Client stole our comps
Out of context: Reply #19
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- Chip_Duggit0
I have a similar, but worse story for you all. I was an in-house art director for a company that had about 5 different companies that it owned. Each needed a logo, stationary package, and print collateral. Myself and the junior designer both worked our asses off on all of these, only to have about 20 of them shot down each time. These were the best ones out of the hundreds we developed over the time we were there. The boss's wife would always want something changed so it was her own, and we would (sadly) comply. Needless to say things that they changed and then used in the end were far worse than how we pitched them.
So surprise, the whole company starts to tank. I see the writing on the wall and haul ass, leaving my friend the junior designer to fend for himself. He gets his notice one afternoon and is forced to leave after hearing he was let go about 15 minutes before hand. He has no time to collect his files or anything that shows what he has done, other than what is on his personal website in his portfolio. After he leaves, the IT cronies come in a see that he had been updating his website at the office when he had nothing else to do, and then tell the big boss. Big boss pitches a fit, calls junior designer and tells him that he has to come pick up his final check personally from him. Junior designer goes in, not knowing that big boss has seen his unused work on the junior designer's site, and forces him to sign some slip of paper that says that he has to remove all of the work he did for the company because it infringes on their trademarks and servicemarks, and is a misrepresentation of the companies.
So now the junior designer is out of a job, and the work that he has done for the past year cannot be shown (even though hardly any of it was ever used) on his personal website for him to get another job. He has since gotten a new website and posted the materials again, without knowledge of previous big boss.
In the end, the big boss currently has 5 sexual harassment cases pending against him, has failed to pay the outdoor companies that did all of the billboards, bus signage and printers that have printed all of the materials. He has had to close 3 offices, lay off 70 people, and still has the gaul to call himself a 'Christian'. What comes around most surely goes around.