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

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

Copyright

The dictionary definition of Copyright is: the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.[1]
In basic terms If you have created something then you legally own it and no one else can claim that it is thier's. You are also protected if anyone claims that they created something that you did. The only thing with copyright is that there is a lot of loop holes and flaws within it. For instence you cannot copyright protect an idea as an idea is not a physical thing. If you action the idea and create what you were thinking of then that can be copyrighted and protected. Almost anything that has been created can be copyrighted for example a drawing, poem, photograph. The use of the internet has made it more important to copyright your work now because someone could see a piece of your work online and decide to take the image of your work and claim it as thier own. If you have copyrighted it then you own all of the rights to that work.

 There is a few things you can do to protect yourself with copyright for example you could use the copyright symbol with your name next to it on the bottom of your work. You could also post yourself a physical copy of your work within a sealed stamped envelope as this will pass through the mail system and have official date stamps, Although this is not the best way to copyright it still provides a bit of evidence if anything gets took to court. The best way to copyright a piece of work is probably to talk to a copyright lawyer that can help you to choose the best option on how to copyright your work. 
Copyright also does run out after a certain amount of years so its good to renew it after 50 plus years. 

[1] Oxford Dictionary Definition, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/copyright (accessed 16/04/2014)