One of the great things about working for myself is all the control I have over where my work comes from and what leads I choose to pursue. All of the work I’m doing right now comes from acquaintances and referrals. I have an RSS feed from some popular job boards, but I’ve responded to less than 1% of all the listings I’ve seen over the last 10 months. I keep a Craigslist feed in my RSS reader mostly for comic value.

Craigslist is one of the phenomenons of internet publishing in recent memory. They’re part of what’s putting newspapers on their heels by providing classified ads for free or a minimal charge, an area where most newspapers make their money. But that’s a separate discussion.

While Craigslist does have its uses (my girlfriend just bought a decent road bike for just $50 and I’m on the lookout for a beach cruiser with hand brakes for under $60), the jobs section is filled with spam or mediocre listings. It takes a lot of digging around to find a gem in that pile. That’s usually not worth my time.

Designers, creatives, and commercial artists of all types are better off looking elsewhere. Businesses looking to buy these services are better off asking friends for recommendations. If you’ve got nowhere to go, then you damn well better write a good ad. The quality of people responding to your ads is directly related to the quality of your ad.

A case study in idiocy

There are few other places as convenient as Craigslist where a creative can get such a focused study on exactly the kinds of work offers to refuse. Below is a recent listing in Craigslist Santa Barbara that illustrates this point exactly.

PhotoShop Wiz Needed for Project (must be LOCAL )
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I need someone who is quick and efficient with PHOTOSHOP to help me create my business cards and company brochure. This will only take 10-20 hours max! I need you to be available during the week days and work hours 8-5pm.

I would like us to work together - and create my business card and brochure. I need to “see it” as it’s being created in order to know if it’s what I want! I know this may be crazy…but I know what I want, I just don’t know photoshop.

I am not interested in using any other software, only PhotoShop!

All you need to have is at least 2+ years of recent experience using PhotoShop.

Must be a local person only!

Location: must be LOCAL
Compensation: $15 hour
This is a part-time job.
This is a contract job.
Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

These are exactly the kind of people you should never work with.

It’s clear that this person has never bought design before, does not value the skills and expertise of a professional designer, and has not the slightest idea about the process involved in designing a brand identity. What this person is looking for is a monkey to implement their murky ideas.

He’s not crazy, he’s stupid. That’s right folks, give him an 8th grader with a pirated copy of Photoshop and he too can be an art director.

You get what you pay for

Choose to buy design as a commodity, then that’s what you get. Choose to sell design as a commodity, and that’s what you’ll produce.

The outcomes of listings like these follow predictable patterns. At best, this person will get crap work that they’ll be happy with. Often, however, the work will take longer than the 10-20 hours spec’d because the “he’ll know what he wants when he sees it, and he’s just not seeing it” and the poor kid will get shafted with no pay after 25 hours of work because he “couldn’t deliver.”

We’ll see this ad reposted in a month or so.