I’ve worked on projects for some of the biggest companies in the world. Even recently, I contributed to some of the biggest launches in popular culture.

From projects that launched. Projects that went public. To projects that people actually used.

And a ridiculous amount of that work is missing from my portfolio. Not because I’m embarrassed by it. Because I’m contractually prohibited from showing it. Yeah, we might share snippets amongst the friends we trust but that won’t land the next lead.

Welcome to the wonderful world of non-disclosure agreements.

I understand confidentiality. I understand protecting unreleased products, business strategies, trade secrets and commercially sensitive information. Of course I do. But once you’ve launched the thing, published it, promoted it and proudly announced it to the entire world, why am I still not allowed to say I helped make it? That’s where things get absurd.

An NDA is often just the beginning.

Then there’s the Master Services Agreement. The Professional Services Agreement. The subcontractor agreement. The intellectual property assignment. The confidentiality provisions that apparently need to survive the collapse of civilization. Pages and pages of legal language, drafted by people whose job is to protect a corporation from every conceivable possibility. Including, apparently, a designer having a portfolio.

And here’s something interesting. In Canada, copyright law generally recognizes the creator as the first owner of their work, subject to exceptions including employment and subsequent assignments. (Department of Justice Canada)

That’s the starting point.

I made it. The law recognizes that creation matters. But somewhere between the creative brief and the purchase order, that principle can disappear beneath a mountain of contractual paperwork.

Sign here.
Assign this.
Waive that.
Agree not to disclose anything without prior written consent.
Forever, apparently.

And because the client has an entire legal department and I have a deadline, we all know how that negotiation usually goes.

Meanwhile… the client celebrates the launch, executives congratulate each other on LinkedIn, some agency publishes a case study, and the company submits the project for awards.

Everyone gets to talk about the work. Except, potentially, the people who actually made it. And here’s what I find particularly strange…

The film industry has been dealing with a version of this problem for decades.

When a film is being made, the distributor wants to control the narrative. Understandably. You don’t want every cinematographer, visual effects artist, animator, and production designer publishing material before the film has had its moment.

There’s a release strategy.
There’s an audience.
There’s an investment to protect.

Fine.

But when the film comes out, something important happens. The credits roll.
Hundreds, sometimes thousands of names.
People who built sets. People who designed costumes. People who animated a character’s left eyebrow.
And those credits can become part of a permanent professional record.

IMDb. An actual record of who did what.

You don’t necessarily need permission to tell someone you worked on a film when you’re already publicly credited for it. Your contribution exists independently of your next job, your next employer, or whether someone in a legal department remembers your name.

Now look at the design industry.
Who designed that banking platform?
Who created that digital experience?
Who developed the identity system behind that multinational brand?
Who art-directed that campaign?
Who built that beautiful little interaction everyone keeps sharing?

Often, nobody knows.
Or rather, somebody knows.
The client knows.
The agency knows.
The people who did the work know.
But the world doesn’t.

And five years later, when the agency has changed hands, the team has scattered and the project has been replaced by something newer, that history can disappear entirely.

We have enormous archives of finished work. Very few reliable, comprehensive records of the people behind it. And perhaps that’s the actual problem.

We don’t just need better portfolio rights. We need better credits.

A permanent, independently verifiable record of creative contributions. Not another portfolio platform where everyone competes for likes. Not another gallery of beautiful work with suspiciously vague descriptions of who did what. A proper credit system.

The project.
The client.
The agencies.
The studios.
The designers.
The strategists.
The developers.
The producers.
The illustrators.
The people whose names rarely appear in the announcement.

And perhaps, with the tools we have today, building that system today isn’t nearly as impossible as it once was. AI could help catalogue publicly released projects, connect fragmented credits, identify relevant records and assist with verifying contributions. Not to replace the people who make things. To finally acknowledge them.

Of course, it would need safeguards. Verification. Dispute resolution. A distinction between having contributed to a project and claiming ownership of it. But those are problems worth solving. Because a portfolio isn’t some vanity exercise.

It’s how creatives establish credibility.
It’s how we demonstrate experience.
It’s how we find the next opportunity.

You hire us because of what we’ve done.
Then prevent us from showing what we’ve done for you.
How the hell is that supposed to work?

I’m not asking to own your brand.
I’m not asking to reveal your trade secrets.
I’m not asking to publish your unreleased strategy.
I’m asking for something much simpler.

When the work becomes public, let the people who made it receive recognition for their contributions.

Give them a credit.
Give them a record.
Give them something they can carry into the next chapter of their career.

Because I made that. You showed it to the world.
I’d like the world to know I was there.