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by aichcon 6149 days ago
I agree that spec work is nonsense, but these things have a way of working themselves out. If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and quality designers will charge you for it. Many times the parties who ask for spec work don't really care much for quality and thus will attract the kind of talent that is willing to do spec work. They'll get what they pay for.

I suspect the time and energy Tim spends trying to organize the book contest, look through the submissions and filter out the garbage would have been better spent just contacting a reputable designer and paying them to do a good job.
1 comments
DannoHung 6149 days ago
I think that's the cynical way of looking at it. On the other hand, maybe he's not particularly concerned with going through with the effort of finding an excellent designer and spending the time discussing what he wants on his cover and would instead like to give amateur and student designers a chance to possibly get their work on the cover of a book and maybe win $250 bucks for something that they might be able to pass off as course credit (in the case of students) or that they would have done on their own time (in the case of amateurs or hobbyists).

Maybe he's not expecting professional designers to submit their best work.

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aichcon 6149 days ago
Perhaps you're right, but if I was going to release a book and put my name on it, I would want it to be designed by a professional. Books are definitely judged by their covers.
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michaelfairley 6149 days ago
For his last book, Tim actually printed out fake bookcovers, placed them on books in bookstores, and sat around and observed how much attention each cover brought (source: http://vimeo.com/3934635) . A lot of people around here don't like Tim, but that is certainly hacker like behavior. I'm sure he'll do something similar for the new book as well.
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tptacek 6149 days ago
An anti-spec person would say, "it's so true that you need books to be designed by professionals, so that they all the technique and language of graphic design to their fullest and match the content of the book perfectly, so as to sell as many copies as possible, that you should be prohibited from soliciting the services of designers who might not meet those standards, as evidenced by their willingness to accept substandard contractual terms".
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