I think this is a fabulous idea… Rizco Design has created a green report card, with which they hold themselves accountable for the resources they consume in creating their design products. I can imagine including a green report card like the Beleaf Report Card, as an extra page in a PDF quote as a pledge to the client to keep the project green, or even as an extra page in a PDF invoice as a “green receipt” to the client reporting on the projects low impact on the environment. … I’m inspired to make something similar myself! (I promise I’ll share the template once I’m done)

This great article by HOW gives designers the 101 on Sustainable Design in the Print Industry. I’ve copied a fair bit of it below, but you can read the entire “It’s Not Easy Being Green” at How , written by Constance J. Sidles, a Seattle Production Consultant. (BTW, love the Kermit reference, Constance!) (Read on …)

This illustration technique me feels like I’m a little kid again and colouring in the lines! I really enjoy this style, as I can take my time with my B-pencil & smudge stick rendering an illustration… and then hop on the computer and create the final black & white and colour print-ready files respectively in a matter of minutes. It is an ideal style for creating a lot of illustrations in a short amount of time, as it achieves a traditional feel without the time involved in creating watercolour paintings.

The step-by-step process I follow to colour my illustrations in Photoshop is :

• Illustrate the character with a graphite pencil on bond paper (I like printer paper as it’s smooth and fits on the scanning bed!)
• Scan each illustrations at high resolution
• Create a Photoshop file for the character illustration
• Remove the character from the background and place it on its own layer, carefully removing the whitespace with a soft edged eraser tool or feathered magic wand selection (see below)

• Adjust the contrast
• Save out a flattened, grayscale version as a TIFF (I’ve set up an action to do this in Photoshop automatically for me)
(Read on …)

Since yesterday’s post, Digital Verses Traditional Illustration, I had the question posted “Which is more advantageous to go digital or to stick with the traditional?”

That is a tough question! To be honest, I reckon nowadays, digital illustration opens more doors in more industries than traditional illustration does.

Like any “job,”  it really depends on which industry one hopes to work in. The feeling I have is that digital illustration lends itself best towards application in graphic design, web, advertising, gaming, and the electronic industry… which is an enormous array of industries! Traditional illustrators I feel will become more rare just as artists are, and will have to find niche markets which prefer tactile illustration… publishing, gifts and home wares, fashion, small aspects of the gaming industry, graphic design in the print & packaging industry, fine art… all of which are far more competitive industries. Of course both digital and traditional illustration can find work in almost ANY industry, but these are the big trends I have noted.

Something else I’ve noticed is a lot of graphic designers are also digital illustrators, thus they have the skills to marry their digital illustration with their designs right from the start and can provide their clients / employers with a complete package. Companies who hire a graphic designer / digital illustrator may remove the need entirely  to commission traditional illustration at all. A lot of traditional illustrators only provide the actual tactile artwork… leaving the scanning, colour correction, resizing, and final layout application in the hands of their clients–which also means leaving the costs of those service billed to their clients!

The convenience of not having to “wait” for the time it often takes to create traditional illustration is also in the digital illustrator’s favour… because once the work is done, the digital illustration can be dropped right into the layout / webpage. Whereas when traditional illustration is complete, it still has a whole “digital” process to go through to get it ready for it’s end application. So traditional illustrators who can not offer skills beyond their artwork may find they are being passed up for digital illustrators who are a “one-stop-shop” for the end client.

For me, my love of painting and with my awareness of needing food on the table spurred me on to go to school and be trained in both Graphic Design & illustration… so I entered the industry with both digital & traditional skill sets. I’ve found my digital skills complementary to my traditional illustration style… if I accidentally drip some coffee on an illustration just as I’ve finished painting, I’m not fretting because I can remove it in Photoshop! I still prefer paint for my illustration medium, and it works for me because the areas of the industry I’m most interested in prefer traditional illustration, too.

Thanks for the question, digital portrait artist at Portrait Kingdom,  it’s such an interesting topic to explore!

