and if those who are too snobby or up themselves to bother trying to sell themselves then screw them.