Well as the ancient romans said "nomen omen", alas pixish sounds so terribly close to phishing. I guess that if a designer will give away his/her work for the cover of a book not for 15$, but for a copy of that book (which would cost far less than 15$ to the publisher and it wouldn't be accepted as payment at any food store) he basically agreed to be phished.. ahemmm.. pixished out.

... I don't understand why people agrees to this kind of things... it is sad...

I would guess this appeals to hobbyists, for whom a photo on the cover of a book would be a real thrill ... especially if they get given a copy which they can then show their friends.

But for photographers trying to earn money from their craft it's a bad deal.

An unspecified prize ... oh goody!

...I saw a few fairly good prizes.  I could have sworn I saw one for $600 but can't find it now - a logo I think.  You woudn't like to collect that?...

I would, but it's not up to me whether or not I would get it. And that is the problem. Only one person gets paid, regardless of how many people enter. $600 may be fair compensation for the work, but not if 25 people do the work and only one of them gets the money. It's a "Do the work now and I'll decide later if I should pay you at all" sort of arrangement, and that is a terrible way of doing business.

And contrary to Pixish's stance that this is beneficial to amateur artists and designers to promote themselves, the reality is that this is instilling a very negative sense of self worth and value in young artists. What a horrible message to send young artists, saying "Your work isn't worth any money, but maybe if you're lucky you can get a little prize for your efforts."

Beyond that, what guarantee is there that anyone gets a prize at all? How many of these contests do you think will end without a winner chosen, and the person commissioning the contest walking away with a pile of great concepts? Especially in the logo contests, what is to stop someone from starting a contest, getting a bunch of good logo concepts, saying "Sorry, I didn't see any entries I liked," and then using one of those concepts anyway? Without any contrct in place, there is nothing to stop this sort of thing, and I guarantee it will happen at Pixish just as it has happened at similar sites before.

...But, if there is a contest for something already in your archive that pays 25 bucks... heck, I only get 30 cents on SS for same photo... and there is nothing about exclusivity mentioned...

Good point. If it's something you have just taking on space on your harddrive, it might be worth the risk entering it. Doing custom work for an entry, creating something from scratch as per the project requests, that is an entirely different story.

The founder of Pixish posted a response to the negative feedback.

A few of the finer points:

It's our hope that Pixish becomes a true marketplace, where publishers who list assignments with too few rewards will have to raise their pay to what the community thinks is fair. This is good for artists.

Fair pay would mean that everyone contributing to the project gets paid. Otherwise it is spec work, and no it is not good for artists.

Generally, when people talk about spec work, they're talking about design. Pixish is not really for completed designs. It's mainly for design elements: photos and illustrations that will be incorporated into a larger design project.

Nice try, but it is still spec work. This comment simply diminishes the value of photography and illustration. Besides, you could easily say that logo design is design work anyway, and with that type of work being common at Pixish, it is clear that they are not just looking for "elements."

We're sincere in our desire to help artists get paid. So we're working on tools that will better distinguish paid assignments from the "just for fun" ones. Right now, the payment is left to the publisher and the winning artists to work out.

Translation: We care about you getting paid, but most of you won't get paid. So I guess we actually don't care about you getting paid.

...a publisher will soon be able to offer an assignment directly to an artist, privately. This way, an artist can set up a great Pixish portfolio, get noticed by publishers, and get offers for paid work.

Right. So you're helping people get paid projects. So then what are these Pixish projects? Oh, that's right. Unpaid.

One of the reasons spec work is evil is because it's sometimes required by big companies, which takes advantage of small designers. But in Pixish, everything is in the hands of the artist. So if you think an assignment isn't worth your time, don't do it!

Again, this is the definition of "evil" spec work. Sure no one has to do it, but these companies feed artists the old "you will get paying jobs out of this eventually" line. How is Pixish different?

The entire response is full of contradictions and flimsy excuses. In the end, Pixish is exactly what they claim not to be. Try as Mr. Powazek might to clear Pixish's dirty name, it is clear from all the negative response that most people are seeing right through his scheme.

Well at least some good is coming out of the situation. A lot of comments I have read in blogs have mentioned previously not knowing what spec work was. Thanks to the Pixish discussion, more people are in the know now.

Dragging this post up from the dead. 

Pixish is closing on October 31st.   I bet you are surprised.

Wow... this is an old one back from the dead

hali, I do get what you're saying. My only response would be that when it comes to photography, and in the context of microstock which I'm assuming is what you were getting at, we get paid for every usage. It night not be much, but it's compensation. When it comes to spec work, crowdsourcing contests, and other similar activities that Pixish and other sites are known for, few people ever receive compensation.

Photography is certainly a profession that is chock full of ways in which artists can be exploited. Any industry has it's Pixish, where someone is trying to capitalize on the work of a group without having to pay them anything. I would just point out that in microstock, everyone gets paid, and many people earn pretty impressive livings here. We microstock artists have just made the choice to sell our work in a way that guarantees payment, even if it's small payments, whereas sites like Pixish exist only to profit from the work of others without any compensation.

As for the Pixish closing, I would just point out that in the end Derek Powazek sort of accepted the spec label that everyone was placing on Pixish from the beginning. When the site launched, he defended the concept and said that it wasn't like those other spec sites. Yet in the end, he advises Pixish members to relocate to 99designs and Crowdspring since they are similar to Pixish. Not that it really matters much now, of course. I just found that sort of ironic.

I also don't think that Powazek should be surprised at this turn of events. The site never even evolved beyond the beta stage, they were hammered with negative publicity from the spec work backlash, and that backlash resulted in low sign-up numbers. They were probably doomed from the launch, but it also seems like little effort was put forth to ever get the site to alpha in a way that might shed some of the spec baggage.