Freelance Foolery

Wow! What a thread!

Well I’ve been around for a long time now. For 15 years, my friends and I are having the same discussion over and over. So I’d like to bring some topics into this thread.

I’m a freelancer now, but I’ve already designed for a lot of great companies in Brazil, like Coca-Cola, GSK and many others… The truth is that the big companies concerns are all about money and time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a genius work. All that matters is that 1) It’s not over expensive 2) They get it as soon as possible. Usually, these deadlines are completely insane.

I work for this company that calls me on a wednesday night to inform me that a ship is leaving the harbor on friday and needs a full signage ready! Can you imagine the quality of the work?

This is an usual problem. It is like if Marketing Managers have a 30 days deadline fora project. They spend 27 days thinking and deciding what they’ll do and you have only 3 days to get it all done. And guess what: For what’ve seen in these 15 years… Most of these Marketing Managers don’t have the knowledge to evaluate the quality of a design job . They judge it comparing with what they’ve seen around.

The problem in these cases is that for a freelancer “The necessity creates the slave”. I mean, If you’re low on money, you have a kid, bills to pay and a Kamikaze job comes knocking on your door, You’ll take it no matter what! Even if the client states that it’s just paying you half of what you’d charge. And you gotta do it. Because if you don’t, someone else will!

“The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.” (1974) — Stanley Milgram

Clients know this very well! Who in the world wouldn’t like to work for Coca-Cola? So Huge corporations take advantage on this. Wouldn’t you do the same? You may say you wouldn’t because you are a designer and you know how harmful it would be! But they’re not! And they don’t give a damn as long they are getting what they want.

Unfortunately, this (crowd sourcing, spec work and so.. )is becoming commons sense. It’s an unstoppable wave that we might be ready for.

It’s really a matter of client’s education. It’s up to us, as designers, to educate our clients and make them understand the importance of this “You think its expensive to hire a professional, wait until you get an amateur !”. And how we do this? Defining our standards! Our dos and don’ts!

I saw this guy who had this 10 things you need to know before you hire me! on his website. It states things like… I don’t do spec work… I won’t work for exposure…

But we also got to keep in mind that my standards and yours might be quite different.

All I have to tell you is that, a client that evaluate the designer by conditions like price, turnaround time and wants spec work, it’s not the kind of client I want to work with. They’ll probably skin you off and then trade you for another designer with better conditions than yours. They want to pay you half the price, yet demanding the same results.

2) Have you ever stopped to think that this threads like: “I’ve got my red paw” is a way to people motivate themselves? People (specially in the Occident) need to feel that they’re are doing something that’s taking them somewhere. Otherwise, they feel boxed. Plus, Most of these people are only kids. Get easy on them!

I have this one saying myself: “A pressa passa e a merda fica” / the rush passes and gets the shit(google translate, Sorry)

Aticca said
Wow! What a thread! 2) Have you ever stopped to think that this threads like: “I’ve got my red paw” is a way to people motivate themselves? People (specially in the Occident) need to feel that they’re are doing something that’s taking them somewhere. Otherwise, they feel boxed. Plus, Most of these people are only kids. Get easy on them!

Yeah i always done the same thing. Although i don’t post about it for the world I still have a self motivating “im the best!” that i tell those around me, Im in a better mood and get things done faster, cleaner and better looking. Or after completion “f* x%x Yeah!” just to complete my awesomeness. Im not a cocky person, its just a motivational thing.

On topic, The one notorious place for this problem and contributes it everyday is DigitalPoint. they have a freebie/$5 – under section. What? A guy was selling his logo service for $25, i took him up on the offer. 3 days later he comes back to me with the site name and a target symbol orange, beveled. That’s about it.

he done it in three minutes, took three days to deliver and wanted $25. WHAT !? And thats just about all that marketplace is. Now i noticed its seeping into here too along with other places. The best remedy is to Educate people and ignore these fools and scammers.

Same with music and sounds. a few that has been up for sale here at Audiojungle are rips from movie sound effects and had been altered nearly unrecognizable. not pointing nobody out but one is actually the Transformers’ sound(where they transform) pitch raised and stretched out. Good job, getting past reviewers.

Anyhoo, all of this stuff degrades the marketplace and devalues professional designer/creators. At the same time it raises the value of amateurs and scammers. We need a classification system that people could be aware of and would know if someone is pro or amateur. Submit works and be rated. If you have only three things to submit, amateur. If you can submit 50 that look good, pro. And everything in between.