My colleague, a web designer and digital illustrator, has taken up a life drawing class to improve his illustration skills. He’s a natural, and his digital illustrating skills transferred well to the life drawing environment as his eye was well trained to create some lovely pieces. His instructor centred him out and asked him if he’s done any lessons before because he’s talented. He modestly told her ‘No, but I’m a web designer, I do some digital illustration.’ And her response? “Oh, so nothing real then?”

That simple comment pinpoints the new attitude steadily developing in the illustration field… a snobbery of sorts, an underlying rivalry, a subtle attitude… a rift between digital and traditional illustrators. On one side of the line there are the “old school” illustrators, clinging to their pencils and brushes, their tacky palettes of colour unachievable in RGB, their stained clothes and chemical tarnished lungs, and the ability to put a tangible product in their client’s hot little hands. And on the other side of the line are the “newbies,” the growing mass of digital illustrators who prefer the smooth contours of the mouse beneath their fingers, the visually controlled crisp lines of vectorized graphics, the pixel perfect renderings and gradients achievable by their beloved macs and pc’s, the warm glow of their monitors, FTP transfers and digital proofs… and the security of Apple-Z.

With such different preferences for medium, is it a wonder that there is a growing anxiousness between illustrators on both sides of the line about where one’s place is? Which will dominate the illustration industry in the future? Which will be taken more seriously?

The fear that traditional illustrators have is that they will be phased out–that the timeless tradition of painting and drawing will become obsolete in the wave of kids who learn how to colour on the computer with their cute little mouse by the time they are three-years-old! Behind that is the real fear though… that traditional illustrators will be out of work, that no one wants traditional illustration anymore.

As an “old school” illustrator, I had those fears myself, and wondered if I should jump ship and ride the of digital illustration wave… but after evaluating what I do and where I want to go in my career, I realized that jumping ship at this point would be acting out of the fear. Then taking another step back, I realized that I don’t need to compete with digital illustrators for work… just as I don’t compete with comic book artists, or animators, or graphic designers, or any other type of artist who does something different to the style of artwork I do. I’ve come to really appreciate digital artwork, as it has made me focus on what makes my traditional artwork unique, and pushes me to keep learning and developing new styles in traditional mediums.

Disposable and Easy
There are some assumption about digital illustration that are a bit sad : that it is quicker and easier to create a digital illustration than a traditional illustration. Digital illustrators, though they may create amazing illustrations, aren’t taken as seriously as traditional painters because their work is digital, and it isn’t recognized as a ’serious’ medium.

I had an instructor once say to me that the tools don’t really matter as long as the final product is amazing… what does it matter if he decides to use his little finger to smudge some paint so it’s just right, just because it’s not a paintbrush doesn’t mean it isn’t art! The same is with digital illustration… the end product can be amazing depending on the artist, not the medium. Digital is just another ‘medium’ of illustration, just another tool with its own benefits and drawbacks, another style, another movement… it is many things, but it is not the demise of traditional illustration!

The attitude that digital illustration isn’t “real” is fast changing… just as the photography industry has finally embraced digital photography, it won’t be long before fine-digital-art is being honored in museums and art galleries.

Supply and Demand
On the flip side of the coin, the attitude that digital art isn’t taken seriously because it isn’t a rare commodity is much more true. Unfortunately, when something can be created in mass quantities at a low cost (and there isn’t any lower cost than hitting Apple-C!) it is no longer seen as a rare-commodity.

Because ‘digital’ is the original form of the artwork (light pixels generated from binary 0’s and 1’s in your computer) it means that ANYONE can have the original work of art if they can get their hands on the digital file. The Mona Lisa is a priceless work of art because it is the only one… nothing can replicate it, it’s one-of-a-kind.

Whereas a work of digital art can be recreated an unlimited number of times and still be identical to the original down to the last pixel. So digital illustrators may have a supply & demand issue on their hands as far as fine-digital-art goes, making it difficult to attach a pricey tag to digital art reproductions sold in a gallery setting. It will be interesting to see how digital illustrators overcome this hurdle in years to come!

Industry niches
There are plenty of avenues for both traditional & digital illustrators to follow without even competing with each other for work :

Children’s book publishers seek out traditional illustrators for children’s books, as there is a warmth and tactile quality that is difficult (but not impossible) to achieve with digital illustration. They tend to prefer traditional illustrators as it visually stimulates the children with something different than what they see when playing video games, playing on the computer and watch on Saturday morning cartoons.

