I’ve been reading a ton of articles concerning logo design today when I stumbled upon this blog , and it got my blood boiling a bit. The lesson to be learned from it is that working for free cheapens us, hurts us all, and makes our work under-valued. This seriously troubles me. I still have a little bit of school to complete before I’ll be out looking for a job, but man oh man do I really need a job when I graduate. I know a lot of people are lucky and manage to go to college free one way or another, but not me. I will have to pay back every penny and more, that I borrowed to fund my education.

I’ve already had a few experiences doing freelance work and can personally atest to how easily and quickly people think graphic design work should be churned out. Sometimes I have a hard time realizing how long its going to take, due to inexperience. However, good design takes time, its a process of research, brainstorming, sketching when creativity hits, battleing with technology and then battleing with the design ignorance of clients. People see graphics everywhere, see cheap stock sites all over the internet and think making a logo is quick and easy and not worth much. Wrong. Being an good artist, especially a graphic designer requires years of study and education cost money, thousands and thousands of dollars of it. How are we ever supposed to repay our education cost and support ourselves if we charge $10 an hour. We can’t afford to undervalue our own work because when we do it not only hurts ourselves but our entire profession as well.
Here’s a fun though vague connection, I’m in American Lit 2 right now and this is basically the same concept that was behind W.E.B. Du Bois’s disagreement with Booker T. Washington in ‘The Souls of Black Folk’. If you sell yourself, your profession, your race out for less than the full value/rights that it deserves then you’re going to come out under every time.