The final podcast in the recent series that
we were set to listen to was based around the act of drawing up contracts when
you’re in the Illustration business. It was a real eye- opener for me to see
how much more business there is than I originally thought, and showed me that
the sooner I establish myself professionally the easier it will be to get my
foot in the door when I’m let out into the real world.
Going over the basics in a nutshell, the
presenters advised one to draw up a standardized contract that can be easily
edited to meet yours and whichever clients needs, and it would definitely get
changed as you learn about the ins and outs of the business anyway.
They gave great advice, like that if a
client doesn’t like the idea of a contract, it’s probably not a client you want
to be working with anyway, which makes sense to me! They also advised that we
add a kill fee, which is a fee you would get if you get cancelled before you’ve
finished your commission, and a late payment fee, which should be up to 5% of
the project salary.
Other things that were touched upon (and
that taught me lots) was how to charge companies for different types of
projects, for example if the product you were illustrating for is a billboard,
it is acceptable to charge more then for a once-run newspaper editorial,
because of the audience seeing it and because of buy-outs.
Licensing of your work was another thing
that was spoken about. They said to specify in the contract who had the rights
to the final outcome and for how long, and that if you didn’t establish if it
was a work for hire piece of not there could be trouble on the horizon, because
you might not even be able to use the piece for your portfolio! This shocked me
a bit, but I guess that’s just the way the business world works!
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