Greeting card companies rely heavily on traditional illustrators as the majority of the market who buy greeting cards are women who are drawn to sentimental imagery… but that being said, vectorized illustrations are fast replacing the ‘cartoon’ humour style cards and there is always a need for bright and graphic cartoon humour cards.

The video game industry relies heavily on digital illustrators, as images created digitally have a much smaller file size than a scanned piece of art would be… and because the end result needs to be married with the code to run the game, a small file size is essential. So illustrators who specialize in rendering and textures are in high demand in the gaming industry. But, traditional illustrators are still able to delve into this industry, as their skills are sought after for concept, character, and background art.

Website development relies heavily on digital illustration for graphics, icons, illustrations, logos, etc. Similar to the video game industry, small file size is essential…and digital illustrations can be reduced to only a few kilobytes in size without compromising the quality, or looking ‘pixely.’ Traditional illustrations, when properly scanned and saved for web use, are frequently used… but it is more common for traditional illustrations to be purchased as stock images rather than commissioned directly for a website.

Graphic design firms rely on both digital and traditional illustrators for printed packaging, books, brochures, business cards, signage, etc…

Advertising firms use storyboard artists to illustrate their concepts, which they in turn pitch to clients. Traditional illustrators using pen & marker, or digital illustrators using wacom tablet and Photoshop, can easily work side-by-side in this industry.

Architectural firms also marry digital & traditional illustration when creating a ‘rendered’ illustration of a building… illustrators on staff render an illustration of what the final building will look like with landscaping and people walking about… and this can be done either on the computer or with paintbrush on paper.

A Happy Medium
Traditional & Digital illustrators can benefit by taking a feather from each other’s caps.

Traditional illustrators can embrace the digital side of illustration and marry it with their illustration style. They can add to their repertoire of skills the ability to scan and colour correct high-resolution files to provide to their clients, rather than packaging up the final artwork and posting it off. They can learn to touch up their artwork in Photoshop, or add a little extra bleed around the edges for their client. They can experiment with different techniques of digital illustration.

Digital illustrators can learn to get a little dirty ;) Drawing from life is an excellent way of developing illustration skills. Learning how to see light as it is in real life, rather than relying on what the Photoshop filters can do for you. Starting sketches on paper first, and then rendering the final artwork on the computer screen will result in more dynamic and fluid digital illustrations. Learning how to use one traditional art medium (pencil, paint, sculpture) will broaden their appreciation for texture and colour application beyond what Pantone’s latest digital swatch library offers.

Staying in touch
I spend most of my time at work staring at a computer screen with my fingers typing away on a keyboard and mouse. So I find it a real release, and feel ‘alive’ drawing and painting, creating something visual and tactile from graphite, water, clay, or plant matter. I reckon while embracing the digital age, illustrators should keep in touch with that human side of being an artist, and keep that relationship between pencil and paper alive.

‘How much should I charge for my illustrations?” is one of those unecessarily ambiguous questions creative people face when they are asked to provide an estimate for a project. While many clients have a set budget that you have to work within, others ask you to provide a quote for your project. You could pick a number out of a hat… or if you’ve got a little business sense, you’ll take the time to do a little number crunching to be sure all your bases are covered.
When I started out freelancing, I found this article (below) by Neil Tortorella posted at Creative Latitude very helpful in establishing my own illustration pricing. I never ‘quote’ an hourly rate for illustration work, I quote for the entire project up front… but my starting point for every quote is working out how much time the project will take, and how much I need to earn at a minimum to to meet my annual salary.

Below is a step-by-step guide of what to take into consideration when coming up with your hourly rate… it’s a good starting place for establishing your illustration rates :

Creative Latitude : How do you Rate?

“If there’s one question I’m asked by designers more than any other, it’s how to figure out what to charge for a project. We have several ways. We can look it up in the Graphic Artist Guild’s Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines (PEG). We can charge the ‘going rate’. Or we can make a good guess at what the client is willing to pay and charge that. There are others, but these are the typical methods.

