I am the in-house designer for a company that employs 8 marketing managers. These marketing managers are the ones that supply me with the lion-share of my projects.
However, more and more, the marketing managers are asking for the native files, so they can make changes to the materials I’ve created and use those files to create additional materials.
The issue I am having with this is, the marketing materials they are creating with my natives are absolutely terrible. What is troubling to me also, is they don’t seem to care, in their eyes it’s “good enough”. They would rather create something fast and on the fly than have me create it.
Now I can understand the convenience for them, sometimes they need something fast, however the designer side of me is appalled that our customers are being presented with materials that look, quite frankly, terrible.
I’d be totally fine with this if I didn’t work for the same company, but I do, and I have pride in the materials that our customers see. So part me would like to take a stand and say that all marketing materials should flow through me, but that would cause quite a stir.
Anybody else experience something like this?
Answer
In addition to Philip’s excellent answer (money always gets their attention), point out that the MMs are changing the documents so that they no longer reflect corporate standards. “The company branding is being diluted” is a good way to put it. Your job is to make everything look good and look consistent, and they are damaging the company’s appearance.
If the MMs come back to upper management with complaints about turnaround time (that is, they feel like they have to do the work themselves because you don’t get jobs back to them fast enough), then you ask for a meeting (maybe with their overall manager? and yours?) to address workflow and figure out how jobs can be routed in a timely manner while maintaining company design standards.
It may be that they’re giving you jobs with too little lead time, so they have to learn what constitutes “far enough in advance,” or you have to change how you prioritize work. Another possible compromise if time is an issue is that no work can leave the office without your approval: the MMs can do whatever they like, but it must have your signoff before it’s released to the public, and you must have the native files to sign off on them so you can fix whatever they’ve done. (Not an ideal solution, but a potential peace offering.)
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : kdub , Answer Author : Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum