Sigh... Advice.

[alexfugazi]

Actual transcript- edited to hide the identity of the clueless PR guy-

______________

Dear Tim,

I am setting up a poster design competition for facebook to promote our new company XXXX

I really love some of your designs and was wondering if I could possibly use a few of them on our site and on our banners advertising our competition to demonstrate what kind of things we are looking for.

We would only use your images as examples of what poeple can do.

Of course we welcome you to join the competition when it starts and I would be happy to send you the details. Thanks for your time.

Best regards,
XXX

___________________

XXX- if you could, send me the specifics of the design contest, as I'd like to read through what exactly the art would be used to promote. Also, for a commercial site using my art in a non-review capacity, I'd have to ask for compensation and artist's credit- if you could let me know if you have a budget for this kind of thing.

Thank you-

Tim Doyle

______________

Hi Tim,

Thank you for getting back to me. Unfortunately we do not have a budget for this kind of thing. I hope there is some sort of capacity in which we can still use your art as we think it is fantastic.

Here is the link to the competition page. launched today: XXXXX


As a further thought I understand you sell posters of your art already, although not in the UK. I would have thought there would be a great reception of your art over here. Maybe there is some sort of agreement where we can print and distribute your art over here.

As mentioned we have just launched this site as an extension of our large format printing business to target specific groups, one of which is Students and Designers.

Having seen your own site and the incredible selection of art you have done I thought there might be an opportunity for us to work with you. I had two possibilities in mind, either you could sell large format posters from your designs to the UK market and pass on the orders to us to print and deliver in the UK, or we could offer your designs to our customers and pay you for the design. The site has only just been launched, really as a proof of concept platform and does not yet offer this latter facility, but could be developed in the next version.

I am open to any other ideas or thoughts you may have on the subject.

Thanks,
XXXXX

________________________

Hello XXX
Looking through the official rules of the contest, it would appear that by entering into the contest, any artist would be signing away the rights to the image in perpetuity in any medium, whether they are the winning artist or not. And, even the top five winning artists would only receive payment for prints sold for the first month, and after that, you would be able to continue to use the art without recompense to the artist. My reading of it could be mistaken- please clarify if I am!

I actually do sell quite a bit of my silkscreen posters to the UK, and all over the world, in fact, through my website- NakatomiInc.com. While I'm not against licensing my art for other products I have to maintain control on prints and posters.
Thank you-

Tim Doyle

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Hi Tim,

You are quite right in what you read in the rules and regulations, but this only applies to entries into the contest. We would only expect to use your images as examples to inspire people when submitting entries.

To be honest we are a new company and this is our first competition, we basically based our rules on what we researched from other competitions from other similar companies. If you think this is unrealistic and limits the entries then this is definitely something we need to look into for next time.

I would love to hear what you think would make a more appealing competition.

Best regards,
XXX

_____________________


So- while I am frankly disgusted at their contest rules and regulations, I do have a little bit of hope in that they seem to be asking for advice. Do any of you GP regulars have a good example of what I should point to as an ideal artist-friendly set-up to emulate? I never enter contests, so I don't know what is par for the course.

[Andymac]

Just point him to one of the scorn threads on here. That should tune him up.

[3d glasses]

im embarrassed its for a uk company.

[DCM]

I'm not surprised it's a UK company. Embarrassed nonetheless.
It's still early days in the 'poster scene' over here, and although people are drawn to the art work, the awareness of how things work is not there. From what i have spotted over the last couple of years are companies, and to a lesser degree some artists, trying to get into the poster/print world without actually having a grasp on what it really entails. Chris and Alex sorting out things like Poster Roast widens the awareness and highlights the craft, but, as with any sort of 'scene' there are people there to exploit it.

[DRG]

The whole 'Crowd Sourcing' thing is such an internet buzzword right now, it really isn't limited to any country or industry. It's simply an easy way for "companies" with no real budget (and often no real business plan or knowledge) to get "stuff" for free, and free stuff that somehow ties in with Social Media is extra delicious sounding to people with no budget because of the massive 'bang-for-buck' potential.

The purpose of companies using spec work/crowd sourcing is not simply to get free work or to "exploit" artists but often to promote and draw attention to something. It actually sounds like the guy is genuinely interested in how he might get better results - I think it's very positive how keen he seems to be to hear your thoughts on the matter.

I would do some googling on the pros and cons of Crowd Sourcing (don't bother with the term Spec Work, as that will often be from a designers' point of view) and send the guy a few snippets or links. Essentially, he needs to understand how crowd sourcing isn't the best way of achieving his business aims, as opposed to just 'crowd sourcing is really bad for designers, man!'

[philaarts.com]

its not your obligation to tell others the ropes or help build his business.... hit delete.

[steve w]

its not your obligation to tell others the ropes or help build his business.... hit delete.

this.

[perkins]

Under those terms, thanks but no thanks.

Perhaps they'd be willing to purchase one of your designs to use in addition to having the contest, to provide an example of an actual official design to the contestants? That's putting a more positive spin on it. there's no benefit in working just to provide samples to others who will actually get paid for their work, that you helped provide ideas for (!). What it does negatively for you is render those ideas unusable for other clients, because they're posted online as having been done already for another company. I'd politely tell them no so that you can rework the ideas & try to sell them to another client.

[philaarts.com]

billy is a pussy for being polite.

[Brad]

send dave a virus.