More from my col­umn in form, the Ger­man design magazine.

Pitched out
A pitch is the pre­sen­ta­tion of design ideas to a client by com­pet­ing agen­cies or stu­dios.

I keep read­ing ?(…) won the project (…) after a pitch…? Won? A pitch is the pre­sen­ta­tion of design ideas to a client by com­pet­ing agen­cies or stu­dios. The Amer­i­cans pitch a base­ball, while the Eng­lish noun denotes a black, sticky sub­stance that is dif­fi­cult to get off your hands. That stuff is called Pech in Ger­man, and we use the same word for bad luck. I love ety­mol­ogy! Bad luck indeed for those who don’t win a pitch. Clients invite design­ers to a pitch when they think they need help with a com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lem, and the fee usu­ally doesn’t even cover the cost of the colour prints. That would be like vis­it­ing sev­eral restau­rants in a row and try­ing the food in each one, then refus­ing to pay the bill because none of the dishes were really to your lik­ing.
Tak­ing part in a pitch where con­cepts are sold for a frac­tion of what they are worth, in other words: given away, makes you a loser three times over. First you lose any respect for our busi­ness, because if it can be given away, it can’t be worth much. Then you lose money by not being paid for your most valu­able asset: ideas and their visu­al­iza­tion. And finally, you lose any chance to show the client that it takes a dia­logue to solve design prob­lems. A pitch is like a blind date with many part­ners at the same time. A client who invites design­ers to a pitch with­out first talk­ing to them prop­erly, at length and in depth, might as well draw lots among the mem­bers of a pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion. And if a client does engage a few design­ers in a dia­logue about the issue, he won’t need a pitch any more. He’ll know who to trust.
Why then do more and more clients think that pitch­ing is the way to go, and why do so many design­ers take part? It seems that Stu­pid­ity, Lazi­ness, Van­ity and Cow­ardice — the four Rid­ers of the Design Apoc­a­lypse – drove Rea­son, one of the patron saints of design, to a black­out; a pitch black one, so to speak.