The Guild’s PEG is a good source and every designer should have a copy. You might find it a bit too general, though, in some areas. The ‘going rate’ is called that because if you’re not careful with it, you’re going out of business. Unless you happen to be clairvoyant, guessing what you think the client will pay is just plain bad business. The idea isn’t to figure out what the client will spend. It’s figuring out whether you can make any moolah on the project.

A better way to approach the problem is figuring out your bottomline: where you need to be to really make money. Go below this point and you’re paying your client for the honor of working for them. The more work you take on at the wrong rate, the deeper the hole you’ll dig for yourself. You can actually ’sell’ yourself right out of business with a rate that’s too low. Go too high and you’ll price yourself out of the market. Once you know your true costs of doing business, you can make sensible decisions.

You’re unique. Yup, just like every other designer out there. We all have different set ups and our costs vary. So we need to tap into some of that high school math you complained you’d never use. Actually, this is pretty elementary, so don’t sweat it.

The place to start is you. What’s your target salary? And let’s be realistic here. If you have employees, you’ll need to add up all the salaries. On top of that, you’ll need to figure in other associated costs like taxes, FICA, insurance, etc. A safe figure is 25-30%. I lean toward 30%. The math looks like this:

* Salary: $40,000
* Associated costs at 30% of salaries: $12,000
* Total: $52,000

Well, that’s a start. So how many hours are there in a year? Hmmm; let’s see. Eight hours each day. Five days in a work week. Fifty-two weeks in a year that’s . . . er . . . Hang on. I’ll save you the trouble of digging out that calculator. It’s 2,080 hours. Again, if you have employees, you’ll need to multiply that by the number of employees.

Now, if you’re like most people, you probably would like to spend a few holidays with the family and you may get a bad cold now and then and need to take a day off. Let’s factor those things into our equation (based on an solo practice):

* 7 legal holidays (US): 56 hours (8 x 7)
* 2 weeks vacation (you need some time off): 80 hours (8 x 10)
* 5 sick days (did you get a flu shot?): 40 hours (8 x 5)
* Total: 176 hours

Take that off the top of our total hours and we’re left with 1,904 billable hours. But, you probably do other things around the office like invoicing, sales calls, surfing the net and reading articles like this one. Well, you can’t bill for that time so we’ll need to ax those hours too. If you’ve been a good designer, you’ve kept time sheets. A review of a few weeks can give you a pretty good idea how much ‘down time’ you have. If you’ve been bad and haven’t kept time sheets, you’ll have to give it your best guess and make some adjustments later on . . . when you do keep time sheets. A typical target is 25%. If you’re new, it may be as much as 50%. Hopefully it’s not more than that. Let’s use the 25% for this example.

That brings our billable hours into the more realistic area of 1,428 per year. Now we’re getting somewhere! Now simply divide your billable hours into the cost of salaries and voila! You have a rate of $36.41 ($52,000/1428). Let’s round that down to 36 smackers. This is the amount to must charge to get your salary and its associated costs.

You’ve got stuff. Stuff is good. We all need stuff. Designer stuff includes things like office rent, utilities, phones, computers, software, paper, ink, marketing materials, yada, yada, yada. You get the idea. Now it’s time to start adding up all your stuff. The accountants like to call this overhead. I guess that’s because if you buy too much stuff, you’ll find yourself in way over your head. Let me pull a number out of the air. Say for our example your overhead costs $35,000 per year. We need find the percentage of salaries this overhead represents. Simple. Divide the overhead ($35,000) by the salary ($52,000) and you come up with a little better than 67%. Add this to the base rate we calculated earlier:

$36 X 67%= $24.12

36 bucks plus the $24.12 for overhead is a whopping $60.12. Again, we’ll round that out to a clean $60.

And there you have it. Now you know you need to charge at least $60 per hour if you want to eat and pay your rent. We also know that we need to contract at least 1428 hours per year, or 119 hours each month, to make this mark. Pretty neat, eh? Now we’re starting to act like a real live business! We not only solved our rate problem, we also set a sales goal.

