Unit Verse

Yesterday I received the following email, with attachment:

“Please review the attachment and the information on my historic interactive pictorial menu and then pass on your estimate of price and delivery to produce the software. The menu will be located on a website I designed on Web Easy Professional 7.”

Other than being signed with the sender’s name, that was it. I did not open the attachment. Instead I just chuckled and hit “delete.”

This is not how to inquire after hiring an agency. And I’m not talking about the inanity having a website “designed on Web Easy Professional7” nor even  the utter rudeness of having no “hello” or other opening salutation. I’m referring more to the idea that I or anyone else can offer an estimate for price and delivery to produce software based on an “attachment” with information.

A design project is not an interaction between two computers  or two email accounts or even a person and a requirements list, and the context is not merely the design and delivery of software. A design project is an interaction between people; people with a host of respective motivations, requirements, personalities, expectations, questions, responsibilities, inside and outside obligations, and many other things that are relevant to the scope of the project and the work that will happen within it. A direct conversation, face-to-face or by phone, is the bare minimum requirement for any intelligent consideration by either involved party.

Inquiries like the one above show a lack of intelligent consideration. I suggest that you never work with people who are comfortable with that.

Freelance Switch has an article this morning entitled, “Freelancing Under the Table: The Pros and Cons.” It takes a slow, meandering path toward gently recommending that you might find it difficult when engaging in the unethical, illegal, unprofessional practice of taking cash under-the-table from clients. The article is filled with amoral, nonjudgmental passages like this:

“The IRS may be the stuff your nightmares are made of, but the simple fact is that if you take money under the table once or twice, you aren’t going to have a problem. Even if a client reports income that you didn’t expect to pay taxes on, you can probably manage the situation.”

And concludes with another gentle reminder:

“…Before taking on a project under the table, think about the issues that go along with it.”

Wow. Can you imagine such an article in a legal professionals’ publication? Or in a medical professionals’ publication? Freelance Switch has clearly established itself as the leader in providing irresponsible advice to design professionals. Imagine if your clients, in the course of learning about your profession, happens upon that article. Now imagine the impression that they’ll form about you and your profession. Does this sort of advice directed at design professionals inspire confidence in designers or in the profession as a whole? Quite the opposite. This article—and others like it that have been published on this rag—are detrimental to our practice and our profession. Further, they can only inspire our potential clients to view our profession with a jaundiced eye. Thanks, FS.

This was an excellent opportunity to advise professionalism to design professionals. This was a no-brainer, folks. The article should have simply stated that illegal and unethical practices have no place in the design profession. Period. Shame on the author for crafting such an irresponsible article and shame on Freelance Switch for publishing it.

This week our own Nathan Ford published a cutting essay on website design pricing approach, and how some agencies’ pricing amounts to little more than looting. Among other things, Nathan notes that some agencies and individuals rely on the fog of understanding surrounding Web technology production to artificially and unscrupulously inflate project pricing in order to find the maximum a client will agree to pay.

“?A price that is based on anything other than an honest appraisal of efforts, though, and extorted from the uninformed by means of shady, smoke-and-mirrors tactics, should not be misconstrued as mere capitalistic gains. By all definitions, that’s thievery.”

These issues are worthy of examination and reexamination in the interest of individual professionalism and industry health. Whether you’re a freelancer or an agency designer or owner, I highly recommend reading Nathan’s essay and then devoting some time to reflection.