One of the downsides of being severely myopic: Finding on Tuesday random specks of paint on your foot-- when you had painted on Saturday.
end trans
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Spec work at my door-- UPDATE
After some thought and consideration on the best way to say "no thanks", this was my response to the company looking for some work on spec:
Good morning, Ms. Xxxxxx,
Thank you for your interest in my work. Though the project sounds interesting, spec-based work is not something I'm pursuing at the moment. Should you be interested in contracting my services in the future, please feel free to get in touch me for further job quoting.
Regards,
r
Did I handle it right?
Good morning, Ms. Xxxxxx,
Thank you for your interest in my work. Though the project sounds interesting, spec-based work is not something I'm pursuing at the moment. Should you be interested in contracting my services in the future, please feel free to get in touch me for further job quoting.
Regards,
r
Did I handle it right?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The neverending argument over spec
There's been an ongoing argument over spec work within the design community for quite some time now (I'm not going to rehash it here, since right now the most likely readers of this post will already be aware of it). I have my opinions on the subject (the short version boils down to "yeah, no"), but it was always something that happened to someone else, and never to me.
Today, however, things appear to have changed. But I feel I need to give a quick recap of the last 9 months to give things a bit of perspective.
At the end of last June I fully joined the ranks of the unemployed for the first time. At first I thought it would amount to not much more than an extended vacation, and things would return to normal. After the 6th month, I wasn't as optimistic. Now, 9 months in, I've decided that I need to take matters into my own hands and am in the process of getting some sort of career as a full-time freelancer of the ground. I've been lucky to have found recently a client that's been consistent with work. I know that I can't prosper with just one client, so I've been trying to round up gigs through other means. Which brings us to the point of this post.
As a rule, I'm pretty particular and wary about answering online ads. I answered one earlier this week that had a flat fee and was very specific in it's scope. Everything about it appeared legit to my overly active spider-sense. Today I got an email in my inbox that says otherwise.
Here's an image of the email:
All the basic earmarks of spec are there-- (according to them) lots of applicants, the promise of payment if selected, with the added dangled carrot of lots more money if chosen, or the promise of potential future work if not chosen this go around.
I haven't decided quite how to answer back. I'm trying to strike a balance between principled indignation and professional politeness, but am drawing a blank. Comments, thoughts and crits are welcome always.
r
end trans
Today, however, things appear to have changed. But I feel I need to give a quick recap of the last 9 months to give things a bit of perspective.
At the end of last June I fully joined the ranks of the unemployed for the first time. At first I thought it would amount to not much more than an extended vacation, and things would return to normal. After the 6th month, I wasn't as optimistic. Now, 9 months in, I've decided that I need to take matters into my own hands and am in the process of getting some sort of career as a full-time freelancer of the ground. I've been lucky to have found recently a client that's been consistent with work. I know that I can't prosper with just one client, so I've been trying to round up gigs through other means. Which brings us to the point of this post.
As a rule, I'm pretty particular and wary about answering online ads. I answered one earlier this week that had a flat fee and was very specific in it's scope. Everything about it appeared legit to my overly active spider-sense. Today I got an email in my inbox that says otherwise.
Here's an image of the email:
All the basic earmarks of spec are there-- (according to them) lots of applicants, the promise of payment if selected, with the added dangled carrot of lots more money if chosen, or the promise of potential future work if not chosen this go around.
I haven't decided quite how to answer back. I'm trying to strike a balance between principled indignation and professional politeness, but am drawing a blank. Comments, thoughts and crits are welcome always.
r
end trans
Monday, October 24, 2005
Jeez, Here I thought that I could actually be consistent with this blog. Although, looking at the dates, it's pretty much averaging out to once a month. Gotta try a bit more frequency. Finally got the bulk of the redesign of the site completed, and it's up. Woohoo!
Now I'm thinking of ways to improve on the look and feel of the damn thing.
Work, BTW, has been DEAD these last couple of weeks, to the point that it's becoming frustrating. I've become quite adept at shuffling papers around the desk-- literally. I keep hearing it's just a very temporarty lull, but still... I've also talked to a couple of other PAs, and what I heard over and over is that they too started as freelancers and after a few months of that landed full-time gigs. I'd like to believe that is a likely scenario for me, but after a day like today (total amount of time actually spent working-- an hour!). Some people would think that this job is a godsend. Me? I'm so used to being overloaded with work that I don't know what to do with myself. I feel like I'm not being productive, even though I'm getting paid for it. Hopefully things will pick up in the coming days (my supervisor seemed a bit frustrated that there wasn't anything that needed to get done. Not sure if it was b/c she wanted to have work to give me, or if she was looking to protect her budgeted allotment for freelancers. Maybe it was a bit of both).
I've also been using Stuble Upon-- a nifty little toolbar in Firefox. You set up preferences on subject matter and you get a new random page based on those preferences whenever you click the "stumble" button. Pretty cool stuff.
Now I'm thinking of ways to improve on the look and feel of the damn thing.
Work, BTW, has been DEAD these last couple of weeks, to the point that it's becoming frustrating. I've become quite adept at shuffling papers around the desk-- literally. I keep hearing it's just a very temporarty lull, but still... I've also talked to a couple of other PAs, and what I heard over and over is that they too started as freelancers and after a few months of that landed full-time gigs. I'd like to believe that is a likely scenario for me, but after a day like today (total amount of time actually spent working-- an hour!). Some people would think that this job is a godsend. Me? I'm so used to being overloaded with work that I don't know what to do with myself. I feel like I'm not being productive, even though I'm getting paid for it. Hopefully things will pick up in the coming days (my supervisor seemed a bit frustrated that there wasn't anything that needed to get done. Not sure if it was b/c she wanted to have work to give me, or if she was looking to protect her budgeted allotment for freelancers. Maybe it was a bit of both).
I've also been using Stuble Upon-- a nifty little toolbar in Firefox. You set up preferences on subject matter and you get a new random page based on those preferences whenever you click the "stumble" button. Pretty cool stuff.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Man, blog spam (and spam in general) sucks. Takes more time to get through the deleti0n process than i'd like. Malloy's unusually calm this evening talking about DeLay's indictement. Been working here and there on a redesign of the site, and maybe I'll be able to get a bunch of stuff done over the weekend. Need to do that before I go about pitching for jobs out there. Been thinking that I need to get my hands on a digitizing tablet, but other than places like ebay, I can't come up with a starting point for my search.
The search continues...
The search continues...
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Got a chance to work on some signage today. Mostly manual labor-- mounting/laminating, prepping posters to go to print. It gave me another chance to fiddle purposefully with InDesign, which I really need to get my hands on (along with the rest of CS). It was a welcome change, considering the last couple of days have been slow on my end of things. Maybe it's just the nature of this place's workflow. Maybe I've been involved so long in heavy-volume/high-pressure environments that I have trouble taking things at a slightly slower, more exacting pace.
Or maybe I just have a need to occupy time constructively at work.]
Or maybe I just have a need to occupy time constructively at work.]
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