Complaints About Flannery Stamp

Crouse

There are only four works of fiction, all fairly short, so not a demanding oeuvre. Personally, I prefer the two volumes of stories - A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge.

Geoff

The NYT writer's criticism is ludicrous. What image of a person on a stamp, currency, etc. hasn't been sanitized? You show the subject in a favorable light.

And...why not a Betty Crocker stamp? And preferably with apple pie scented ink.

Ok, what about a stamp of Elvis Presley in a suit and bow tie with his hair parted to the side? :)

If you 'google' Elvis Presley, you'll see at least 100 images of Elvis, including at least one with his hair parted to the side, and at least one where he is wearing a bow tie (his wedding pic)...but none that I can see where his hair is parted AND he's wearing a bow tie. I believe Priscilla asked him to put a part in his hair for the wedding, but he declined.

Lol, some good Elvis pics there. All I am asking is which Elvis best portrays who he was? Yes, there would be many to choose from, but many more I would never pick. I dont think anyone asked that question when they made this stamp. They just went the glamour shotz route. Well it is a woman after all.......

On the off-chance that you are serious, southpaw:

- google 'stamp design contest';

- every sales pitch by every salesman is spec work;

- I walked thru art galleries in Chelsea today, and pretty much everything I saw was artists' spec work;

- in the broadest sense, every time someone takes professional training, or opens a business, they are engaging in spec work.

Once upon a time, I was a union shop steward (alternate). Preachest thou elsewhere?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Apples and oranges ikey. Spec work is made to order for a specific client. Not the case with gallery work. A salesman is not producing anything for a client. He is either selling an existing product or multiples or he is pitching future work.

Google spec work or check out this FAQ: http://www.nospec.com/faq

Or better yet next time you go to a restaurant tell the chef you a eating at all the neighborhood establishments and you will pay the one you liked best. See how far that gets you

southpaw: You obviously have not googled 'stamp design contest'. Cheers,

Did the Heston stamp show him in the best light? I don't think so

Ikey - I know all about stamp design contests. I maintain that the idea that working on spec is not a valid way to "pay" for or create good design. Have you every asked yourself why "design contests", at least at the top level, are pretty much limited to the wildlife stamps? It's because the illustrations for wildlife stamps are able to be sold as artwork, original or prints, to the public whether or not the contest is "won".

That is not the case with true "spec" work, where specific imagery is needed, whether it's an illustration of Flannery O'Connor or a logo for your local travel bureau.

Please understand the true definition of spec work in the design industry and why I responded the way I did to your suggestion that this would have been a good way to go.

The reason I asked about what you did for a living is because I know of no other professional field where spec work is routinely seen as just. Currently there is no graphic design "union", but I guarantee if there was one, working on spec would be issue number 1 to fight. Cheers.

southpaw: You certainly raise a good point that 'failed' wildlife-type stamp designs can still be monetized by the artist. And, certainly, that would attract more professional talent that an open contest for a less-readily-monetized subject would attract.

However, the exploitation you decry is not restricted to the design industry.

Consultants of every ilk have their brains picked by prospective clients long before there is a contract on the table. Many a consultant have submitted a proposed SOW (Scope Of Work, y'all), only to find that the client now thinks they have a roadmap to doing the work in-house.

<tangential_anecdote>

In the 1960s, an American consulting firm with an excellent reputation and proven track record was asked by KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) what it would cost to buy a design for a complete city. The answer was: pay what you want, and that's how much work we'll do. This was not a snotty answer. At one price level, you get told to remember schools. At the next level, you get told how many students will likely attend. At the next level, you get counts of classrooms & bathrooms. At the next level ...

</tangential_anecdote>

Earlier in the century, the aerospace business was replete with spec work in the form of design-build-operate competitions (think 'Lindbergh'). The spirit (ho, ho) lives on in the Ansari X Prize.

I am sympathetic to workers being paid for their work.

The arts are not the only line of work where there is an accompanying ocean of wannabes, part-timers, et al ... think car repair, home renovation, and web site creation.

Stamp design contests were, to my mind, a lovely way of opening-up America's stamps to input from America's artists (and wannabe artists). Any <bait>housewife</bait> who ever got a complement on her school-age drawings could take a shot at Becoming An Artist without dropping everything, moving to New York City, and handing a truckload of cash over to Columbia. Democratizing the design of America's stamps was part of American Democracy.

In the specific instance of the Flannery stamp, I am certain that an open competition would have produced more designs that better reflected the artist's life, persona, dreams & demons.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I am reminded of what I did part time for 30 years which was the repair of Carousel slide projectors. People, kitchen table mechanics, would come in wanting a particular part say a focus motor worm gear and then want free advice on how to adjust the auto focus which frankly took a bit of skill. Or I once had a man when given the estimate said if he took it apart would I do it for half! I swear sometimes if the price was free they would want an extra bulb at no charge!

Ikey, you keep expanding the scope of "spec" work to justify your position. We are not talking about "proposed scope of work" being stolen. We are not talking about examples in the aerospace industry where designs are demonstrated for a chance at billion dollars future contracts.

We are talking about relatively small projects with no promise of future work, no guarantee of compensation of any kind.

I again challenge you to give an example where an ordered job needs to be completed before the customer decides which contractor to hire. In your examples: does the contractor complete your custom home before you decide to hire him? Mechanics don't do custom work, so car repair is a very poor analogy. Web design is a same process as graphic design, I design websites, logos, ads, brochures, etc. It's not a different profession. And it's not a matter of wanna-be's vs professionals. The question is what is the structure for payment for your labor.

I once heard: "If you give him a banana, he'll ask you to stick it in his mouth."

southpaw: You've misread the examples; they were of "... line(s) of work where there is an accompanying ocean of wannabes, part-timers ..." and, in this, they are parallel to the arts. Holding a repair competition for your car puts your car at risk; not to insult the graphic arts, but holding a stamp design competition does not even put your crayons at risk.




Not to be cruel, but the triviality of the reward for designing a stamp is roughly parallel to the triviality of the risk. I will certainly agree that amateur and/or under-employed artists who enter stamp design contests are in it for little more than pride, or bragging rights, or a feeling of participating in their nation's cultural life; I fail to see what is wrong with that, as they are free to enter the stamp design contest, or not, as they please.

It seems to me that, over the decades, the times I've read interviews with folks who've entered design contests - be they for postage stamps, cereal box slogans, radio jingles, whatever - they've all had a good time, and whatever recognition they got (a small check, a nice letter on somebody's letterhead) they did not seem to regret.

You are defending people who do not need defending, but I will give you that you are doing a helluva job!

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey