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- [00:00]
Host
If you'd like to feel a bit less about the business stuff and more confident about earning a living from illustration, then you might just love the free workshop that we've got coming up. It's called the Illustrator's Income Atlas and it's happening live on Wednesday 24th September at 1pm UK time. You will leave with a nice straightforward income plan, a little sketched out map for yourself that you can stick on the wall and fresh ideas for your illustration career. You can save yourself a spot at www.thegoodshipillustration.com atlas.
- [00:31]
Sam
It'd be to see you.
- [00:51]
Katie
Hello. We've got the business course running again in the end of this month, but things have changed. We've changed some things.
- [01:01]
Tanya
Big news, big changes, Big changes.
- [01:04]
Katie
Huge.
- [01:07]
Sam
You have to wear a suit to join.
- [01:08]
Katie
Yeah, no, we've got really worried that the word. I got really worried that the word business was putting people off and the.
- [01:15]
Tanya
Word business and cause together. They don't sound as much fun as it actually is when you do it, do they?
- [01:21]
Katie
No.
- [01:21]
Sam
These two had to be dragged kicking and screaming.
- [01:26]
Katie
I mean, in terms of it does what it says on the tin. It is a business course for illustrators.
- [01:32]
Sam
They decided to change it and take the word course out and make it a club, which is not just a tiny weeny change, but it means that people can come in on the course and take it at their own pace. Start straight away everything available from a oner instead of it being delivered to you once a week. Because I think it was burning people out, wasn't it? There was so much in the course that it's just not actually possible to consume it.
- [01:59]
Tanya
Especially when you're hungry for business advice. You're like, okay, how can I get my finances sort out? Let me get in there. And then we only let them have one module at a time. They're like, I want to have a look through it all and there's such a lot to take in. Have we said what we're changing the.
- [02:13]
Katie
Name to the Illustration Business Club.
- [02:16]
Tanya
Illustration Business Club, which is going to be like an umbrella. So in the umbrella of the Illustration Business Club will be the course, which is eight modules, lifetime access. You're in the club for life whether you want it or not.
- [02:29]
Katie
And we've changed it so you get access to the entire course immediately. So if you're really excited about a specific bit like search engine optimization or having a substack or multiple income streams, you can just go straight to that bit and do it immediately. Yeah, you don't have to wait.
- [02:42]
Tanya
And then under the umbrella is also community because we have fantastic Facebook group where everybody's helping each other out. We have lots of really experienced people in there and newbies and we're in there as well. Everybody helps other out. And then we have the calls as well, which is a mixture of the co working sessions. And we're going to have zoom calls picking particular topics within business, aren't we?
- [03:05]
Katie
Yeah, yeah.
- [03:06]
Sam
And then focus on those so that we don't. Because people come at business from so many different levels. Like some people are new illustrators, some people have been working for 20 years and just want to up their income and find some different kind of advice and tricks and techniques. And a lot of other illustrators just want some community and someone privately to ask, what do you charge for this? How do you go about dealing with these kind of clients? And in the Facebook community, which is completely private, I think you can ask a lot of these sort of iffy questions that you wouldn't want to ask publicly or answer publicly on threads. So there's a lot of good exchange of advice in those kind of areas as well.
- [03:45]
Tanya
I feel like it's the kind of stuff that doesn't get taught at art school as well. Like it's as soon as you leave art school, you're just hungry for the information about how you make this into a job, how you can earn money in our art school, quite rightly, you're learning the art itself and there probably isn't time for the business as well. But yeah, a lot of people leave art school floating about with some gorgeous artwork, amazing artwork, but not able to make a living yet because they don't have the other tools that they need. They need to get in that business car for a little while.
- [04:16]
Katie
And I used to be really angry about that. I was like, university should teach you. It's terrible that they don't. They're just irresponsible, shooting you out with a cannon into the world. But really I think it's a good thing now because if you do take the time to learn the businessy stuff, you have such a big advantage immediately over everyone. Mostly because not everyone's been taught it or people get the very basics. But you learn like a tiny thing and you already know more than most people that are in the creative industry.