“Anyhoo, all of this stuff degrades the marketplace and devalues professional designer/creators. At the same time it raises the value of amateurs and scammers. We need a classification system that people could be aware of and would know if someone is pro or amateur. Submit works and be rated. If you have only three things to submit, amateur. If you can submit 50 that look good, pro. And everything in between.”

I wrote about classification in one thread, and got under attack instatly

However, I am definitely for that. But marketplace probably isn’t. Not even a great majority of authors, too. But what is the great majority?? mediocre at most. Lets be real. Some of authors wrote to me-how can a file be rated cause music is subjective??”

So it means that if i make a track where i put a too much of input signal, or play dissonant and wrong chord , it is just taste?? Forgodsake , what century do we live in ,that we cannot value the quality?

How can it be possible that music can be rated by quality , without even thinking about taste.

I might not like Final Fantasy , or some other animated movie movie, but i cannot say that the animators did it unprofessional(for that time).

But no one seems to care, unless we start to talk about it a bit more.

An about that thing someone said….Transformers, etc….stealing pieces of sounds from elsewhere, and modulating it a bit, and reselling….. you would be surprised how often it goes on the market. .

kristijanf said

So it means that if i make a track where i put a too much of input signal, or play dissonant and wrong chord , it is just taste??

lol actually dissonant is in the list of files Audio-jungle doesn’t need. not due to taste just overuse.

Quality of music is subjective like all art. That’s why they decided to price by duration. because what may seem like 3 min. of utter crap to me is an eargasm to someone else.

also what is the wrong chord? Its only right or wrong if your trying to copy something. What is too much input signal? now a days we have bands like Megadeath who i swear sounds like bears with tonsillitis trying to sing. Heavy dissonance, heavy input signal. Too much for me but somebody likes it or they wouldn’t be rich right?

Also how can somebody say the majority is mediocre without thinking of taste and quality?

by my rating im saying im amateur. and i am. Krisijanf sold at this time 5-10,000 dollars worth. Are you amateur? not by those sales and the awesome music you made. Your pro. Im not saying submit and be rated on quality. Im talking experience. Every other paying industry is doing it. So is the big music industry. Quality is a side effect of professionalism and experience. We can all look back at our previous works and see it.

but thinking about it more i guess it would take having to get a licence. just like plumbers electricians, ect… but at least its harder for scammers and freelance kids to do those type of things and degrade the field.

So its kind of back to square one. At least by selling on Envato there is quality and pro controll. Simply put, dont buy or sell on forums. done.

Interesting thread!

FireJermWebs :..... “at least its harder for scammers and freelance kids to do those type of things and degrade the field.”

This was exactly my point…although not to generalize any group of people. Kids can do a really good job.

Choosing a file of the week on envato is obviously something in that direction (quality reward) So it seems Envato has a good teem of people that can value the quality, not taste.

Just check featured file on VIDEOHIVE .You will se what means QUALITY ! Wether you like it or not, it is awesome and professional.

Ad.

On dissonance, i thought about playing for example, in a wrong key (not on purpose, cause if you want to do it on purpose, you need to be damn good musician)

And on input signal, i meant that the one’s mix his tracks without knowing that his stereo is gonna explode cause the signal goes few DB-s above the zero .I wouldn’t call it taste, again. Taste is when i like to eat pineapple on pizza, and quality is obvious and objective reality.

well by freelance kids i mean like the winy amateurs that act all childish. You know the kind that just because they done their first wordpress theme in some WYSIWYG editor and get $3 for it, they say “I can b web deziner naow?’

yeah Envato does a pretty good job defining professional quality. Even the worst little childish beats or simple sounds are still of pro quality. Meaning nice and clean with no static or skips, no out of tune skips, ect. You can’t get that with the problems O: is describing.

kristijanf:.... And on input signal, i meant that the one’s mix his tracks without knowing that his stereo is gonna explode cause the signal goes few DB-s above the zero

lol yeah I done that the first time i tried to make a bass test. blew out my sub. well there is a musical taste to imput signal too. Oddly enough some of the newer bands are mixing to the point the voice will blow your tweeters but the bass will kill your woofer and the guitar just sounds so fuzzy to cover up the fact they are off tune. If i can get a chance ill upload a youtube vid demonstrating what im talking about.

on topic, i tried 99designs for $h!7 and giggles. I submitted what i thought to be utter crap i done in 10 minutes. I won! It was just a logo for a site, but wat? there were other awesome well composed works of art going, but mine won. I got $125 for it. then they took out fees, taxes, which left me with $35. ok. crap like this is what needs to go. If i were king of internets i say BANNED !