pro bono = pro sucko

Today I read an interesting discussion at the MacNN Forums regarding designers working for free. Unlike some of the people posting there, I can understand both sides of the issue. On the one hand, doing free design work tells the big businessduds that there are a bunch of suckers out there who will work without pay just to build up their portfolios. On the other hand, building up your portfolio by doing free work is sometimes a necessary step to landing a paying job (or generating more business if you're a freelancer).

But the reality of it is that there *aren't* a bunch of suckers out there working for free; just college students and unemployed freelancers trying to make a start in the business. Also, you get what you pay for. If a big businessdud is willing to accept crappy design work to save a few hundred (or thousand?) bucks, who cares? Oh! but that lowers the standards of what's "professional" design!

No it doesn't; it just makes *your* work look better in comparison. :)

If you're just starting out as a freelance designer and have little to no experience under your belt, you won't find many paying gigs anyway, so the *only* work you find may be pro bono. When I was in that situation, I did the free work exactly for that reason, to build up my portfolio. Word of mouth (combined with people passing along my business card) was what led to paid projects. And it was those paid projects that gave me the learning experience I needed to get the job I have now. I might feel differently if I had been a full graphic design major and graduated from college with a top-notch portfolio in hand, but graphic design was only my minor, and I was attempting to make a start in a field I didn't have a lot of experience in. But thanks to those free design projects for family and friends, I'm now employed full-time in a regular job.

(Also, none of that has anything to do with the original topic in the thread. mixin visuals asked if someone could give him some ideas or help to come up with a logo for his site, and a few people responded with actual logos. That's not exactly what he asked for; he apparently knows his way around Photoshop well enough to create the design elements on his site, so he could probably create his own logotype as well, just by choosing a good font. Why art_director and others chose to grab this and twist it into a big irrelevant debate and shame mixin visuals, I'm not sure. His site clearly was not a profit machine [now or in 2003 when this thread started], seeing as the piddly amount of money he'd make from Amazon referrals would barely cover the cost of maintaining and hosting the site. I also find it slightly ironic that they got their knickers in a bunch over someone making a quickie logo for a site that's mostly a host for links to design-related web resources. It would only be fitting that the very people who use his site be the ones to design his logo, or at the very least offer advice about it. Maybe I'm missing something obvious.)

I'm sorry if my work isn't up to the standards of Mr. art_director on MacNN, and I apologize for being personally responsible for bringing the world of overpriced graphic design to its knees. I'll try to feel sad when I get my paycheck this Friday.