[lotides]

No topic has made me more disappointed in the Hacker News community than this one. It's frustrating to see my livelihood attacked by the very people I try to help every day. It's not the "big agencies" that spec work hurts. It's people like me. I've dedicated my life to design. I work with startups and small business to provide great design on small budgets. I don't want to go back to doing corporate work. I stopped when I realized the only people that cared less about the work than me were the clients themselves. So I decided to focus on small business. People that care about fresh ideas, innovation and quality products, like I do.

I'll spare you the book-length essay on why it's wrong to exploit the design industry like this. I'll just leave you with this: the only people that care about ethics in business are ethical businessmen. You are what you do. You can stab, claw and bite your way to the top or you can take a stand for something more important: integrity.

Next time, give yourself a couple of hours looking at local freelance designers. Call them. Ask them about rates, their design process, previously successful design campaigns and their approach to design. If you aren't satisfied after having at least tried, then go ahead and submit it to the design sweatshop in the cloud.

[JoshLedgard]

I do fully support the local design community. In fact our site and product design comes mainly from local resources. However... most of them simply don't like or want to take on small projects like this.

Sure, if I have to spend $500+ dollars they can tackle larger things that I would never farm out. But the GOOD local designers are generally too busy for the small stuff. And the ones that have time simply aren't as good.

Also - for smaller projects like this - the small entrepreneur (me) has a limited amount of time. Why should we spend it calling around to see if someone has a couple of hours to do this. I've tried. The people I trust are busy... so contest away.