Design body takes wrong direction on free-pitching

After weeks of criticism in Design Week about organisations expecting free-pitches for contracts and countless letters criticising any consultancy for taking part in a free-pitch – what turns up in the post this week?

After weeks of criticism in Design Week about organisations expecting free-pitches for contracts and countless letters criticising any consultancy for taking part in a free-pitch – what turns up in the post this week?

An invitation to free-pitch for the British Design and Art Direction Awards call for entries 2005.

This is why our industry is never going to get anywhere on the issue of free-pitching – we can’t even get our own house in order and set a good example to others.

For anyone who is interested – we did take part in the Wembley pitch and did get through to the shortlist. While I agree with and support the argument against free-pitching, we took the decision that we would take part for reasons I have no intention of justifying to anyone, other than the designers who worked on it, here.

We have, however, taken the decision to decline the invitation for the D&AD work.

D&AD is funded by members (several who are adamantly against free-pitching) and is supposed to represent us and the best in our industry – not just the best work, but to my mind best practice as well.

Martin Devlin

Creative director & partner

The Workroom

London N1

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