Pixish and spec work.

There’s been some kerfuffle about Pixish being a spec work warehouse. My own personal feelings are that if you’re a starting designer not yet employed at any kind of studio or do freelance work on your own, it’s probably not a bad idea. The portfolio you built up at school might not be cutting it or you may have very few finished examples of print work. Maybe you’re self taught and looking for a way to break in. Maybe you’re a great artist but want to try your hand at solving design problems. Sure. If you have the time, why not do it. Design is kind of difficult to practice in a vacuum. If you’re doing personal projects on your own, most of the time you are creating the problem to solve (which inevitably means that you had your perceived solution to begin with) and that’s kind of contrary to, well, design. Maybe you’re just looking for some crits of your work. What’s the worst that happens? You don’t get paid, you request a few copies of the output, you throw it in your portfolio and you keep shopping for a full time job. Web design is a totally different beast. Get a url, a server and an idea an put it out there for $100 a year. It’s visible to anyone with a computer and easily recognized as a “design”. Print? That’s a totally separate beast. It’s a little costly to try new things when offset costs money. Real money. In the end what harm does Pixish do? I would imagine that it will never take work away from established designers or firms and it won’t likely devalue design from those firms. In the end, to me at least, it seems like a great place for those just starting out to gain some knowledge and constructive criticism with which they can go forth and maybe become the next Paul Rand.

Derek Powazek’s own response to the criticism here.