I have started a new policy at my place of employment, signing our work. I have to admit this idea was partially stolen from a Graphic Department Manager at a previous job. We were having a discussion about the new catalog he was putting out. He had just started and was wondering why none of the previous GD managers had the graphics staff sign their work. He not only had them sign their original art work, but had a section of page with their pics and bios. The staff loved the idea and appreciated the thought. This discussion led to my realization that “How can you take pride in your work if you do not get the recognition you deserve?”. Artists from the dawn of modern civilization have (almost) always signed their work. We are artists aren’t we?

Now I get to move on to more practical considerations, how. How do integrate this into a customer’s project? Our new customers will know this upfront and, I do not worry that our existing customer will have a problem with this, as long as it tasteful. How do I balance tasteful (i.e. small, unobtrusive) with making sure the programmers and designers get their recognition? Most of our projects are web based, so my natural thought was small banner at the bottom of the index page (approx 120px X 40px) that linked to a page of the team.