Logo

[Naima]

Logo design is also tougher to protect than a more complex illustration such as a map. At least with a map, you can limit the way someone can use it by laying on a heavy watermark and sending the client preview files in low resolution until you are paid (even if you still have wasted valuable hours if the client bails halfway through). But with a logo, you are in very large part selling the idea for the design, more than the hours it'll actually take to finally turn that idea into an usable vector, so it's much easier for the client to just grab the design in its sketch state and steal away with that, leaving you empty handed.

Well , yes , the hardest part, for however strange it might seem , indesignign logos , is not realizing it , but brainstorming the idea ... It takes me 9/10 of the time to get a good idea than to actually design it.

[ScottDA]

Well, not quite. It's the erroneous claim that it is free advertisement. Except it's not free for you, since you actually have to put in the work, and except that they don't advertise you, they just use your work for free. Unpaid interns get better compensation than "exposure".

Another point to be made is that very often people who pay in exposure actually think they are doing you the favour, and won't appreciate whatever you did for them the same as if you just said. "You can can have this for free." Indeed they probably think you still owe them for the favour they did you, which to be clear, was absolutely nothing.

This is spot on. I am an author/editor by trade and cannot tell you how many people out there want to get authors to submit work "for exposure" for books they are going to sell and thus make some money on. I see it here, too, although not as frequently, and it really irritates me. Your craft, be it cartography or writing or composing music or drawing, takes time and effort, so doing something for free actually puts you in the hole as YOU have invested your time for no payment of your services. That time you spent doing something for free could have been used for a paying job.

[Voolf]

Well, not quite. It's the erroneous claim that it is free advertisement. Except it's not free for you, since you actually have to put in the work, and except that they don't advertise you, they just use your work for free. Unpaid interns get better compensation than "exposure".

Another point to be made is that very often people who pay in exposure actually think they are doing you the favour, and won't appreciate whatever you did for them the same as if you just said. "You can can have this for free." Indeed they probably think you still owe them for the favour they did you, which to be clear, was absolutely nothing.

Unless it's a well known company which can reach thousands of poeple with its product, hence expose your work much further, beyond your advertisement abillity, I absolutely agree

[Kellerica]

Unless it's a well known company which can reach thousands of poeple with its product, hence expose your work much further, beyond your advertisement abillity, I absolutely agree

True enough, but then again, a well-known company is often a well-doing company. It's a bit easier to understand it when little indie projects just starting out are trying to get people involved for free, but a large company with actual income has zero excuses for wanting the product of your time and not paying you for it. Of course there can be exceptions to this time and again, but I'm sure you see my point.

[Voolf]

True enough, but then again, a well-known company is often a well-doing company. It's a bit easier to understand it when little indie projects just starting out are trying to get people involved for free, but a large company with actual income has zero excuses for wanting the product of your time and not paying you for it. Of course there can be exceptions to this time and again, but I'm sure you see my point.

True. Still there are companies that "allow" you to put your work for exposure. Let's say you are amateur writer and want to advertise your stories in a big well known magazine about novels and short stories. Usually magazine like that will collect only "good" material for the issue and pay for them. They collect things they know readers will be interesed in.
Then they will safe couple pages for those "unknown" writers' stories. They will take your story and put in a magazine with an info about where to go for more. It works for both sides, because the company have extra article in their magazine, and you got the exposure. It's a service they provide for you, because you are new to market and not always people are willing to pay for your work right off the bat sometimes.

As for the maps, John's map Skenara got into Atlas of Design. I don't know if he got any money for that or not, but If they would ask me, I would be willing to give them one of my map free. Even if they ask me to make new one special for the atlas . For me it would be a great way to widen my audience.

[Kellerica]

Yeah, like I said, there of course can be cases where this kind of thing works. I'd be perfectly happy with the examples you mentioned too!

But sometimes you just get people who have all the means to pay you, but think they shouldn't have to because you're just "doodling pictures/pressing a button on your camera/clicking your mouse on your computer" and that is just plain disrespectful.

[J.Edward]

Do not work for free.
You, and by extension, your time, have value.
As much as everyone else's time.

Even your family should offer you a good meal, if nothing else, for your time. ;P

As to the atlas, it was free. The map was produced for other reasons and was already done.
I don't think I would have produced one just for that if it had been for free.
That said, if it had been for a different publication [say, a larger, more clearly for profit publication like a magazine], I may not have been as willing.
I did argue with them about the terms and got them to change their contract terms.
Would I do it again... idk. Publicity is a good thing, but you have to find the balance that feels right.
It can be a tough call.

To counter my own point though...
I am about to spend a bunch of time free making a map for a challenge...

[Naima]

The only free works that could have a value in advertizement , are the "for fun" art when you are perhaps doing some art for a community, that community would publicize eventually your work , for example game mods , or personal projects or even the free contests here on the Guild, other "free" jobs are just done for "kindness" and not really bring any return in terms of visibility.
So a Thankfull post would be the minimum.

[Voolf]

I did argue with them about the terms and got them to change their contract terms.
Would I do it again... idk. Publicity is a good thing, but you have to find the balance that feels right.
It can be a tough call.

You mean the Atlas of Design ?

[Falconius]

Unless it's a well known company which can reach thousands of poeple with its product, hence expose your work much further, beyond your advertisement abillity, I absolutely agree

I'd be leery of any large or professional company that would ask for free work, perhaps even more so. I mean I can understand why an individual would want free stuff, but a professional company? They don't do things they don't charge for, and when they come up with the prices for their product or services they include in the budget the costs of art or labour or whatever else they need. Anyways, doing stuff for limited individuals for 'exposure' is just a bad move. Especially when there are options for artists to participate in contests and/or display their work in places that specifically cater to giving artists a leg up and recognition and which specifically caters to the crowd they would want to be recognized by. For instance NVIDIA is currently having a Future Cities competition, if CG artist or environment artist want exposure that's the sort of thing they do. And if a trade magazine or social media thing like Artstation or Deviant Art wants to give an artist exposure, they do an interview and feature art the artist has already done. Alternatively you can buy services that increase exposure, in places like Facebook or again Artstation (I only keep bringing up Artstation is because exposure is basically the purpose of the platform, and I'm familiar with it).

I started out silver smithing, silver doodads are the first art things that I've been paid money for, and if anyone had suggested that I do free silver work for them for exposure I would have just laughed in their faces. "Ok I give you this necklace or this other doodad made of a precious metal, for free, and you get to enjoy it and use it and keep it, and you'll give me exposure in return? Sounds like a great deal!" Except who is going to pay for the silver? And who's going to pay for equipment used to make it? I was lucky because I didn't realize it then, but what your paying for with silverwork as with any other art is not the materials (because even with huge markups on just the material you'd never cover the cost of your time if that were the case), but the time spent investing in making it designing it and learning to design it and learning your craft; I say I was lucky because I didn't value my time I spent, but silver is definitely not free and so I wasn't about to give things away for exposure. In other words the material cost prevented me from devaluing my work, and prevented anyone having the gall to say I should be giving them free stuff, or I would certainly have fallen into the same trap as other artists do when they are working with pixels and bytes.

Now I know this discussion started out from Tiana's joke, but I can't just let the subject go without trying to encourage artists to value their time and experience appropriately, and say screw you too all those that would take advantage of others like that. Which has no particular reflection on the OP or anyone else here, but Im always willing to rant about this when it comes up