So, you’re on a project, and it seems like you might need illustrations, photos, or other art that’s beyond our capabilities. It’s time to research your options, see who you like, what aligns with your project goals, and what the client responds to. This is going to be a lot of digging through the internet, so find a good podcast. ? Note: this is where Are.na comes in. Are.na is the new Pinterest. We have a wealth of artists, agencies, foundries, vendors, studios, and inspiration stashed there. Every past Upstatement project’s inspiration channels are there for you! You’ll definitely want to look other places for ideas and artists, but Are.na is a good place to start. And remember to add any great finds to our directories!
Are.na best practices:
Our Upstatement Are.na account login is in OnePassword, or if you already have an account, ask for a group invite from Molly, Regis, or your producer. Once you’re in, create a project channel—or a few. Think of this as a Pinterest (ew) board or board section. For instance, if you’re working on the Devoted project, create a Devoted channel, or maybe create a Devoted illustration channel and a Devoted photography channel, then connect them. Just try to name them with a clear focus so people can use them later on when looking for specific inspiration. Set them to private so other non-Upstatement people can’t steal our genius ideas.
Fun facts, you can:
Connect two channels.
Retroactively add images (blocks) from one channel to another.
Search and filter through every single image on every single channel—or browse by channel name.
Tag and search by tag within a channel or account (Tag your blocks! For instance, you can tag an illustrator as “portraits” or “landscapes” in the Info field.)
Export images for a printed moodboard.
Use your own account but contribute to an Upstatement group.
Use the Chrome extension to add images you find on the fly. It’s called a bookmarklet—so cute!
Use the app (iPhone only right now ?)
This is more functional than Pinterest because it allows all of the amazing inspiration from every past project to be accessible and searchable to the entire Upstatement family. And it works better! And is prettier! We know there may be some growing pains, but please help us make Are.na a ‘thing.’ The idea is we’re building a living resource for the whole company.
Plus, we can make select channels public to raise Upstatement’s profile, promote our work, and boost recruitment efforts.
There is a Teams feature coming soon that might make our lives even easier…stay tuned! We’re working with the Are.na team on new features that we would find useful, like recirculation. Please send any suggestions (or bugs you encounter) to Molly and Regis!
2
Get your head straight
Okay, you’ve seen what’s out there. You’ve got some ideas. Assemble a brief, a project schedule (pad it!!!! Ask the producer to help!), and budget. For a rough idea of budget, check out our database of past projects. For questions on turnaround times and other tricky things, check out our Q&As. Getting these documents together is annoying, but we find it helps us think through what we really want, need, and have time for.
3
Approach your target
Time to email your first-choice artist. Introduce yourself! Link to Upstatement’s site so they know you’re legit, say you’re a fan, and give the briefest description of what you’re looking for (i.e., want to create portraits for a venture capitalist site, but don’t worry, it’s cool looking!). Say if they’re interested, please let you know so you can discuss timing, budget, ideas, etc. Don’t overwhelm them in the first email, but don’t make it so skimpy they have to beg for information and waste time on a bunch of emails only to realize they’re not interested.
Like any relationship (lol), picking the right person is 90% of it. Then, it’s up to you to communicate what you need from them, advocate for them to the client, and to support them throughout the process.
Do they answer emails promptly? Is their email tone professional, clear, and personable? This is important especially if you’re taking a risk on them for the first time and there’s a hard deadline.
? REP ALERT ? Is there a rep? Usually this is totally fine, but an agent means they’re going to be a bit more expensive. You don’t need to do anything differently than you would when dealing directly with the illustrator. Typically, once the project is underway, you’ll just be speaking to the illustrator.
4
Lock it down
They accept! Great! Get that contract squared away. This is boring but important, like so much in life.
We have a fancy new contract-builder1, approved by Jared. It’s tough for us to have a standard contract since every project is different (vs. commissioning editorial illustrations for a monthly magazine) so one fun trick is to just ask the outside artist to supply their own contract. They all have them, and we can ask for tweaks as needed. Or, you can have the client hammer things out with the client directly. Ask Jared and your producer what route is best for Upstatement’s protection.
Whether they provide the contract, the client does, or we do, you’ll want to check on these things:
Rights management: the images could be yours in a temporary, restricted way if you license them. If you go with full buyout, they’ll be yours forever to do whatever you want with! (for most clients, it’s usually worth getting full buyout, but that’ll cost ya ?)
Deliverables, with size, file formats, and descriptions (e.g., one 5×4 inch color portrait of a woman screaming as she writes a contract, layered TIFF)
Due dates (make sure it matches your schedule and allows for some wiggle room)
Number of revision cycles
Kill fees (make sure there’s a graceful exit option for both parties)
5
Direction
Give them some more direction2, get them excited, and sit back and wait for those sketches to roll in.
6
Review the Sketches
Sketches come in! Share these with your team and compile your collective notes before sharing with the client; you want to give the client a high-level summary and assure them it’s going in the right direction and that you got this! For more in-depth info on how to give direction and feedback, see this (coming soon!).
One thing we hear from artists a lot is that they want to hear the problem, not the solution. If you can articulate what’s wrong, that will give the artist a better understanding and give you a better result. For instance, an illustration comes in and you think it looks too busy. You tell the illustrator to get rid of the striped pattern that’s used throughout the illustration. That’s one solution, maybe, but if the illustrator is simply told it feels cluttered and busy, they can address that in their own way, or provide a few options to you.
7
Repeat, Reuse, Recycle
Go through the sketches, feedback, revisions thing a a couple times. 3 The number of revision cycles was listed in your contract, right? Keep things in writing and summarize phone conversations in Slack or email so no one gets confused.
8
All done!
You received final files. Everyone’s ecstatic. (Or they aren’t! If people are mad, don’t freak out. See our case studies, coming soon, for ideas on how to smooth this over.) We prefer to have the artist invoice our client directly, especially for large sums, but if you’ve worked something else out, request the artist’s invoice and be a real pro by getting their tax form too (a W9 for USA, W8-BEN for international friends). They can find these online through the magic of Google. Then, as is standard in most accounting firms, ask Molly what to do with these.
Ok, on to the next section: strategy! Basically: how to think and what to say during this process.