To keep things simple, I will write all the facts in bullet points:
- I have a 9-5 job while volunteering my services for a non-profit organization as part of the sub-committee board.
- I am the only graphic designer in the organization.
- However, the non-profit do get non-member designers volunteering their services for big events.
- Upcoming big event, I was given the responsibility to design the event visuals.
- A volunteer (who one of the head committee member has introduced) offers her services to animate the transition slides that I design.
- I made confirmations with the volunteer and the committee member that she will only animate the design elements I provide without making any changes to it.
- Sent the volunteer the files and that was that.
- Later in the day, I messaged her to make sure that the files were working great and just to ask how she was doing.
- She mentioned that she tweaked my designs.
- Asked her to show me and what was shown was a completely different design.
- She mentioned that the head committee member liked and approved it.
- Keep in mind that her design is completely different from all other visuals for the event, making it inconsistent and that none of this was communicated with me.
My reaction was that this is disrespectful after 2 weeks of non-stop designing after coming back from work. The designs I did was within the guidelines that were given to me while the volunteer’s design is not. I was/am upset.
ps: The head committee member is a very influential person in the non-profit and the corporate work while I am in my first 3 years of working life.
What is the appropriate action(s) to deal with this, objectively?
Update:
Right after I wrote my question here, the head committee member actually messaged me apologizing about the confusion and of what happened. Our conversation was very civil and respectful plus we came up with a solution to prevent anything like this to ever happening again. The volunteer did suggest to the committee member another design but I feel that she just suggested what she personally thought was better for the event.
Answer
I work as a graphic designer for a church and have run into this sort of things many times over the last 5+ years. Just check your pride, sometimes it hurts when someone else’s work gets approval over yours especially when you put your heart into it. But you’re not wrong that it isn’t their place to make those kind of changes. Speak with your oversight about the change and your concerns about consistency explaining why you did what you did. Ultimately it’s their call, and you have to submit to that.
Be sure to address the structure with your oversight. A volunteer doing design work ultimately shouldn’t be submitting anything directly to any staff members other than the on staff designers and then the designers submitting that to their oversight. Be respectful, stay humble, but deal with this with your oversight and have them give you the go-ahead to confront the volunteer.
Good Luck!
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Objective Solutions , Answer Author : Andrew Mark Beauman