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.