This morning my RSS reader kicked back a really interesting article by David Airey in which he talks about a recent article in Forbes magazine. David’s article (Forbes calls designers snooty) is critical of the Forbe’s piece (The Creativity of Crowds) in which the magazine describes how websites such as XXX will help bring democracy to the snotty, elitist [my word] design industry. Frankly, while I think David is offended by the article I don’t think he’s offended enough.

The Forbes article starts by pointing out that “In 1922 publishing baron colonel Robert McCormick promised $50,000 to the architect who produced the best design for a tower to house the Chicago Tribune. The competition attracted 263 entries … ” – which is a fact but what Forbes fails to point out is that $50,000 in 1922 is worth about $500,000 today (*) which means that unlike the ‘contests’ being run on CrowdSpring (and other websites) the architechs who took part in the 1922 contest had a good chance of making great money if they took part in the contest.

Now I’m not usually one to mix my political views with my blogging but the post from Forbes really irked me.

I’m not sure how their editorial team came up with the conclusion that designers are snotty or that we need to become more democratic but quite honestly, I don’t know very many designers who could be described the way they’re presenting the industry.

There are a few myths about being a designer that many people should disregard:

We get paid well

This is a big myth. I get paid a very comfortable hourly rate for my work and a lot of people would be shocked to learn what that is but it’s not all my money.  Of the total that we charge for an hours work, I spend nearly $10,000 every year on software and hardware plus another $5,000 on books and training materials. Add to that, nearly $2,500 a year in telephone and internet expenses above the costs I already pay as a homeowner. When you add it all up I, I pay nearly $25,000 each year to be capable of delivering quality designs to my clients. In comparison the average project generates $1,250 per week of billable time which converts to $65,000 (with no holidays) for a grand total of $40,000 of which I have to pay the same taxes everybody else does.

We never work

The funny thing about designers (especially web designers) is that we never seem to be doing anything. OK, that I’ll agree with but there’s a reason that we never seem to be doing anything … it’s because we’re always waiting for something. I can’t tell you the number of times in my career the final copy for a web assignment is delivered at 4:30 on a Friday, usually before a long weekend and almost always a few days behind the deadline. Frankly, I think most companies should stop employing web designers in the mornings and let us work from mid afternoon into the evenings since that’s when we get the copy / graphics / marketing message etc. from the rest of the company.

We’re snotty

Do you know why I think we’re viewed as snobs by the rest of the world? Because we have taste. To be a designer, you have to appreciate quality and have a eye for detail. That’s not restricted to our work, it’s part of our lives. The reason we drive nicer cars, have better laptops, drink finer wine and eat gorgeous food in our tailored suits and matching ties? It’s because it would be a sad statement of our appreciation for quality to do anything less. Heck, I pay an accountant to do my taxes but I don’t call him anal for being able to balance a budget … it’s who he is.

So what’s this got to do with designing on spec for these competition websites? Everything.

Designers bust their butts to create quality marketing materials for products all day long and most do it for less money than they’d earn managing a donut shop. Now, websites such as the one Forbes is promoting is asking these people to bust their asses simple for the chance to maybe win the contract.

Let’s take look at what that really means for a quality designer. On the front page of the contest website there’s a request for a web designer to build a website for a financial accounting company for $1,000. To win the bid, you should put together two samples of a web interface in HTML for them to choose from. Its  a three day contest.

So to have a chance at winning, you’ll need to come up with three original designs, create the Photoshop graphical elements, convert these to web graphic files, write the HTML to support the files and the CSS to load the graphics. Let’s assume all of that can be done in six hours, times three designs is 18 hours work for a chance to win a contract worth $1,000. If you won, you can assume there would be another ten hours of work to wrap up design changes and actually implement the design which means that you’re earning ~$35 per hour if you win.

Assuming you can win one in five contests, your actual time investment is (18 hours competing * 5) + (10 hours post competition to complete the project) = 100 hours of work to win $1,000 worth of projects or … $10 per hour. Yep those pompous business men over at Forbes have us pegged … real snobs.