We all have our passion projects, and if the opportunity comes to work on them, money is not really of our concern. But besides these projects, no designer should ever work for free, especially not, if a client wants to “test” you with a free project first.
Who is asking for free designs?
When I started out, I charged a couple of bucks for a logo. And even though my prices were very low, there were still clients who wanted me to work for free on a project: “It is just for the first project, if all works out well, I’ve got lots of paid projects coming your way in the future.”
This sentence and variations of it are a clear sign of a client you want to avoid. Most of such clients will scam you. They set out the bait (“lots of paid future projects”) but they never keep their promises. They take the work you did for the first project and then they disappear.
This is no surprise, as clients who are of high value, have enough success (and budget) to pay you for the very first project right away, even if it is just a "test".
The mere fact that clients are asking for free work is an indicator for clients who aren’t successful themselves. With their attitude such clients will not have lots of success in the future, so how will they be able to provide us with lots of projects in the future?
Think about yourself first, but also about the design community
Make sure to pay your bills first and do anything you (legally) can to pay them as a designer. But after your bills are paid, you also have an obligation to think about other designers and the community.
If you work for free, you bring down the respect and the prices other designers can expect from clients. This will hurt you individually in the long run, as the design community is a closed biotope – you work and live within it. And when the biotope gets polluted with cheap clients brought in by designers working for free, everyone loses out on respect, money, and self-worth.
Designers help each other. I am currently not a skilled t-shirt designer. So, every time a client asks me for t-shirt designs, I recommend good people that I know. Would I or any designer recommend you as “good” if you polluted the community by offering free work? Would you recommend a designer that has made it harder for you to make a living being a designer?