Blog
06.04
Yes, I was right, but why do I feel horrible about it?
Last night, out of morbid curiosity, I visited the website of a former employer. There's no way I'll reveal what ad agency this was, but I will let you know it was probably among the worst career experiences I've had. There was something about the atmosphere and philosophy that never felt quite right.
It was a small place with one big client. My boss treated them as exactly what he considered them: cash flow. He felt like the "real money" was in producing one-off projects faster and cheaper, faster and cheaper, faster and cheaper... to the point where the place became simply a graphics house whose staff had no choice but to inject little to no thought, strategy or care into their design process.
There's a fine line between "faster and cheaper" as a benefit and a detriment. I love finding ways to be more efficient but not by sacrificing quality or industry. Right now, there's a dirty, seething black market in the design world cheerfully referred to as "crowdsourcing." Proponents tout it as the future for those seeking "faster and cheaper." What it really is, is a filthy underbelly of the design process that is fueled by a poisonous concoction of spec work, apathy and artist desperation. For those of you not familiar, a person essentially tosses a need into a tank of designers, forces them to spend their time on a design in hopes they will be paid, and then awards an insulting amount of cash, or often mere kudos, to the "winning" design.
Crowdsourcing is fast and cheap and every time a designer participates in the practice they are participating in an assault on the value of marketing and designers who earn a living defending the quality of the industry. Screen actors and writers put a stop to this very same problem by unionizing. Is that really how far we designers must go as well?
If I must, a quick plug for my current workplace. Our staff is in-house and utterly dedicated not just to working the software or pushing pixels but understanding the intent and strategy behind every project.
Back to my old workplace. They never reached the point of crowdsourcing when I was there. But it was going that way. Their one big client got tired of being treated like a commodity and left. With the cash flow gone, I watched a disgruntled staff quit or be let go one after the other for financial reasons. And when I finally walked away from the agency, leaving behind exactly three people and a part-time receptionist, I, far less tactful in my age at the time, told my boss in no uncertain terms that the agency was on the wrong path and doomed to fail.
When I visited the website last night, I noticed he is now working out of his house. And his flagship "service" is outsourcing (shockingly, branded with the word "outsourcing" in the title), with a promise to secure all the designers and marketing professionals anyone could ever want, fast, and embarrassingly cheap. When I read that, I knew exactly what had happened and where he was getting his design work.
I was right after all, and it breaks my heart.
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