No Commercial Potential: Third prize is you're fired
⇒ begin text
My Totally Reactionary, Ill-Thought-Out First Take on Pixish
So. Pixish.
I did make a profile, but I am not at all sold in the idea yet.
My original question when I first read about it was: “was letsallworkonspec.com already taken?”
Second question, after looking around the site and reading some of the early “assignments”: “Oh, no, really this can’t be serious, can it?”
I’m perfectly willing to accept that my bitterness over my experience with competing at Threadless very much informs my opinion of popular voting design competitions generally. (I guess what these lacked was sufficiently wretched puns.) I just really think this is a terrible way to get good art and/or design done.
Case in point: Jonathan Coulton’s t-shirt design assignment. (Leave it to JoCo to be the first to try something new on the internet.)
Quoting:
“I reserve the right to print or not print the winning design or designs, depending on whether or not I agree with the community’s assessment of which is the most awesome.”
See the problem here? The “winner” of any given assignment is going to be whoever gets the most votes. Not necessarily what best fits the assignment, or what even what make the “client” happiest. Just what gets the most votes. And if there’s one thing we Americans know, voters are never wrong.
So, even if JoCo theoretically hates the winner of this particular competition, that person gets the “prizes” and JoCo is really no closer to filling his need for another t-shirt design. Lovely.
Which brings me to my next point. Prizes? Designers and photographers who are worth the trouble do not want prizes. They want to get paid. I would maybe be very interested in submitting something for JoCo’s t-shirt, but you know what? I already have three iPods. And I already bought all his music. Even if I had a design the internet hordes loved, I would mostly win redundancy.
So like I’m saying. I don’t see how any of this is going to work at all. Although, as with most web ventures I’ve doubted (Twitter? What the hell is the point of that?) it will probably be insanely popular. Still, needed to be said.
See more: Unjustified Text, Editorial
Derek Powazek
11 February 2008, 15:26 #
And we appreciate hearing it! (Hi, I’m Derek from Pixish.) Remember that the site is in beta and we’re putting it out there to solicit feedback, so thanks for giving us some!
On voting: The tool is flexible. So a publisher could reward the top submissions from the community no matter what they are, as JoCo has. Or, on the other extreme, a publisher could turn off the voting altogether and just curate by hand. In my experience, a two-tier process works best, with the community voice sorting the submissions and the publisher making the final choice.
As for the spec thing, here’s the deal: If you’ve already got a career and you’re making a living from your art, mazel tov! Pixish may not be for you. But the truth is, there are a whole lot more people struggling to start out in their careers. We want to lend them a hand and help them to get noticed.
Plus, future features will enable publishers to offer assignments to specific artists for cash money. That’s not spec work, that’s work work. And we want to get there as quickly as possible.
Thanks for giving it a try!