First of all, sorry. It’s nothing personal. You’re welcome to read all about our reasoning for this, but you certainly don’t have to. The gist of it is this: we tried spec work, and it doesn’t make sense for us. The same thing is true of puffy shirts. It’s not our style, and thankfully, the call is up to us.
When Spec Work Makes Sense
Spec work isn’t all bad. Some of our staff have had amazing experiences with it. It certainly has a place in portfolio building and passion projects. Highly competitive accounts are sometimes worth spec work for larger agencies which can subsidize such work with other projects. We are definitely not condemning it whole hog, and we purposefully wrote the title of this blog to not be click baity. Spec if you wanna spec!
In fact, here’s our personal favorite reason to do spec work. You can really swing for the fences. You’re not going to lose any money, so you can throw out your truly moonshot stuff. In that way, it has the potential to be super fun. But, if you’re not ready for a trip to the moon…
Whole Ass One Thing
A word of warning here. Sometimes spec works comes dressed in sheep’s clothing. Requests for “just a general idea” or “cocktail napkin sketches” are the most insidious kind of spec work. They don’t give you a good idea of what we can do. So for Studio Simpatico, we take the sage advice of Ron Swanson. We don’t half ass two things. We whole ass one thing.
Why It Doesn’t Make Sense For Us
With logo and visual identity work, our process involves quite a bit of discovery time and messaging/values articulation leading up to any tactical design work or output—discovering what makes you unique, developing an awareness of competitors, and then translating that visually. This is a good thing. It means when we do work with you, the work you get is of the highest possible caliber. As a boutique studio with bills to pay (the good stuff: payroll, health insurance, 401(k) match), we want to make sure we’re as focused as possible.
So What Now?
Well that depends doesn’t it! Studio Simpatico excels at branding and visual identity, mobile and web design, and WordPress development. If you are in need of any or all of these services. Omg. Hit us up. We will definitely knock it out of the park for you.
But, if you’re not quite ready to pull the trigger?
That’s okay, too! You can chat us up online until you are.
