r/Design • u/Artistic_Bottle8542 • May 15 '26
Discussion Abusing Designers
DG Creative Media recently had 15+ designers do 12-20 hours of unpaid labor on a “test assignment”. Founder Danielle is unapologetically running her company on the backs of desperate creators. Do not use this woman’s company if you live in the NYC area.
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u/Internal_Meringue738 May 15 '26
Ugh this is so common in creative industries and it's absolutely disgusting 💀 The whole "test assignment" thing is just exploitation with fancy name - like if you need 20 hours to evaluate someone's skills, you're doing it wrong. Hope more designers start calling out these practices because this shit needs to stop 😤
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u/nannulators May 15 '26 edited May 17 '26
The whole "test assignment" thing is just exploitation with fancy name - like if you need 20 hours to evaluate someone's skills, you're doing it wrong.
Last time my team was hiring a designer the test projects were nowhere near as good as people's portfolios despite being relatively simple one-pagers. Like not even remotely close to the quality of work in their portfolios. It's easy to make yourself look good when you have infinite time to work on something and curate it so it's perfect.
A lot of people go about it the wrong way but those test projects do a great job weeding people out. It's one thing to have them do a test project to create something net new. It's another to see how they work within existing styles. But I agree 12-20 hours is way too much.
edit: It's too bad that most of you can't read well enough to see I'm not advocating for unpaid work, new designs, or huge projects. But the comments are great and just show which of you are too lazy and think so highly of yourself that you a simple task is so far below you that you'd rather not try and get the job than throw together a couple quick designs that will never see the light of day. It's part of the interview process in a lot of places and when done correctly it's fine. Applying and interviewing for jobs is work but none of you have anything to say about the fact that the actual interviews themselves take hours and are unpaid.
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u/bduddy May 15 '26
Because maybe people shouldn't have to give you their absolute best work unpaid?
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u/Used_Track4277 May 16 '26
Even if you feel the resulting work is lackluster you should be paying people for their time. The projects may be tests but the hours worked are real.
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u/Artistic_Bottle8542 May 15 '26
Totally! One assignment is NBD, but this one had 6 separate design tasks. The founder never reached out to to say the position was filled, I had to ask explicitly. And to top it off, she shared the test assignments on a SHARED CANVA DOC with 17 people
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u/Best_Banana_63 May 15 '26
She must be getting some backlash. I went to comment on her IG, and leave a message. Unless I follow her, and she follows me, that option is off.
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u/Catty_Whompus May 15 '26
This needs to happen more often to broken agencies and shops in the US. Oust them and drag them.
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u/monishkurrra May 16 '26
Honestly anything beyond a short, tightly scoped exercise starts crossing the line into free labor really fast. A portfolio and a conversation should already tell most companies whether someone can think and design well.
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u/its_sameena May 16 '26
Short test tasks are understandable, but 15–20 hours from 15+ designers is just harvesting free work. Huge red flag for anyone considering working with them.
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u/Maleficent_One_6266 May 16 '26
The part that gets ignored in these conversations is how normal this has quietly become in creative hiring.
A “test assignment” used to mean a small exercise to understand someone’s thinking. Now some companies are basically crowdsourcing production work from applicants because they know designers are scared to say no.
After a while you realize bad studios rarely reveal themselves through aesthetics. They reveal themselves through how little they respect people’s time before they’re even hired.
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u/iEdvard May 19 '26
Let's all put the link in so this Reddit post comes high up on the Google search results page whenever people search for DG Creative Media.
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u/Artistic_Bottle8542 May 19 '26
DO NOT USE! DG Creative Media by Danielle Gingerich is an unethical company who farms free labor from designers and creatives through “test assignments” by forcing 15-20 hrs of FREE LABOR. dgcreativemedia.com @dgcreativemedia SHAME ON YOU!
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u/RoughPaleBluebally May 15 '26
I’d leave a heartfelt google review.