I work for a nationwide franchise, we'll call them… HDS. I work as a Graphic Designer. For just this franchise. There are 400+ franchises across the Canada.
I designed a floor decal back in March to replace Covid stickers that were being removed from the floor. They were sent to Head Office to print and send back to us.
Yesterday, Head Office sent out updated store posters for every store to print and replace the old ones with.
One of the designs is mine from the floor decal I had done. It's 100% mine. I opened both files and compared, they're the EXACT same.
Head Office has their own graphic designer for nationwide stuff like this. And they straight up took my design.
In my contract, it says nothing of intellectual property. I'm basically “Employee #275” and the only difference is my pay and my title. Nothing in the contract is graphic design related.
When I saw the poster, I was immediately like “wtf that's mine”, and I've already had it out with the designer at head office for him making low quality stuff. And I'm pissed because he has a higher pay than me, and he churns out garbage.
So my morning has been spent trying to figure out if I can do anything. It most likely comes down to what it says in my contract, and the franchise agreement, I suppose. But fuck this. I want to be compensated for my work.
I designed something for this store. Got paid for that, and now it's being used nationwide. And I am NOT being compensated for that.