- [04:42]
Sam
Yeah. And I think going back to the thing we talked about previously, the kind of lonely nature of being an illustrator means that you don't exchange information. There's no one really to ask, like, are fees really this low? You know, am I being ripped off individually because I'm too soft or too weak with clients? And then you speak to another illustrator and they say, no, that's exactly the same fee I was offered. So there's a lot of kind of frank discussion about things like that, about money and fees that you wouldn't normally get access to, particularly if you haven't got a community around you at the moment. And we've got people from all different areas of illustration coming on and talking about fees and design processes that are specific to those areas, like packaging, editorial, working privately with clients and not having a design or art director in between you and the client and how to manage those kind of things. And they were things I always wondered about. The great thing is we can ask people to be guests on our course and they tell us all those things because half the time we don't know some of the things we want to ask. For example, a packaging designer, how does this gig work and how do you go about it? So we're adding more and more interviews with people from different areas of illustration into the course and it's getting fatter and fatter and more like a club than a course.
- [06:03]
Katie
Yeah. We're going to do a workshop, aren't we? Yes, we are, because Tanya illustrated this gorgeous map and it shows you all the areas of illustration that you could go into.
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Tanya
So.
- [06:14]
Katie
Or planning a workshop, talking about your income as an illustrator. So the illustration income map atlas thing, and talking about all the things you could do. So, like, for me, especially when I left art school, I thought you'd be a picture book illustrator or an editorial illustrator, and that was the only options. I had no idea that there's entire other things like licensing and immediately lettering.
- [06:41]
Tanya
Live illustration.
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Katie
Live illustration. Yeah.
- [06:43]
Sam
And portfolio mixes of all those different, different things. Very few people just work on one specialism anymore. And in titan times, a lot of illustrators are saying, I used to be able to make an income solely out of this strand of illustration. I no longer, no longer can. What are people doing? So we've got loads of other brilliant ways to add, quite easily add stuff to your income stream that are related to what you do already. But perhaps you didn't realize that other people would really like a bit of that in their business area. So you can continue to do the same thing, but you can sample it into different. Different places and to different clients.
- [07:21]
Katie
Yeah. Because I think sometimes people think if you're an illustrator, you automatically have to accept that you're just not going to make Very much money, you're always going to need another job. But I think if you just know a few strategic things, like diversifying your income, having more than one thing going on, most people can make it work.
- [07:39]
Tanya
Illustrators have got really brilliant creative brains that can turn their hand to everything. It's amazing when you speak to illustrators, all the other things they do, like sewing projects, cutting, they're just brilliant, you know, writing, substack running shops, all the different things illustrators do. So I think we've got, we've got the kind of talent that can be used in lots of areas. So you don't need a kind of boring side job. Your side job can be something just as interesting.
- [08:06]
Katie
Definitely.
- [08:07]
Sam
Then you've got Katie talking about pricing as well. So Katie and I come from two different areas in pricing and at first I was like, you can't do it like that. You just have to accept what they tell you. And you're like, no, you can't them the prices. So I think both of them have met in the middle both of these kind of approaches and are real world doable rationales to pricing. And, but I think having Katie's approach and mine together and we've got inside info on picture book pricing, which is really what the publishers will give you rather than something that you can truly impact. So you got all this whole kind of 360 degrees on different areas of illustration and how those businesses run and what they pay. So you put all of those together, you're not in the corner just looking at one niche illustration activity and only having the skinny on what they pay and how they do it, but you can learn about all the other areas simultaneously. Oh, and we've also got, we're going to have an early bird special with our lawyers, Brifa, who are specialist lawyers on intellectual property and they are going to answer a few questions which you can also send in too about things, things like copyrighting. Do you need copyright? What do you do if someone reproduces your work somewhere else? What are the impacts of AI and copyright? So we're going to have a one hour session late September, which if you're signed up, you will get to hear that date and you can sit with, with the lawyers and find out all those juicy things.
- [09:36]
Katie
It's going to be so good.
- [09:37]
Tanya
Yeah, it's going to be brilliant.
- [09:39]
Katie
If you go to thegoodshipillustration.com forward/business, you can put your email in on there and you'll hear when the doors open, you'll hear when the workshop is about income. You hear about the early bird thing with Brif and copyright and legal questions. Yeah. To get all the dates and proper information. Yeah. Yeah.
- [09:56]
Sam
I think that's it, isn't it? I've blown my own brain now. It is so exciting. The business side is a bit where it all comes together and you can make a career out of it and be part of this ongoing club. Oh, and it's not subscriptions and it's not like membership subscriptions. You just pay once and you're in.
- [10:12]
Katie
Yeah.
- [10:13]
Sam
Part of the gang.
- [10:14]
Katie
Yeah. Okay. Goodbye. Bye, Sam.