If I could weigh in on this discussion, there are certainly a few issues at play from multiple disciplines that all converge: business, professional, artistic, legal and technical. It's important in these situations to identify the important issues and goals and apply solutions that really help if possible (or just relax and sleep well). My current toolbox for managing re-use and preventing helping the competition includes a number of written procedures for dealing with IP. They are the laws that we live by.
(for items for print) Export in JPG format (rather than PDF) at 150 dpi. It looks flawless on-screen, although the print quality is compromised substantially.
If a PDF is necessary (ie, as in the case of multi-page items that a user may wish to page through) use Acrobat Pro's "Combine Files" feature. It is two separate steps, but works like a dream.
If a job is unpaid and uncontracted (ie, merely a prospecting/marketing mockup done on spec), it should be festooned with watermarks and bear your copyright marking and contact information). Further, since it's just a spec sample, go ahead and include an additional page(s) of marketing information, trackable links to a portfolio, etc.
At the end of the day, know that you borrow a great deal from those around you every day, at the very least in terms of layout ideas, graphic concepts and inspiration. But, regardless of how you deliver your final deliverables, you are a professional: The quality of your work cannot be duplicated. Truly. You use professional tools and tactics, design conventions honed across years of experience. Subtle layout conventions, technique, font selections, gradients, drop-shadows, strokes, effects and myriad other touches give your work a superlative quality that "pops" and cannot be duplicated. You no doubt have layout files, gradients, templates and tools (within InDesign, Photoshop or other), that have been years in development and refinement. Nobody will ever have that. I've got InDesign templates for complicated mailer designs that took weeks of work to layout, and have been refined over years. There's no cheating the process. Those aren't the deliverables, and those are always yours. That's where the real value is. Next time out, you have a head start.
And I wouldn't necessarily blame a client for shopping a design around. I've benefitted from a client sending me an existing bid, complete with an art mockup. It's great to get a look at the competition's work. It certainly didn't help me much, although at the same time I managed to feel horrified at 'what if this was done to me?' My current policy? Don't feel that feeling: GENERATE that feeling in others, by delivering frightening work that raises the bar. If something is going to get shopped around? Deliver the work that will make it to the register. In the final analysis, everyone solves problems differently. Having a customer come in the door with a fixed design they're in love with, done by someone else, with images you don't have access to, a font you can't figure out, and a mixed bag of effects you can't decipher is no picnic. Indeed, some of my worst jobs have been client-mandated attempts to duplicate something closely that should rightly have been replaced.
Daniel Benjamin
[link removed by moderator]