I found quite a while back that providing rational incentive to PC artwork designers is near impossible on a pure financial or assurance of return business incentive.

I note one case where the company I was working with gave a design project to an artwork contract company and told them "what ever it takes". $28K later they got back a huge bucket of garbage that was filled with wierd custom decals for all the ICs and an off-grid auto-routed rats nest that was near impossible to later hand modify. Subsequently when I had to make a few modifications to the design I had to have it all re-done. The re-do was all of about $5K and the incentive to the second contractor was "certainly you can do better" ... and he did.

Now days, if it is my own project, I do my own artworks. I find that this way I get exactly what I want in the layout and often it takes less net time than having someone else do it. On the other hand if I am working on just part of somebody elses project they invariably decide where and whom to work with. In this regard I must say that I have observed the best results in PC boards when there is a kind of "relationship" between the engineer and the layout person. When it can be that the layout person intrinsically understands the engineer and what he wants then the incentive becomes almost a challenge "to make the board work" instead of any real financial incentive at all !!

Michael Karas