Creative technology commissions rarely go wrong because the technology fails. They go wrong at the boundary between what you assumed and what the client assumed — and that boundary is invisible until someone discovers it costs money.
This is the paperwork that makes it visible while everyone is still friendly. None of it requires a lawyer, and all of it is easier to write before the project than during the argument.
1. The scope document
One page. It says what you are making, and — more importantly — what you are not.
Include:
- What the piece is, in plain language a non-technical stakeholder can check against their own understanding
- What you deliver: the software, the configured hardware, the documentation, the training session. Enumerate it.
- What you do not deliver: content creation, ongoing maintenance, staffing the opening, the projector, insurance, shipping
- What the client supplies, and by when: the wall, the power, the plinth, the video content, site access, the venue contact
- Assumptions you are pricing against — “priced assuming a single projector on a flat white wall with 4m throw”
That last line is the most valuable sentence in the document. When the wall turns out to be textured brick and curved, you are not renegotiating from nothing; you are pointing at an assumption that has changed.
2. The technical rider
What the piece needs from the venue, in the venue’s language. Venues understand riders; they don’t understand your repo.
- Power: total draw in watts, number of independent circuits, whether anything must stay on overnight
- Space: footprint, ceiling height, throw distances, sightlines, minimum viewing distance
- Light: how dark the room must be, and what ambient light breaks the piece
- Network: wired or wireless, ports, whether it must reach the internet, who administers it
- Mounting: what gets attached to what, who does it, whether it needs rigging certification
- Environment: temperature range, dust, humidity, outdoor exposure
- Access: install duration, load-in route, lift dimensions, who has keys
Write this early, because it frequently discovers that the venue cannot host the piece you designed — which is much cheaper to learn in week one.
3. The revision policy
The single most common way creative technologists lose money.
State: how many rounds of revision are included, what constitutes a revision versus a change of scope, and the rate for work beyond that.
The useful distinction: a revision refines what was agreed; a change of scope alters what was agreed. “Make the particles slower” is a revision. “Make it respond to sound as well” is a new feature. Write both examples into the document — concrete instances communicate the boundary far better than a definition.
4. Acceptance criteria
How does everyone know it’s done? Without this, “done” means “the client has stopped having ideas,” which is not a date.
Write testable conditions:
- “The piece runs unattended for 8 hours without intervention”
- “The piece recovers automatically from a power cut within 3 minutes”
- “Tracking works for 1–6 simultaneous visitors within the marked floor area”
- “Sign-off occurs within 5 working days of install completion; absent written objection, the work is accepted”
That last clause matters more than the technical ones. Projects don’t end because nobody formally ends them.
5. Money and timing
- Payment schedule tied to milestones, not dates you can’t control: deposit on signature, tranche on prototype delivery, balance on acceptance
- A deposit that covers your hardware outlay — never buy the client’s equipment with your own money
- What happens if the show is cancelled or postponed after you’ve built it
- Who owns what: the code, the design, the documentation. Licence rather than assign if you want to reuse your own tooling.
What this is not
It isn’t a contract, and it doesn’t replace one for a significant commission. It’s the shared understanding a contract should encode — and writing it first means the contract takes an afternoon instead of a month, because the substance already exists.
The habit worth forming
Send these documents before you quote, not after. It reads as professional rather than defensive, and it does something useful: a client who reads a scope document and says “oh, we also need X” has just improved your quote instead of eroding your margin.
The Interactive & Immersive HQ’s writing on kickoff documents and pre-show checklists is the best practitioner material on this, and it exists because the people writing it learned this the expensive way.