Obama asking artists to work for free to support jobs

Chutzpah? [Link]

From the Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is asking artists to design promotional posters that convey a message: “support American jobs.” The brutal irony for artists, however, is that they will receive no payment for their work.

The campaign, which has $61 million on hand, will reward only the three artists whose work is selected for use. The compensation? A copy of their artwork, signed by the president.

Read the full request campaign here.

The Graphic Artists Guild has responded with an open letter:

Yes, the prize for the winning artists’ work is a print of his/her own work signed by the President; not payment for the job he/she did. In actuality, this “prize” has no value to the artist unless he/she sells it, at which point the artist no longer owns the “prize” awarded to him/her by the “Sponsor.” The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook of Pricing & Ethical Guidelines cites the current rate for the design of a poster for this type of distribution to be approximately $4,000 and upwards.

How obvious is this irony: A crowdsourced contest soliciting free work (spec work) from American artists for the purpose of promoting legislation to create jobs.

On a related note, the request for spec work is growing. Ted Rall noted that he was recently solicited by the American Cancer Society to create “three or more different QuitBuddy personas that individuals can choose from to act as their inspiration to quit smoking.” The work would be uncompensated.

Ted responded politely (full letter is available on his blog), but I loved this line:

According to information I found online, your budget is $350 million per annum. Surely an appropriate fee ($10,000, or 0.003% of your budget) is affordable for a company that spends $914,906 per year on its CEO.