Spec Work

A letter you can send to requests for spec work if you want to decline politely and explain the reasons for your decision. No need to copy paste, just add the recipients name to the end of this url: http://www.supernicestudio.com/rfp/ to generate a personalized letter.

Dear enquirer

Thanks for your interest in working together.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to pitch for your project as you’ve asked for free speculative design work as part of the process for us to try and “win” the project.

“Spec work” invariably leads to frustration for you and encourages a sub-par standard of work from the designers pitching. Why?

1. From a business point of view it makes no sense for you. Agencies have to charge higher fees to cover work they produce but don’t win. If you choose an agency that does spec work, you are paying for all their failed pitches as well as the one piece of work you are interested in.
2. A good design is an informed design. This only comes through research and collaboration with the client — you know your audience best. A visually pleasing ‘best guess’ created upfront as part of a sales tactic is never a good design. Anything created without being informed is at best a pretty picture.
3. Unlike advertising agencies, we are not in the business of selling. We love our work and we love showing off the diversity of work we’ve done (please ask to see our portfolio!) but that’s because every project is crafted with thought and research, and with respect for our clients. We put all our resources into every client that engages us because we don’t need to save our best ideas to sell ourselves to potential new clients.

We aren’t unusual in our position on declining to partake in speculative work. Here are some links to just a few respected industry colleagues who feel the same way, and why:

• “Doing Work on Spec” by Andy Budd (Clearleft)
• “Don’t Design on Spec” by Jeffery Zeldman (Happy Cog)
• “Why Speculative Design Is Wrong” by Paul Boag (Headscape)

Please also see: The No!Spec campaign

We understand you want to get the best work possible for your project, so we hope you accept our reasons for declining spec work.

We’d be delighted to show you how our best projects got off the ground, and how we could do the same for you.