So a site pops up that asks artists to compete for assignments and then to rate other artists on the assignments to help the original querier pick the best of the lot.

There is a no question that this is spec work, which is defined as doing any work before you get paid, or before you have an agreement for payment. It’s called spec for speculative, meaning that it’s speculative whether you will gain any return for your efforts. It’s speculative whether your work will get used.

Pixish is spec work. But, we need to ask: is spec work always bad, and is the way that Pixish is using spec work unethical?

Derek Powazek writes:

Big company says to little designer, “make me a logo!” The designer works for days on the logo and hands it over to the company. “No good!” they say, and walk away. Later the designer finds out that the company had been doing that with lots of designers, and they only paid for the one they liked (if any).

The company has all the power. The designers, disconnected from each other and working in the dark, are victimized by the company because they spent time on a design for no pay.

This is not the only situation where spec work comes into play but is presented as such in his article and thus is a somewhat lame straw man. However, Powazek is correct, in my opinion, about spec work only happening in an unequal power relationship. Almost always, it happens with designers or illustrators starting their careers, and acting on the promise of a snake-oil salesmen who tempts them with tales of riches and recommendations if they do the work first.

Tell me if any of these sound familiar:

“I’m not going to pay for any work since I don’t know if I will like what you do.”

“I’m helping you make your portfolio stronger.”

Or, in this case:

Also note that the power relationship has changed. Clients aren’t taking advantage of designers in secret. The publisher is inviting submissions (something that most publications do), but instead of doing it in private, making different deals with different contributors, it’s all out in the open.

Which really only addresses the fears of inexperienced artists. I don’t think established illustrators and photographers would really be that keen about all of their financial negotiations being in the open. Which to me just means that Pixish is an attempt to capitalize on the labor of the naïve.

What irritates me is the implication that this site is solving a problem in the industry. It does no such thing. It solves a problem for Powazek, who clearly states it:

I put out a call for submissions, review them all, choose the best, and make arrangements with each artist individually. I love it, but it’s incredibly time-consuming. I wish there was a way I could put out a call for submissions, empower the community to sort them, and have a more elegant way to choose and reward the best submissions.

Which can be translated as: “Please help me do my job.” That’s a fine thing to ask, but don’t try to play off queries for spec work by claiming it’s not.

Frankly, I was fairly neutral on Pixish until I read Powazek’s article. In its desire to be cute it misses the issue completely. Be honest about what you’re doing and let the market decide if spec work should be re-evaluated for the internet age (my thought? Maybe for photographers since the barrier to entry is now so ridiculously low. The value of good photography is plummeting. Not for illustrators, for whom the barrier to entry not shrinking nearly as fast).

Finally, one of his attempts to toss away his straw man is so ludicrous it needs to be addressed:

Spec work is when you’re asked by a client to do work which may not be paid for upon completion (the “spec” is for “speculative”). That’s a problematic definition, because all contests work this way.

Exactly. Which is why the AIGA website is extraordinarily clear on this point:

Similarly, organizations sometimes initiate contests as a way of developing logos or other identity work. Unlike disciplines in which the designer can bill for implementation of the proposed design (e.g., architecture), in communication design, the submitted solution already represents the bulk of the intellectual work. AIGA encourages organizations to issue a request for proposals from qualified designers.

Illustration “Golden Spoon” by Christine Larsen, ©2008. Used with permission.

Paul over at the Muriel Awards was kind enough to ask me to write about Jonny Greenwood, since he won the Best Music category. Only, after I wrote and submitted the piece I realized that my comment about Greenwood being denied an Oscar nomination was off base, because I misunderstood the reason (He was denied for using his own previously composed works, but I thought he used to high a percentage of other composers works).

Alas, this was all too late to fix when I realized. So, below is my corrected text, for the sake of pride and history.

The opening shot is like a western. You expect to see a lone horse riding around the bend. Instead we have a muscular spider web of glissando strings. It resolves, more or less, to a harmonious chord. And the pick hits the rock and we hear the tang of the hole Daniel Plainview has dug for himself. If I tell you this is no western, friends, you’ll agree.

Those who complain of There Will Be Blood lacking heart should sit and listen to the soundtrack again. The score is melancholy and complex, halting and both slightly antique and completely modern. Only small portions of low mixed guitar might confuse this work with Radiohead. The rest is pure heartbreaking orchestration that illustrates that you really can take the composer out of the band, and the band out of the composer.

But most impressively it burned the turns of the tones in my synapsis like the ghost of an image on the retinas. When I listened away from the visuals, I was surprised by how much of the score I not only remembered, but remembered well. Like you might remember that favorite song you played every day for a month a few years ago. The one that you still love. The score evoked those ghosts of memory, but not necessarily the ghosts of Plainview.

