Sunday, 15 May 2016

Association of Illustrators.

Tips from the AOI

You should have a website that's functional, simple and links to your social media.

Put your email on your website, not a contact form as people are less likely to use a contact form!

If you have a blog as well as a website / any social media you post on keep it updated regularly! Also keep it professional, keep your personal shitposting separate from your professional life. If you're not good at keeping up with social media, just don't do it.

If you're doing personal projects, keep that updated on your blog - doesn't have to be just professional work.

Don't post work you're doing if you're not allowed to by the company you're working for, or you'll get in trouble and nobody wants that.

Behance is good for posting projects and development of said projects.

With physical mailers (creative CV's etc) make them A5 - A6, introduce yourself and avoid sir/madam to make it more personal, if you know the name use the name! Follow it up later with an email. Don't just send out mass mails with all the same stuff on to different people - check you've got the right name.

You automatically have the copyright on your work unless you hand it over to someone else (don't do it, it's not worth it). To avoid people ripping your work off the internet and using it use a lower res (72dpi which is fine for the 'net anyway) and put the copyright symbol when you post it. This may help people be able to trace the image back to you as well if it is used without your knowledge.

Read your contracts! Make sure there's no sneaky loopholes in there that give the company all rights to your work as they'll use it over and over and you won't get paid for it! You set the licence for how long the client can use your work for, and in what regions they can use it. You can keep raking in the cash if they want to renew a license or use it internationally.

Value your work! Don't sell yourself cheap to begin with and then try and up your prices! Cause work does go for lots of money and companies with big budgets will try to swindle you! (If you want £200 for a piece of work say you'll do it for £300 and let them think they've haggled with you). Do not work for free! When offered a brief find out as much as possible about the client, as sometimes the name cannot be mentioned but you can find out how many branches there are, whether it's international or not and be able to make a good approximation of how much you should charge for your work!


This talk was pretty helpful. I feel like I know a lot more about copyright, licensing and how important it is to find out information and read contracts when valuing your work as it can be easy for baby illustrators to be ripped off, big time! I feel a bit more confident knowing that I can join and seek help from the AOI if I find I have no idea what I'm doing or really need help valuing a project.

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