We lost one. I want to write about that honestly, because nobody writes about the ones that do not ship.
We spent about two months on a bid. We built it properly — mocked it up, had real prints made, walked it into the room and pitched it. It went well. The work was good.
And then the City of Edmonton withdrew the bid, and all of it went into a drawer.
It was out of my hands. I want to be careful how I say this, because it would be easy to make a tragedy of it, and that would not be true. The decision was a serious one, made by serious people, for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of a brochure.
So we moved on. There is no shortage of work in a city — safety initiatives, departments with things that needed doing — and there was never a moment where we were allowed to dwell. That turned out to be a mercy.
What I took from it is this. Do the work as though it will ship, every time, because that is the only way to do work worth shipping. And then hold the outcome loosely, because the outcome was never entirely yours. The craft is yours. The decision belongs to somebody else.
The bid is in a drawer. The two months are in my hands. That is not a bad trade, when I am honest about it.