But this seems to me to be more of a community thing;...
Agreed, and that was our intent. I can only speculate that maybe some people really did think that the World Science Fiction Society is a Big Corporation with Lots of Money and that Fat Cats like me are raking it in hand over fist from the insane amounts of money we charge people to attend conventions and buy books -- we control all the world's science fiction, don't'cha know? -- and were sticking it to the little guys. (Yes, I exaggerate for effect, but not by much.)
Plus we've been having base design contests for years without them attracting controversy.
Again, I'm speculating that this doesn't matter to the aggrieved parties on account of it's not the same kind of graphic design. At least one of the protesters seemed IMO singularly tunnel-visioned. I pointed out that my employer, in pursuit of contracts, does "spec work" valued at millions of dollars in effectively free consulting. (We're a supply chain management company. I design databases and supply chain models to optimize large, complex companies product flows. Parts of what I do are incorporated into RFP responses in an attempt to win the business.) He dismissed my analogy on the grounds that Big Companies don't matter and that what I did wasn't Real Work anyway, not like being a poor struggling graphic designer. Well, thank you so much for dismissing my entire career as meaningless!
(This should not be taken as me denying the immense value of work done by artists and designers. I can't do that work, but I don't make the Dilbert-esque mistake of assuming anything I don't know how to do is easy.)
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Date: 2009-04-16 07:03 pm (UTC)Again, I'm speculating that this doesn't matter to the aggrieved parties on account of it's not the same kind of graphic design. At least one of the protesters seemed IMO singularly tunnel-visioned. I pointed out that my employer, in pursuit of contracts, does "spec work" valued at millions of dollars in effectively free consulting. (We're a supply chain management company. I design databases and supply chain models to optimize large, complex companies product flows. Parts of what I do are incorporated into RFP responses in an attempt to win the business.) He dismissed my analogy on the grounds that Big Companies don't matter and that what I did wasn't Real Work anyway, not like being a poor struggling graphic designer. Well, thank you so much for dismissing my entire career as meaningless!
(This should not be taken as me denying the immense value of work done by artists and designers. I can't do that work, but I don't make the Dilbert-esque mistake of assuming anything I don't know how to do is easy.)