NEWSFAIR PAY

For more than a week, graphic designers have been waging a campaign targeting the Department of the Interior for economic justice in their profession.

And yes, you read that right. Graphic designers.

It’s not a group of professionals you typically hear from. Designers work independently or in small teams, and often behind the scenes. They create the world around us – from Obama’s campaign logo to the digital animation we watch on the evening news.

For years, the design community has been waging a quiet battle against something called “spec work.” It’s a process by which designers are expected to work for free – designing logos and materials in the hopes of being selected for a job.

The practice of “spec work” has gotten worse in recent years, thanks to design websites like CROWDspring and StockLogos.

This post was guest authored by petition creator Mary Koster. You can follow her on Twitter at @mkdesignhaus.

Last Friday, a friend and fellow designer mentioned that the US Department of the Interior (DOI) had announced it was crowdsourcing the design of a new logo. I was shocked. Why would the federal government do this? Don't they know it's a slap in the face to artists everywhere? The practice of crowdsourcing devalues the design profession by requiring artists to work for free, gambling on the chance of getting paid when someone "likes" the end product.

But then I got to thinking - isn't there something we can do to change the DOI's decision to crowdsource design?

AIGA - the professional association for designers - is a great organization, but the national organization hasn't yet involved itself directly in the issues of crowdsourcing and spec work. Besides, I knew we needed action - and fast. The deadline for the Department of the Interior's logo contest is next week, on June 15th.

That's why I came to Change.org and launched a petition.

The Department of the Interior is a cabinet-level federal agency with 70,000 employees responsible for land management, energy production and more. The logo they've chosen to crowdsource would appear on countless materials - ranging from uniforms and public signs to internal memos and newsletters. In the design world, we'd consider this is a big job.

The decision to crowdsource a major federal agency's logo is a strange one. For starters, there's the issue of contracting abroad. The federal government typically seeks to hire or contract with U.S. citizens or U.S.-based firms for projects. However, on sites like Crowdspring, many of the designers competing are from outside the United States, often in places where it's easier to eke out a living on contest winnings.

There is also increased risk in crowdsourcing design - especially when it comes to copyright. Many designers apply to several competitions at once, often using the same materials over and over - or worse, blatantly stealing another designer's work. Worse than that, Crowdspring releases itself of any liability for the designs submitted to their site, meaning that the burden of ensuring the originality of a design falls to the buyer.

Crowdsourcing is a powerful tool for tackling big, urgent problems (e.g. crowdsourcing the emergency translation of Creole during the earthquake in Haiti). But when the U.S. government crowdsources a logo? That's just a rip-off.

At a time when our economy is struggling and many people - including creatives - are unemployed, why is the federal government asking its citizens to work for free?

This post was guest authored by UW student Scott Davis and several USAS members at the University of Washington. Davis is the director of Our American Generation and a lead organizer in the campaign for UW to cut its contract with Sodexo.

06/01/11 SEATTLE, WA: At 5:35 pm, fifteen more UW students were arrested for peacefully occupying the Office of Admissions, explaining they are concerned for future students of the university. The students, comprised of members from the UW Kick Out Sodexo Coaltion, Black Student Union and MEChA de UW, hoped to have a discussion with administrators about students’ decision-making power at the university.

The demonstration comes at the height of the UW Kick Out Sodexo Coalition’s campaign against the food service giant, Sodexo. The food service company has been cited for labor and human rights violations in five different countries for actions like paying sub-poverty wages and forcing women to take pregnancy tests as a term of employment. The students believe a company, like Sodexo, who blatantly violates worker rights, should not be doing business with the university. The administration’s continued indifference to these students’ concerns served as a wake-up call to other student groups who are similarly trying to make changes on campus.