okay so i’m in charge of social media/publicity for this club im in. also it’s worth noting that im the newest member of leadership and it feels very cliquey. anyway, i was told to make a flyer for an event, which is totally fine. they gave me VERY little to go off of, so i just used my own creativity. i came up with like 7 designs. at the next meeting, they nixed them all. every. single. one. and said i needed to start over completely. they still gave me very little direction, though, the only thing they said was that they don’t at all like any of the ones i had made, and that they wanted a figure. granted, one of the main parts of this club is body inclusivity, and it feels weird to put a character on the flyer because no matter what you’re going to be excluding someone’s body. idk. but anyway i said that and they were like okay… make it abstract or non human. which still didn’t feel great, but i just said id do my best.

someone else volunteered to help. we scheduled a meeting with me, them, and the clubs president. and the flyers they had made were using a painting?! like the whole flyer was someone’s painting plus text. and they didn’t have the artists name on it, which makes sense cuz it’s not a painting club and it’s completely irrelevant to the club.

i was VERY outspoken about my opposition to this idea. maybe i’m extra sensitive about it because i do art, but it just felt incredibly wrong to me to use someone’s painting for a flyer. i was told that it’s fine, especially if we include the artists information (granted, if we had it would probably have been small and hard to see because again it’s completely unrelated to the flyer). also that it’s literally the exact same as using a picture because someone had to take the picture, which makes sense but still feels different to me. also, i used canva and unsplash/freepic so they’re free to use, but even if not it still feels different.

so, AITAH for refusing to use (and potentially being a bit harsh/inflexible in the process) a painting for a flyer?