Free Pitching

I’ve seen a worrying number of free pitch requests at work recently (one in particular from a public sector organisation). For the uninitiated, this is where a company or organisation sends a brief which requests some sample designs to be sent with your proposal. The assumption is then that the company reviews all the design work and decides which agency to hire on this basis. This practice has been around for years, and, to be frank, it’s downright rude. Would you have a meal in every restaurant in town, but only pay for the one you liked the most? Why is it somehow deemed reasonable to behave like this when commissioning web design work?

It doesn’t help that a lot of agencies and freelancers accept free pitching as part of finding new work. For whatever reasons, there will always be designers willing to give away free design work in an effort to secure a job. This practice benefits no-one. Designers end up completely de-valuing their work by giving it away for free (and put themselves at risk of clients using it without permission) and clients receive sub-standard work without the benefit of a proper briefing or understanding the client’s needs.

The sad thing is that it’s difficult to see an end to this practice. Ideally, I’d like to see an organisation like D&AD or the Design Council make an effort to educate designers about the consequences of free pitching. It’d also be useful to have a document on the web which is aimed at clients requesting free design work. When replying to the public sector organisation above, stating my reasons for not submitting a proposal, my message would’ve been given considerable weight had I been able to reference some ‘official’ notice to back me up.

It’ll probably never go away, but given the above (simple) measures, we could hopefully see less of it.

Posted 2 years, 1 month ago

Completely agree. Fancy doing something in Newcastle? Maybe get a few companies together and a couple of talks aimed at new companies, design students and potential clients? Codeworks maybe, or The Design Council might fancy sponsoring? Give us a shout if you fancy.

Gareth · www · 2 years, 1 month ago

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My name is Phil Lindsay, a web guy from Scotland, now living in Newcastle upon Tyne in England. I also run a web design company called Presence. You can email me at phil@xlab.co.uk, read more ramblings on my Twitter stream and view my photos on Flickr. You can grab the RSS feed for this weblog here.