In an inspired act of crowdsourcing, showmanship, and democratic participation, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman has turned to us to refashion the NEA’s visual identity.
Yesterday Landesman announced that his modest but mighty federal agency was accepting submissions to redesign the logo for the NEA’s “Art Works” initiative.
As the NEA blog explains:
“‘Art works’ is Rocco’s guiding principle for his work at the NEA. The phrase has three meanings: ‘art works’ are the plays, paintings, dances, films and the other works of art that are the creation of artists; ‘art works’ describes the effect of art on audiences and viewers, art works to transport, transform, inspire, and challenge us; and ‘art works’ is a reminder that arts workers are real workers with real jobs who are part of this country’s real economy.”
The new logo, Landesman says, should make that three-part definition come to life. Designers, start your engines. The deadline is February 26. The actual RFP is here.
Many designers are not happy with this. Here is what Michael Bierut wrote at designobserver.com:
“The US National Endowment for the Arts, seeking a new “Art Works” logo, confuses an RFP (Request for Proposals) with an RFFW (Request for Free Work), with only one lucky winner promised a $25,000 payoff. As Chairman Rocco Landesman tells us, “‘Art works’ is a reminder that arts workers are real workers with real jobs” — who work on spec, evidently. Sigh.”
So designers would be happier if it was called a “Design Competition” in which all the existing terms would still apply? OK, that works for me.
Smells a lot like spec work. Which tends to upset the design community. For details, see:
http://www.no-spec.com/
Leave it to the gov’t to turn creativity into a 23 page contract. Just reading it sapped mine.
I find it hard to believe that the NEA is supporting spec work. But it makes you wonder how much thought they put into this before the announcement.
Read AIGAs response?
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/what-is-aigas-response-to-the-nea-call-for-logos
Another example of crowd sourcing undermining labor.
It was one of those ‘Too good to be true’ situations…
It was clear that the committee was wildly out of touch. Not only did they want work for free, but the insanity of the 23pg ultra-complicated RFP, online apps, government disclosures, etc etc.
As a freelance designer I felt like I needed to hire a lawyer just to wade through the application paperwork!
I just sent a PDF with my idea and didn’t even fully complete that cryptic application. Ugh, I remember it being a real creativity killer…
How about a slogan:
“You Pay So I Can Play!”
Check it out how much we each pay (according to another of Dan’s entries):
https://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/10/idea-of-the-day-a-taxpayer-receipt