[lwhi]

"While it's in the design industry's collective best interest to never work on spec like this, it might be in an individual designer's best interest to design Gap's logo for free."

People play the lottery - but I wouldn't argue it's in their best interests to do so.

[webwright]

Yeah, and people invest dozens or hundreds of sales hours to land a million dollar contract. It's all about the ratio of risk to reward. For many/most designers, the ability to say, "I designed the Gap logo" is a big enough reward to justify the risk. And, unlike the lottery (but more like my sales example), it's at least somewhat based on merit and effort.