Well, I guess that’s about it. What’s that the Accountant is saying? There’s one more thing? Hmmm . . . we took care of our salaries. Our overhead is nailed. What else could there be? Oh! A profit! We need to make a profit. Profit is that funny money that allows our business to grow and expand. It’s the leftover nest egg that gives us the ability keep employees on when things get slow. It’s what allows us to replace the old G-3 with a nifty new G-4 and a Titanium Powerbook to go. Yup, we need to make a profit.

How much profit do we need? I’d say not to go below 10%. 20% is better and that’s what we’ll use for our target. Time to pull out the calculator again. We’ve established our base rate at $60. 20% of 60 is 12, so we need to tack $12 on top. Our final rate, to recover salaries, overhead and a healthy profit, is $72.00. If you’re like me, you’ll round this amount up to a tidy $75. It just sounds better and adds a slight fudge factor.

Now that wasn’t too bad, was it? The final rate is the number you’ll use to do your estimating, whether you charge by the hour or by the job. It’s the number you can’t afford to go below. No more wondering if you can afford to take on this job or decline that one. You have facts to back up your decisions.

If you can’t find your calculator, you’re in luck. Being the nice guy that I am, I’ve posted a spreadsheet on my site that will do all this for you. You can find it in either Mac or Windows flavors at http://www.tortorelladesign.com/calc. Happy calculating!

About Neil Tortorella
Neil Tortorella has been calculating his hourly rate for over 25 years. He’s pretty sure he’s got it right this time. ”

– © Neil Tortorella, Tortorella Design

I came across this post on How Can I Recycle This?

“Last week, I wrote a bit of a rant about how much I hate it when pencil leads are broken (HATE) and asked what I could do with the formerly-useful pencils. But I didn’t think about the resultant sharpenings. If the pencil is wood, I guess they can be composted - right? But what about previously-foam-cup pencils that can’t be composted? I know it seems a really small thing and almost isn’t worth caring about, but any suggestions?”

As an illustrator, I create an incredible amount of pencil shaving waste! I even have a ‘graveyard’ of pencil stubs too short to comfortably use anymore but am too sentimental about to actually throw away. Happily I don’t need to toss the pencils shavings in the trash anymore, as I’ve discovered some great ways to keep shavings out of landfils :

Reuse
• Mulch : wood pencil shavings make great mulch in the garden

Reduce
• Use graphite sticks instead of pencils (completely reducing the shaving waste)
• Use solid graphite pencils (completely reducing the shaving waste)
• Use refillable pencils and just purchase new leads (be sure to purchase those packaged in recyclable & recycled packaging)

Recycle
• wood pencil shavings can be composted
• wood pencil shavings can be used as kindling in fireplaces

Ok, I officially ‘used up’ my regular old ball disposable point pen. There’s no bringing it back to life, every drop of ink was used up illustrating and writing! So I turned to the source of my Pentel RSVP Black BK90 pens and it didn’t take me long to discover that Pentel offers refils for their disposable pens! So that’s one tiny problem solved. But what about the handful of pens I’ve got sitting here that are dried up that don’t take refills?

“Every year Americans discard 1.6 million pens. Placed end to end, they would stretch 151 miles — equivalent to crossing the state of Rhode Island almost 4 times! …Many companies presently carry one to several lines of products which have positive environmental attributes. These attributes include recycled content, refillable options, nontoxic inks and more environmentally responsible packaging.” –Green Seal

So how does one recycle old dried up pens? Here are some ideas to reuse and recycle old pens:

Reduce

• • Don’t purchase disposable pens : buy one or two good quality refillable pens (and pencils,) and purchase refils as needed.
• • Buy pens without excessive packaging (or at least packaging that is recyclable and made of recycled materials)

Reuse

• • Purchase refills for your pens & pencils
• • Revive dried up pens by running the tip through a lighter flame, or by adding a drop or two of hot water in the tube.
• • Empty pen casing can be used to safely protect a traditional thermometer; store beads; as a pirch in a bird cage; for marking seedlings in the garden; for stir sticks; as a glue applicator; give those poor quality pens to kids to draw with; get creative!

Recycle

• At the moment you can’t toss pens in the recycling bin, as they require disassembling and recycling centers don’t have the time to do all that finicky work.

Take Back?

