Writing a commission

Commissions can range from a highly detailed file with pages of information about what the client wants to a small paragraph where there is lots of room for your your own artistic ideas to be incorporated.  it is important to have all of the information of what the client wants before starting work on a project. It is also important to keep referring back to it to remind yourself of what the client wants ensuring that you don't go off track.

Although a written commission is vital to you they can also have their hindrances for example:

• They might want something that you don't think will work, then you will have to persuade the client that you are right (in a nice way.)
• if you read over it too much and it could make you overthink the design resulting in a sloppy final piece.  

what do you need from it? there are a few vital things that you need to make sure you know when you have received a commission, such as:

• The deadline.
• How they want the work delivered.
• The sizes.
• What hey want you to create, in detail. 

Once you have read through the commission/brief there are a few steps that should be taken to ensure that the job runs smoothly and you get everything done on time. This will maintain your professionalism and make the employer have more confidence in you and will sway them towards hiring you again. these things are:

• Plan out your time for every working day that you have until the deadline.
• have a diary to plan everything out so you can refer back to what you should be doing. 
• research the company and the subject of what they want you to create to make sure what you create is fitting. 

We were asked to write a mock commission to get us thinking about the amount of detail that is needed for a good commission. Here is the one that my group wrote. 

- A2 poster to advertise heavy rock music festival. 

- Must leave room for festival logo and acts names through centre to be added later.  

- Retro 60's-70's Horror/ B movie theme but must relate to music. 

-Limited colour palette (black and grey) limited use of other colours accepted (reds, yellows) think sin city. 

-Submitted as a jpeg, in CMYK, 3mm bleed, 300dpi. 

- Deadline 17/04/2015.

Professional delivery

When it comes to professional delivery there are lots of things that you need to know from your client before you send the work over. 

What do you need to know?

• The size/s.
• The format.
• How they want it delivering to them e.g E-mail, dropbox, post.
• Bleed sizes. 
• Colours e.g RGB, CKMY.
• Black and white or colour.
• Deadline. 
• File size.

there are other things that are important for you to do when delivering work to a client, reliability plays a huge part in your reputation as an illustrator. You have to be consistent with hitting your deadlines and with your art work, as if you are not you will look unprofessional and it will put the company off hiring you again. getting all of the delivery specifications correct first time plays a large part in looking  professional and reliable so make sure that you get this right. 

Whether it's through keeping to deadlines or ensuring the quality of your artwork, weaving reliability into your profile is essential for building and maintaining professional relationships. [1]

Communication is the main skill that will ensure that your professional delivery runs smoothly as you will have to keep in contact with your client to make sure you both know what is happening and you get it right first time. 

You  have to maintain good communication between yourself and your client so there are no mixed messages along the way. people will communicate to you in their own way for example, some clients might be more friendly and relaxed in their way of speaking and others may be more corporate and professional. As an illustrator you will have to adapt to their way of communicating and reply accordingly. It is important to read over what they have said a few times (or think it through if its a phone call) and take your time to reply to them.  

Each client will communicate with you in their own way. It's likely that the phone call or email offering you a commission may seem casual and informal and the dialogue friendly. Your aim as an illustrator is to respond appropriately whatever the approach and to develop an ongoing professional rapport with each client.[2]

Being confident and calm are also two very important parts when it comes to communication you have to sound like you are a professional that knows what you are talking about because then your employer will automatically have more confidence in you. 

Overall it is very important to constantly refresh your memory on all of the correct specifications for your professional delivery. If you are unsure about something or if you haven't received a piece of information good communication skills with your client are vital. All of these things should ensure that your professional delivery runs smoothly.  

[1] J DAVIES, D BRAZEL, Becoming a Successful Illustrator, p. 50

[2] J DAVIES, D BRAZEL, Becoming a Successful Illustrator, p. 50

Communication and Commissions

Communication:

When working with a client on a commission it is vital to communicate clearly to each other otherwise there will be a lot of confusion and mixed messages. Often if a company is in experienced with working with illustrators there will be a lack of communication and the illustrator might do something that the company didn't exactly want because they didn't communicate clearly enough. Things like this should not happen with commissions because everyone involved has to be 100 percent clearly informed so everyone knows what is going on. For example your employer might want a full book done in 6 months but the illustrator might think that is too much for the time period but if this is not communicated back to the client then the work wont get done and you might not get paid so everything should be made clear from the beginning.


Commissions:

Commissions are very important for illustrators because this is generally how they will make most of their income if they are working free lance. A commission is when someone agrees to pay you to create something for them, they set the brief and all of the correct measurements and formats. It is basically a written down explanation of what the client wants.

Briefs:

This is the document that contains every detail of what the client wants from you. The brief should be read very carefully and constantly referred back to, to make sure you are doing everything that the client asked for. The brief should be clear and if anything on it is mis understood the client should be asked and the issue cleared up straight away.


Contracts:

Another thing that is very important when taking on a big brief is to get a contract written up so that you have a legal bond that can not be broken. this protects the illustrator against getting taken advantage of by companies. contracts should state the amount of work that should be done so the illustrator doesn't end up doing way more than they will get paid for. It also legally insures that you will get paid and if a payment is not made then you have written agreements to back you up. It often happens that an illustrator will do some work without a contract and not get paid at all, you always want to make sure that you can avoid this happening.


