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.