Pixish helps you find work, maybeish

Via Laughing Squid

As an illustrator just starting out, I know it's damn tough to find any work out there. Internships and internship fairs are mostly useless to us, because it seems like pure illustration is either do or do not. They think you can either do the job, or you can't. And there ain't ton of shit out there for us, not like designers per se.

So there's a new site, Pixish which takes "assignments" from people looking for artwork, posts those assignments and whether it pays or not, and then takes submissions from whomever, and users vote on the best one, sort of like threadless.

Here's the rub, prices are set by the uploader, so you have to see if it's worth your time, and given the current rates (it's still in beta), not so much. I mean, a couple hundred bucks is a couple hundred bucks, but it's only a couple hundred bucks, knowwhatimsaying?

The bigger perk may be that it's available as a portfolio-sharing site, maybe like Illoz or the others. If someone is looking for an illustrator, scouring the profile pages might happen. And maybe you've got an image sitting around which might work for what someone needs.

A while ago, a note was passing around between designers on the net basically saying "do NOT take those $50 logo jobs on craigslist, you're only killing the industry as a whole. You're the equivalent of a third world country factory worker." And it's true, the net has made it really easy to undercut normal market rates, meaning you might get something now, but not as much in the long run. Any of the freelance sites out there trade on this idea, having you bid against others for services, so that end up working for stupid cheap. Pixish at least has a fixed payout, and concerns have already been voiced about it being just a design spec gatherer, so much so that the creator has said Pixish will only be concentrating on illustrations and photographs.

So yeah, I signed up, maybe I'll even submit to a project. We'll see though, we'll see if it is actually something you can build relationships in and through, or just another undercutter.

EDIT: the site isn't all that new, released back in Feb., the hubbub seems to have died down, and none of the critiques of the site seemed to have changed their policies. After further perusing the metafilter chat, the consensus seems to be for amateurs and students, it's an opportunity, but not a significant one, a way to make extra cash, that's it. it's still mostly on spec and not strength of talent and style, but it is a way to gain experience, but who knows if it's the right kind of experience. But to be certain, this is NOT a threadless style site, it's something different. Threadless, while it is user-generated, like many other sites, pays out of their own pocket for designs that make it. It's also on the strength of the design (or amount of friends) that a design makes it through, and more than one shirt can make it, that is somewhat of a market deciding what is acceptable. No, this is definitely a contest, one where the prospective employer can get free ideas and contract out elsewhere.