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.