Great to see so many responses - thanks so much for the solidarity! Good to hear opinions from both commissioners and suppliers too. Thanks for the links - if I have time I might write something to perhaps put on my website and share. We'll see...
Andrew, I think that non disclosure could be a way around if a potential project were an unusually large/exciting/unique opportunity to tempt me away from my normal principles of not giving anything away for free, but it might perhaps be more relevant to other spheres of work rather than design.
The brief which prompted this thread was for a character design and asked for a drawing to show what the character would look like to be submitted along with the quote! That's a great situation for the client as they can pick and choose from a load of characters, but when I do characters it normally takes quite a bit of time to get them right, and a lot of the preliminary drawings look awful! To do this I would need to basically have a fully-formed character to submit - and there's no way I'm going to do that! Plus for the client, it's very hard to 'un-see' a drawing.
It must be even harder for interpretation/creation of resources projects where content and text ideas are requested up front, like Sorcha says.
Richard, I found it really interesting to read about your exhibition design work and completely understand why you need to operate the way you do. I think it makes perfect sense for that kind of work. Your idea for a two rounds system sounds interesting and I too would be interesting in knowing whether anyone uses anything like that.
Totally agree with Jael too - " I think that the expectations for pitching/tendering and recruitment for even very small pieces of work, not just design based work, are becoming excessive and beyond reasonable." I often see design briefs where the value of the proposed work is only a few hundred pounds (or at least that is what the budget is!).
What does worry me is if this is becoming 'normal' and if the expectation is there. Illustration-wise I am frequently shocked by how little some new graduates know about copyright, what is fair/reasonable in terms of contracts and the value of their work. I have no doubt that this particular character design brief will probably get plenty of responses but I've replied to the sender politely expressing my reservations.
Emma
Emma Metcalfe Illustration
www.emillustration.co.uk
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