via John Gruber

If you do any sort of freelance work, design work, or just have a dickhead for a boss, this will be the best thing you read all day. Doing spec work, or worse, devaluing your work for a client is the fastest way to lose motivation and to hate what you do for a living. Design is service-based, but most people see no value in the service and little in the result - because their next-door neighbor or sister’s kid has a pirated version of Photoshop they think design is something anyone can do and value it accordingly. I’ve worked with hundreds of the clients like the one described in the link, and I’m still approached by them daily - like a friend who borrows five dollars every week to buy lottery tickets, they’re consistently approaching you with a hand out and a promise of compensation, every week over and over. Then one day they win the jackpot and lose any sense of history, they offer you your most recent $5 investment back and assume all is even, you’re not a partner in their success, your previous investments that were squandered will never be repaid, you’re “rewarded” for your work and you still feel cheated.

The most important line of the conversation is actually a derivation of a story about Pablo Picasso - the client, frustrated with the designer, says, “…[the design] would have only taken a few hours.” The designer responds, “Actually, you were asking me to design a logotype which would have taken me a few hours and fifteen years experience.” Too true.