Who gives a Flying Flink?

She claimed it was a unique opportunity to globally promote the work of artists by submitting graphic icons to be used as status updates by Flinkers.

Flink12 is a tiny social networking site that launched in December to try to shave off a piece of Facebook by exploiting the fears of FB’s privacy issues.  Unfortunately, they’re making mistakes right out of the gate.  I received an email last month from Brenda McEwan who wanted me, and readers of my blog, to know about Flink’s “Global Icon Art Competition”. 

As a graphic designer who was a part of the brainstorming sessions from which the No Spec site was born, which warns designers of the pitfalls of crowd sourcing and art “competitions”, I immediately saw red flags.

I responded to Brenda McEwan’s email by pointing her to the NoSpec site and several other sites which explain why it is better to review professional artist portfolios and choose one who displays a style that fits the need.  I explained that to ask people to spend their time creating original artwork and submit it for free with the chance that they may be lucky enough to be chosen, is demeaning to our profession.  You don’t hold a competition to have plumbers install pipes in your house and then pay only one of them that you choose out of them all.  The result is wasted time by everyone else, the profession is belittled and... a more important point, you probably won’t get the quality art you seek, because most people who join in on crowd sourced art competitions are not professionals.  Some people, to their credit, have learned this the hard way.

Brenda says that, if chosen, Flink will commission you on a “work-for-hire contract” (another red flag).  She has contacted many design bloggers with her offer, obviously meant to spread the Flinking name around.  I warned her that there may be negative press in Flink’s future and told her to pass my response on to CEO Anne Crowley and CTO Darren Inksetter.  Recently, I came across Matt Bors blog who also had an exchange with Brenda.  So my warning was ignored and my prediction correct.

So why would I join, submit to, or recommend a new “social network platform” when it’s obviously run by people who just don’t seem to have any respect for me or my profession?  Weeks later, they continue to run their spec work competition and snub the graphic design professionals they sought to participate and spread the word about their “send us free art” scam.  And they don’t care if they get amateur work and they don’t care if people spend hours doing work for nothing. 
Well, I don’t give a flink about them either. I’ll stick with Facebook.

Rant over!