Like Eisenstein’s theory of montage where one uninflected image placed next to a second uninflected image forms a third idea apart from both of them, Greewood’s score stands alone, and then during the movie combines to make something that neither of the visuals or the music could have without the other. Shame that it’s ineligible for an Oscar. It would win in a walk.

For the second year in a row I’ve had the pleasure of voting in the Muriel Awards. If you’re interested in what twenty online film critics have to say about the crop of 2007, you might be interested in taking a look. There are always a few surprises.

In 2002 I signed up for a Hotmail account. I’ve had a server with my own domain since 1996, so this was more to explore the interface and poke around. I never gave my address to anybody, because I never used the account.

But I’m curious how Microsoft is doing in their war with Google. I know that they redid Hotmail for the live.com push, so I tried logging in with my old credentials to see how the new system works.

Sure enough, it logged me in and sent me to my inbox. What did I find? 1564 unread messages. All of them unsolicited, taking up space somewhere in the cloud on a Microsoft server.

And a “junk” folder that had one message in it. I think I’ll stick with Gmail.

What could be greater than a club where you get a picture of a robot every month sent to you?

I can think of no greater thing. Christine has made the Robot of the Month Club and I couldn’t be more excited. Come early January, some very lucky people are going to see happy little packages in their mailboxes.

This week’s Ask An Uptight Seattleite features a letter by me. Although, they edited the funny out. Fair enough — it’s his show, and that’s the way I like it. The editing may have even improved it, although I liked my original signature better.

Here’s my letter:

Dear US,

As a human of the male persuasion, I have come to notice other men and the mammalian way they sit on the bus. I’m a standard issue big guy sent straight up from central casting, so I’m very aware of my “footprint” as I sit on a crowded bus. I try to keep my limbs in tight. Often, though, I’m seated next to a dude who is compelled to spread his legs in a wide V shape, taking up more than his fair share of the alloted community area.

What is the best way to let these gentlemen know that they are encroaching on my personal space without them feeling as if I am encroaching on their personal space? I fear that tapping my foot and rubbing my leg against theirs might send the wrong message.

Please sign me:

Get Your Sit Together Man

The Seattle Weekly has always tried to appeal to the crowd that Ask An Uptight Seattleite so brilliantly parodies, which is one reason I love the column so much. It has multiple levels of satire built on an extremely keen reading of classic Northwest types. Like all good parody, it sends up the people we hate while at the same time hitting occasionally too close to home. And it’s satisfyingly cruel to its targets. Merciless, even. Especially when its hitting close to home.

It’s not only better than any column the Weekly has ever published, I would say it’s the best column in the city. The level of detail — from the name of his dog (starts with a K) to the passive-aggressive arrogance — are the mark of a very astute social observer. Which is why my pet theory is that Uptight Seattleite is actually written by a woman. Whoever writes it, they now get me to read regularly a paper I have actively disliked for the twenty years I’ve lived in Seattle.

John Scalzi visits the Creation Museum, and files a most excellent report.

Christian culture has only recently ramped itself up into being something other than a wan and denatured version of pop culture (this is evidenced in part by the fact that many evangelical Christian teens now dress as badly as the rest of their peers), and this is another high-production-value offering for this particular lifestyle choice.

I’ve been thinking similar thoughts recently, especially when wandering around the Ballard Sunday Market and playing the interesting game of guessing which pierced and tattooed folks are hipsters, and which are members of the beautifully designed hate crusade known as Mars Hill. Where, it appears, the Prince of Peace meets the God of War and brings you modern evangelism to an authentically rocking back beat. Raise your lighters and your devil horns, and pass the collection plate.

It used to be easy to tell the evangelicals. They dressed poorly, and their attempts to reach out to youth through music were laughable, ala The Beef Board’s attempts to reach a tween-girl audience.

But lately the appropriation of the cultures they are fighting is frighteningly accurate. Just like the commercial and wholesale appropriation of punk and other underground cultures by a mainstream audience.

It certainly isn’t against the rules now to listen to Death Cab. I wish it had been that way when the father of a good friend in high school made him get rid of his Devo albums. Oh wait — de-evolution — I’m not sure where the church stands on this. Can any Mars Hill members fill us in?

Is there anything more tedious than hearing somebody else’s dreams? Good. Now that this is established, let me tell you one of mine.