• I’ve yet to find a company that has a take-back program for their disposable pens. So the best thing I can recommend is : Don’t buy them, don’t take them home from seminars and hotels. Just buy pens that can be refilled and reused. I visited How Do I Recycle This thinking someone there may have found where I can recycle these… and aside from lots of tips on how to revive dried up pens, I couldn’t find my answer!

Office Stationery Take Back Programs
I’m having a hard time finding any take-back programs for stationery such as pens and pencils… help?

(Read on …)

I just uploaded a few pieces to ArtWanted.com, a online portfolio / print-on-demand site where you can post original artwork for sale and hopefully connect with a buyer. I’ve only had my work up there for a few days, but WOW have I had a lot of responses to my work… mainly comments to the work, no inquiries to purchasing the artwork. But a surprising number of responses, seems like a popular site.

My only negative comment on it is that they have the option to sell prints of your work through their site, but you have to pay to be a member. This to me seems like a drawback, as there are other reputable sites who offer POD (print-on-demand) prints of artwork with no upfront costs to you. I prefer sites that have no up-front fees for artists, because it doesn’t cost them anything UNLESS they print copies of your artwork… that’s the beauty of POD, there are no up front materials or overhead costs (aside from the server the files are stored on) and they happily take a huge royalty from each piece of YOUR artwork they sell. So there’s my rant. I like Lulu.com, CafePress.com, and Art.com better if you want to get into selling prints on the side.

When working with Clients on illustration or design projects, establishing the terms of working together before the project begins protect both the interests of the Artist and the Client. A contract which clearly includes your Terms & Conditions is one of the most important documents you can set up for your illustration business… it will set you apart as being ethical & professional. Having your clients sign a contract doesn’t take much time… and if taking a minute to sign an agreement for the project ahead scares them away, they probably weren’t legit anyway. In my experience, any legitimate business would not bat an eyelash at signing a contract before the work commences.

When writing your own Terms & Conditions, be sure to specify :

• • the timeline for the project
• • what you are providing to the client
• • what rights the client will have to the artwork
• • what rights you will have to the artwork (i.e. intellectual rights, the right to use the art for self promotional purposes, etc)
• • whether you are willing to allow the client to alter your designs / artwork
• • cancellation fees
• • number of copies of the finished product you hope to be provided free of charge

Sample Illustration Terms & Conditions

Below I’ve copied my Terms & Conditions (which I include when I give a quote,) feel free to use this as a starting point to create your own:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

TIME SCHEDULE
A schedule compatible with the Client’s timing requirements will be established at the outset of the project, with project commencement contingent upon prompt acceptance of this proposal, and with anticipated completion date of March 31, 2007. All dates and time schedules are contingent upon prompt project commencement and timely Client’s input as required.

TERMS & CONDITIONS
1. Client acknowledges that Illustrator is first and sole owner of all “copyright” and shall retain intellectual rights of all Illustration(s).
2. Upon payment in full of all fees, the Illustrator shall grant the Client’s unlimited rights for all approved designs and shall transfer
ownership of high resolution scans of the illustrations, design mechanicals, and reproduction specifications to the Client.
3. Illustrator is entitled to use all Illustrations for self promotion purposes or to enter into any contest.
4. Reassigning of Rights : Client may not assign or transfer this Licence or any part thereof unless authorized in writing by Illustrator.
5. No modifications, changes or alterations may be made to Illustrations or any part thereof, directly or indirectly, without Illustrator’s prior written consent.
6. Cancellation: Should Client choose to cancel work after commencement, Client agrees to pay Illustrator 25% of the final fees if the cancellation occurs after sketches; 50% of the final fee if cancellation occurs after revised linears; and 100% of the final fee if cancellation occurs after final art.
7. Credit : Client agrees to include a credit to Illustrator in connection with the Work.
8. Illustrator’s Copies : Client shall furnish Illustrator with two copies of the Work upon publication.
9. Terms become effective upon the signing of the agreement. It will be retroactively cancelled if the Client is in default of carrying out the complete payment of the invoice in the 90 days of receipt.

If you found this post helpful, you might also like to read about other Business Tips for Illustrators here.