Life’s a pitch

For those that don’t know, a ‘pitch’ in the design world is a submission of an idea or concept to a client in order to gain work. It works like this; the client approaches you and says something like “we need to get ideas from x amount of companies to see which we like best”. There’s always a lot of discussion about this in the design press as it’s something you don’t generally receive any payment for and doesn’t happen in other industries. Try going to multiple restaurants and asking them to cook you a meal to see if you like it and will come back in the future to buy a meal if you do!

Pitches are a gamble because little effort (staying focused on the essential/paying day-to-day work) means less chance of success – and a lot of effort and design time means having to put paid work aside in order to concentrate on a piece of work that may ultimately come to nothing. But, the more effort you put in the better the chances of success, quite a quandary.

Recently I was asked to come up with several concepts and ideas and was told that I was up against bigger agencies. Was it worth it? Of course. At the end of the day it’s about creativity, quality and cost and I am confident that my studio can stand up against most on these counts. I spent a long time refining ideas and only provided concepts I felt were strong. I’m happy to report that the people who requested the work were in agreement and Soft Octopus won the commission. The effort paid off and I look forward to getting my creative tentacles around this one very soon.

  • Blog
  • July 10, 2012

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