Birmingham Council backs down after library free-pitch furore

Birmingham City Council says it is now ‘not looking for workedup design proposals at the tender stage’, following a furore over its tender for the Library of Birmingham identity.

The council had come under fire after requesting creative work – including logo and identity proposals, rationale for the logo and identity and conceptual derivatives of the identity as a sub-brand for free – at the initial tender stage.

A council spokesman said at the time, ‘It is not unusual with a contract of this size and high profile for us to ask for initial concept ideas to be presented as part of the initial tender submissions.’

The council has now contacted design consultancies that are interested in the tender, saying that it is not seeking fully designed proposals, ‘only sketch ideas to enable us to assess the creative approach’.

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  • stephen halpin November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Whilst this might be seen as a signal that at last our industry might be moving towards working together to get this insane practice stamped out…I suspect it won’t be.

    I wonder how many of those submitting will stick to the “sketches” advice and how many will still go ahead and create worked up proposals in an attempt to give themselves a competitive advantage?

    It would be great if you could do a follow up on this once presentations have been submitted to let us know what was presented by who.

  • Mark McArthur-Christie November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    A council spokesman said at the time, “With an operation this important, we’ll hawk around all the private clinics we can think of, get their surgeons to do a full consultation for nothing, make them diagnose precisely what’s wrong and exactly how they’ll operate, tell them to demonstrate the op on someone else first then we’ll choose the one with the shiniest scalpel.”

  • Stephanie Brown November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    A contract this size? If memory serves the contract was around £30K. Hmmmm….

  • Louai Alasfahani November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    This is a step in the right direction. lets hope that people in our industry remember that “what is worse that a client who does not value the designers time is a designer who does not value his own time” – Jeff Fisher. Join the No-spec movement.

  • Louai Alasfahani November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    This is a step in the right direction. lets hope that people in our industry remember that “what is worse that a client who does not value the designers time is a designer who does not value his own time” – Jeff Fisher. Join the No-spec movement. http://www.no-spec.com/

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