[tptacek]

Designers care about "spec work", as the idea was originally conceived, because they were routinely getting jerked around by big companies. It had apparently become standard practice among major brands to select design vendors by running contests, and then using elements of all the contest submissions to improve the work of their preferred vendor.

Designers care about sites like 99designs because the most responsive (and, frequently, most successful) contract entrants are Southeast Asians who will turn in work indistinguishable by a layperson from professional for 1/100th what an NYC designer will charge.

The weakest argument against this practice is unfortunately the most popular: that the work product of an untrained "amateur" turning out 99designs submissions all day out of Vietnam is fundamentally inferior, in ways meaningful to business, to the work turned out by an NYC designer who can take the time to study a brand, a business vertical, conduct wireframing, &c.

This argument is uncomfortably transparent: if both kinds of work product are indistinguishable to the buyer's customers, the extra work put in by a pro designer has zero value, but is instead being bundled, and this argument attempts to promote that bundle cartel-style, by arguing that no designer should break up the bundle.

There are better arguments against sites like 99designs, but I have zero incentive to make them.