I just came across a website devoted entirely to stamping out the ubiquitous practice of requesting free work on “spec” from designers,Web and Graphic.
I admit I have done a lot of free work. I had to learn how web design worked in realtime, didn’t I? All that free work has made me accomplished.Especially when it comes to creating websites overnight.Ok not overnight but faster than it used to take me (2 months at the very start.) Now it takes me a mere 3 to 4 days to complete a project.This could not have been done if I hadn’t accepted free work.The combination of responsiblity to a real life client and not just some sandbox project I was fiddling with plus the interaction with real client led to my being able to take an idea and make it into something, fast.Speed isn’t everything but it sure helps.If you have to spend months between showings working away on one aspect of development your client may die from old age before they ever get a website out of you.
All must start somewhere.
But yes,now spec work isn’t something I would leap up for anymore.