A La Carte (9/21)

  • Tim Challies
  • 09/21/09
  • 4
Dan Brown’s 20 Worst Sentences
I thoroughly enjoyed this roundup of the worst twenty sentences found in books written by Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. A favorite: “My French stinks, Langdon thought, but my zodiac iconography is pretty good.”
Spec Work
There has been a lot of talk recently in the design biz about spec work (where multiple people complete work and a client only pays for the work he actually chooses). Church Marketing Sucks has “An Open Letter to Rick Warren about Spec Work” in which they talk about some of the pitfalls of this kind of work.
The Gospel Coalition Reloaded
The Gospel Coalition has released a new version of their site. Blog readers will be interested to see that Justin Taylor has elected to move his blog to TGC.
Why Do So Many NFL Players Go Bankrupt?
This is an interesting article that discusses why it is that so many football players go bankrupt shortly after their careers end.

Comments (4)

1
Anonymous's picture
a comment from Jim Vellenga • 09/21 @ 10:03am
› visit my web site.

The article on the 20 worst sentence of Dan Brown’s books made me chuckle both because of the abysmal command of the English language Dan Brown seems to have, and because of the comments of the Dan Brown supporters who think any critique of his lack of writing ability is a sign of elitism. Thanks for the morning chuckle.

2
Anonymous's picture
a comment from Andy • 09/21 @ 10:39am

Although I agree with the general principles of the “No Spec” people, I find a few positives.

Fairly often, I’ll get a client that I know needs some design done, but they don’t see the need. Instead of trying to persuade them ahead of time, I’ll do a couple days of spec work and put the design together, *then* present it to them. This nearly always results in a sale and continued work down the road.

Now, the “contests” are what most of the “No Spec” people oppose. If I even have time for them in the first place, I generally treat them just as practice, to continue to hone my own abilities, to try new things that might not fly on a regular job, to bolster my portfolio.

And the best part? Since they’re not paying you, you have absolutely zero obligation to make changes to your design. If you *do* happen to win, so much the better. (Now, if the company takes your design and has some in-house designer modify it without paying you, that’s pretty sketchy.)

3
Anonymous's picture
a comment from Doc B • 09/21 @ 11:50am

There’s one thing the anti-spec work blog forgot to point out…no one is forcing designers to submit a design against their will. If they don’t want to do spec work, they don’t have to. They are free to ignore the contest and move ahead with contract work.

So I don’t see how Pastor Warren’s contest is ‘exploitation’ in any sense of the word. (I’m no big fan of Pastor Warren, but I think we need to be fair with everyone.)

4
Anonymous's picture
a comment from pentamom • 09/22 @ 12:15pm

The argument from the NoSpec people is that if you encourage this sort of thing, everyone will expect to get their design work done without hiring someone to do it.

I can see where they’re right that there’s a push in that direction, but isn’t that true of everything? Should no one volunteer for anything because that devalues it for the people who make a living at it?

It’s one thing to say that people need to realize the implications of things like this, and that people who design for a living want others to know the effect things like this have on them. It’s quite another to say that a given instance of asking for submissions is “exploitation.”

Also, I find their argument somewhat contradictory: on the one hand, no real self-respecting designer is going to participate in this, so Warren’s not going to get a decent book cover. But on the other hand, if this becomes a trend, nobody’s going to pay upfront for design work, ever again. The logic here is apparently that everyone will be thrilled with shoddy work. Do they think their potential market is so stupid that bad work will inexorably drive out good?