So my NPO client bailed on my invite design and I'm bummed

[wienerdog]

So my wife's former supervisor was in charge of a fund raiser auction for her kid's charter school and asked me to design the invitation. She gave me ad space in the program book in exchange for my design/time, as well as a plug "invitation design by Evan Wiener Design."

After contacting their printer to get things organized, completing the design and waiting on some text changes from them, I get an email from the woman who hired me telling me the administration of the school took over the project, didn't like the theme and hired a different designer to create an invite, and is scrapping mine. Thankfully, my wife's former supervisor is still giving me the ad space, otherwise, I think I'd be really angry.

She even offered to pay me for my trouble, which was nice, but I don't think it's ethical for me to ask for money since that was not in the original agreement.

Either way, this is why you ALWAYS WORK with CONTRACTS, regardless of who they are. In fact, I think I may start writing contracts with myself to make sure I meet deadlines for self-promo work. I'll even start charging myself fees if I'm past deadline. :)

Anyway, here's my design. You folks are unfortunately going to be the only ones to see it. I think I did a decent job. It's a tri-fold piece. Side one is the text, side 2 is a bunch of supplied photos.


Here's a preview image:
http://evanwienerdesign.com/3-panel-layout-V2.jpg

Full low-res PDF layout:
http://evanwienerdesign.com/3-panel%20layout%20V2.pdf

[Exodus]

It looks good. It sucks that they scrapped your idea. That has happened to me twice... I was glad I had a contract because neither wanted to pay me for the work already completed. Lets just say... I got my money. ;)

- I think I remember awhile back when you had posted the compass to get some feed-back on it. Well, it worked well IMO. :)

[wienerdog]

Thanks, Exodus. Yeah, everyone on the forum that helped with that really pointed me in the right direction. It's one of those rare jobs that wasn't half-assed for deadlines that I had creative control over, and it got dumped. This is probably the same reasons for bad movies in Hollywood.

[EC]

An important rule of business: When someobody offers you money, take it.

["Technical" Terry]

I really like the spread too. My only thought would have been date/time/location info being grouped together. Otherwise I think it turned out great.

It would be interesting to see what design is actually printed. I think it shows that you have the design skills to create what is needed. I can't think of why they were unable to communicate with you what changes they wanted to make. My only thought is that someone has a son/daughter or niece/nephew who is a "whiz" at the computer. (Gentlemen and women, start your egos! "My kid is better than you kid...")

[wienerdog]

I really like the spread too. My only thought would have been date/time/location info being grouped together. Otherwise I think it turned out great.

It would be interesting to see what design is actually printed. I think it shows that you have the design skills to create what is needed. I can't think of why they were unable to communicate with you what changes they wanted to make. My only thought is that someone has a son/daughter or niece/nephew who is a "whiz" at the computer. (Gentlemen and women, start your egos! "My kid is better than you kid...")

Actually, they did hire a designer or firm that handles some of their marketing material. So they did get supposedly a pro in the area that I assume the administration has worked with before. This was supposed to be a parents-controlled event, but that seems to have been changed. So the entire theme of the piece changed, so this was scrapped. I would like to have been considered to design it with the new theme, considering how well this turned out, but I guess with someone else in charge, that's not happening.