It’s a super-hero movie, but in the way that Muppet Babies is a Muppet movie. Except, instead of babies the super-heroes are elementary school children. The entire Justice League is there. The camera focuses on Batman. Batboy. Batchild. Whatever. (Please, no origin disputes about the impossibility of this. Let’s say it’s a special D.C. issue of ‘What If?’ and leave it at that).

A super-villian — also a student of this school — is escaping the playground by jumping in his open-top flying saucer. Batman swings his grappling hook to stop his escape, and is propelled thousands of feet into the air, dragged behind this Jetsons-like appliance. The film is dark and grainy. It’s moody and hard to make out the detail. They zip across the inky night.

Then, Batman looses his grip. He’s falling over Gotham. Or Seattle, as it happens. He’s plummeting, and we, the audience are frightened. But surely, Batman will save himself. He slings the sub-machine gun he’s wearing over his shoulder, and grabs the edges of his cape to provide glide. But we, as the audience, know that this won’t break his fall, it will just suspend him long enough to bring suspense into the film.

The wind rips across the edges of his cape with a frapping report. His face screws in concentration. What’s that? It’s one of his teachers — the lovable goof, the professor, the one who schools the kids but they get away with everything behind his distracted back — he’s skydiving! Suddenly we realize that this convenient movie trope is going to be the salvation of young Batman. The fat professor, dangling from his canopy, will snatch the caped boy and say a wise and witty word on the rest of the descent.

Batman comes into frame, and then WHAM — he’s gone! Why, the professor was a non-sequitor. A joke the director inserted to make us think he’d do the easy thing. He was only in the film long enough for us to notice him. Surely there will be freeze frames of this on the internet once the DVD is released.

But now the hard thing, how will he land? Batman veers his body towards Queen Anne hill, where he lives. He pushes a button on his utility belt. This connects to the thousands of zombie computers he’s infected with the bat virus in the neighborhood. Together, they start working in parallel to create negatively or magnetically charged particles that provide him lift. Don’t question too closely — it’s a movie. The point is, Batman lands after drifting on his own ingenuity. Batman is safe. He’s home from school. Alfred will surely have cocoa waiting. End of scene.

If you happen to be flying American Airlines in the next few weeks, you might see my name briefly mentioned in an article about NaNoWriMo. For the earthbound set, there is the online version.

Funny how I have more distribution power on my little computer than Gutenberg did back when he was pulling proofs of the 42-line bible, but it is still exciting to see your name in print. Print that ran in presses and smells like ink.

The reporter, Angela Chang, asked me about opposition to NaNoWriMo during my interview. I was a little surprised. I mean, there is a lot to be annoyed by in people’s self-rightoues interest in themselves and everything they output. But even a cynic like myself has a hard time seeing a downside to giving people a forum to start writing, no matter the outcome.

Eric Rosenfield does. He wrote a post with the commanding title “Why I Hate NaNoWriMo, and Why You Should To.” Mr. Rosenfield didn’t convince me. Nor his readers, judging by the comments. But this one thing I couldn’t leave alone:

[NaNoWriMo] pollutes the world with volumes upon volumes of one-off novels by people who don’t really care about novel writing.

Unless he has trouble keeping himself off the animated-gif homepages of hundred’s of Live Journal users, I’m not sure what the pollution is. Bits are cheap and plentiful. And if the books make it past the publishing phase, then the beef isn’t with the instigating month, but the publishers who put out such work.

I suspect Mr. Rosenfield is pining for a more monastic writer. It seems to me he attaches the romantic aesthetic to the process, which is understandable because a great many writers do as well. Maybe he’s thinking of a writer of great talent and mystery like William Gaddis. Hard to imagine him dashing anything off so casually. But then, it’s not so hard to imagine Kerouac doing it, or Fitzgerald. Tolstoy, no. Dumas, yes. Need we go on? The field of the written word is so massive that it seems ludicrous to try and contain it within your own small vision of what should and shouldn’t be.

Francis Ford Coppola once claimed that the next great American movie might just come from a teenage girl in an Iowa cornfield. I say the next great American novel might just come from a young writer up against the time clock with NaNoWriMo. It will be a novel of its time. It will certainly be a novel of its technology.

As the word changes and evolves with the changes in our culture, and by the new means of communication, what a novel is will change. Perhaps that’s disturbing to Mr. Rosenfield, but I find it exciting.

And, of course, I’m thrilled to be a part of it all again. My screen name is Mr. Lowry and, as usual, I have an excerpt up.

On Thursday Christine and I visited the Museum of Flight. We boarded the retired Air Force One, used by Nixon and Kennedy, among others.

Christine turned to me, standing in the galley in the back of the plane.

She whispered something quietly.

“Huh?” I said, leaning in.

“I said it smells like POTUS in here.”