Payment :

when taking on a job it is good to ensure there is some kind of payment or deposit before the job actually begins just to ensure that you will receive some sort of money for the work begins. This is because clients often try to get away without paying the full price or the company you are working for could go bankrupt before the project is finished leaving the illustrator with no payment at all.

Master of the trade- Oliver Jeffers

I decided to write about Oliver Jeffers as my master of the trade because I know a lot of information about him already and he is very successful in his career. Here is the powerpoint presentation that I created.

   I was chosen by my group for the best presentation because it was concise, had a beginning middle and end, and flowed well. I feel as though if I was to choose a presentation that I liked most it would be May's because she talked about the artist that she thinks is a master of their trade and she also gave some  historical background to the techniques that that artist uses. I feel although this gave a really good historical background to the artists inspirations and techniques. It also had really nice images that that artist had created on it.

Branding and Conceptual branding

Branding is an idea that you create a known identity for yourself or your company. Your brand can be characterised in many ways for example if your brand has an iconic logo or a certain look or feel about it. Branding usually develops expectations of the brand as it becomes known for certain things. An example of this would be say your brand is known for using warm colours throughout all of its products then the consumer will grow to expect these colours throughout all products in the future. Branding is mainly done to sell more products to the consumer as the company and its products will be more attractive if they have a well rounded brand. 

A great example of a company that does branding well is Benefit Cosmetics. Their target audience is young women that want to spend a bit of money on beauty products. When the company began its ethos was 'Who says make-up has to be serious to be good?' and they have definitely stuck with their non-serious concept throughout their brand.  the packaging is a huge part of their branding strategy as they all follow the same cute, quirky retro style. their products are so uniquely packaged to any other makeup company that it makes the consumer want to buy their products over a other less visually pleasing brand. They also give their products fun names such as 'stay don't stray' and 'Oh la lift' this adds a more exiting aspect to the products making their consumers exited about their products. I suppose their brand is aiming to re create the feeling of excitement that a child might feel in a toy shop as everything is bright and visually pleasing. 
It is highly visible when looking through their ranges that their branding is consistent throughout the whole of the company. 

As Social media has grown so much in recent years that is the companies main focus for branding they use platforms such as instagram, facebook and youtube to promote their products and extend their brand. 

"The growth of social media is doing amazing things to help us spread and receive the news faster. But our fundamental belief in business still hasn't changed. Our ultimate goal is to make our customers happy and that's it. Benefit's success began with word of mouth. Now the word of mouth just spreads faster and without borders. We have an amazing digital marketing team helping us but nevertheless, nothing can replace engaging our customers in person. Our brand has to be consistent in the digital world and real world."- Jane and Jean Ford, Benefit Cosmetics founders. [1]

They have no in-consistencies anywhere within the company from the social media promotions to the stands in department stores. Branding makes the consumer more comfortable with a company or product as all of their products have a familiar friendly feel. It could be said that the branding has built this company from the ground up, good branding can make any company succeed. Without branding then your company doesn't really have an image or 'face'

[1] From Social to Mockumentary: The Marketing Journey of Benefit Cosmetics,

 http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2282245/from-social-to-mockumentary-the-marketing-journey-of-benefit-cosmetics, accessed 14/10/14

Target Audience

Knowing your target audience one of the most important parts of being an illustrator because if you get that wrong then you wont be aiming your work at the right people and no one will want to buy it. I did some research into the Target market of the Halloween party that my class is planning. Hers is some information that i have collected

• The target market of this party is university students that attend CCAD.  
• Students spend on average £9.30 a week on alcohol [1]
• Students study an art subject. 
• Not many students live near campus.

These things all have to be taken into consideration when planning the party to make sure it is successful. For example, because not many students live near campus it has to be at a venue that everyone will recognise and because all of the attendants will be university students living off student loans, the drinks prices will have to be kept low. 

After thinking about the parties target audience i decided to think about my own target audience as an aspiring illustrator. These are the things that i took into consideration:

• the age group that my style suits 
• the gender
• how much money they might have to spend 
• geographic location 

After thinking about all of these  things I decided that my work would suit a younger female audience but would also have to appeal to the young persons parents because often a younger person does not have a disposable income. I feel as though my illustrative style would be more likely to appeal to a female audience because of the feminine colours that i often use. I don't think that the geographic location is too important to my target audience as my style is diverse and could fit in with all different cultures from around the world. 

[1] Nat west student servey, http://personal.natwest.com/personal/current-accounts/compare-current-accounts/student-account/student-living-index.html (accessed: 06/10/2014)

Halloween Party update

This week the party planning preparations have progressed massively as a lot of things have been sorted out and put into motion.

• The posters have been designed and printed.
• Tickets have been designed and are ready to be printed for next week when we start selling them. 
• A rota has been made for ticket sales so everyone knows what days they will be selling tickets on.
• A table has been confirmed for us to sit at in reception to sell the tickets
• Skyy have confirmed that we can partner with them and do a deal on tickets.  
• The venue manager has confirmed information about the venue, bar and bar staff. 

So far the party planning is looking pretty good and at the moment it seems like we will be able to host a great halloween party and have everything done in good time for everything to run smoothly. There are still a few things that need to be sorted for example music and decorations but they are in the process of planning. These two aspects are not things that needed to be planned as urgently as the others because these things happen on the night of the event not before.