Tamdhu was originally born on the banks of the River Spey in 1897, and ran well for over one hundred years, until outside influences forced it’s closure. In 2012, the distillery was reopened, and the brand reborn – launching on May 3rd. I worked closely with Darren Adams, design director at Good Creative, to produce the brand’s signature monogram and custom script lettering for the new packaging. I was also tasked with creating a repeating pattern for the neck closure and peripheral applications, using historical references from Speyside, including the famous river, and the train station that uniquely gives a direct line to the distillery itself.

This was a real pleasure to work on, and the chance to be a part of the relaunch of this historic brand was one not to be missed. Thanks to Good for bringing me on board for it. More pics will appear in the main work section soon.

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The Communication Arts competitions are among the most prestigious in the visual arts industries, publishing the best work from around the world since 1959, so it’s a little bit of a big deal for me. I won an Award of Excellence for my work on the Audi Quattro campaign for Kempertrautmann, and I’m honoured to be among some truly great work this year. I’ve already been sent this year’s annual and it’s an amazing collection of some of the best work from last year across a whole range of categories. Well worth a look if you can get your hands on one.

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Mike Brennan from .net magazine kindly asked me to illustrate the opening spread of a feature on designing web forms for their latest issue. It was a difficult one to conceptualise but my thoughts turned to making sense from chaos with typography. I wanted to visualise the type gradually coming into focus, like a tv tuning into a station so I emulated an old technique of dragging a printed sheet across a photocopier to give a wave-like distortion. It was a little experimental, but good fun, and I think it worked well, looking great across the spread.

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Whether you’re a recent graduate, a veteran freelancer, or an out-of-office-hours illustrator doesn’t matter – we all want to be paid a fair rate for what we do. You do. I do. It’s a given. The only problem is, a lot of us are out there working, but without knowledge on what’s fair, so when a client comes along and offers to pay you a fixed fee for a job, or sets a daily rate for the same thing, it’s all too easy to smile, shake their hand and be their new best friend for a while.

If you’re young and a recent graduate, it’s pretty likely that you might still live at home and don’t really have a good grasp of what it takes to pay bills and probably don’t have too many regular outgoings that need to be met, so there’s a temptation to accept any offer of work without negotiating so you can get a foot in the door, build a client list, gain credibility and whatever else you think might push you to the top. This is probably ok for a while and most of us did it at some point, but sooner or later you will become frustrated when you can’t seem to raise your prices while your friends are out living it up, or worse, you’ll believe that this is what all illustrators should be getting paid and accept it. After all, we’re doing what we love right? Can we really expect to live comfortably too?

Well, yes. We can, and we should. It doesn’t matter if it’s fun, it’s still a job like any other and we’re providing a service that people can’t do themselves, otherwise they wouldn’t come to us in the first place. So treat yourself and your skills with some respect and charge accordingly. If you undercharge, you’re sending out the message to the client that the price they’re offering is acceptable, and as a result, they’ll offer the same amount to the next guy, and so on until someone says no, by which point the client will quite possibly feel that the dissenter is just some guy looking to rip them off. If this happens to enough clients, then you can kiss any hope of making a good living goodbye, and you’ve just helped to lower the incomes of a lot your contemporaries. No one wins but the client, who banked a lot more money than they probably thought they would – because you didn’t find out what your work was worth.

Resources like the AOI can help you educate yourself on the wonderful world of rights, usage costs, and licensing to help you get a fair pay for your efforts. Getting an agent can also be a Godsend, as it’s their job to know the ins-and-outs of pricing, and while they take a percentage of the earnings they bring you, they generally more than pay for themselves as they’ll negotiate better rates than you might have done yourself.

I’m not here to tell you the price of everything, as that would be a long and ridiculous exercise (and to be frank, I don’t know the price of absolutely everything either), and organisations like the Association of Illustrators have excellent resources on pricing structures for various things, but it should be known that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to illustration.

Here’s a rough stab at the main points to think about:

Licensing is important

When you design an image, you can charge for the time involved in creating it, but you can also charge for the various uses the client has in mind for it. This is important information to find out, as the more uses the client has, the more you need to adjust your quote. Things to ask include where the work will be used. One country? Two? Worldwide? How long will it be used for – do they want it for six months or forevermore? What will it be used for? Print, television, advertising? Every application carries a price. Think of it this way; if you create a character illustration for a customer and they pay you £1000, then go and use it on a poster, you’d probably be happy enough right? But what happens if that client then takes the same character and makes it their company mascot, selling plush toys, tshirts, posters and whatever else, and they make tens of thousands from it in the process? Still happy? Take the time to learn the value of licensing images and you’ll gain your worth, or as near as dammit. Some clients will flat out refuse to pay for licensing, only bringing you in as ‘work-for-hire’, meaning they own anything you produce. If this scenario comes to you, you have to decide if you’re comfortable with that, or whether you want to walk away.

Hourly? Daily? Fixed fee?

Personally, I don’t have an hourly rate. Some clients have tried to give me one by dividing my eight-hour-day and coming up with one, but that doesn’t mean I’ll abide by it. Here’s why: some clients think they know how long something should take. We’ve all had it; the client emails and tells you that the revision is easy and will only take you ten minutes. Will it? Maybe it will, but then again, maybe it won’t, and you can be damn sure that if the client starts dictating how long something takes you in minutes, they won’t want to pay for it by the hour. Also, what happens if you’re a quick worker? Does that mean that your worth on the job is less than someone else’s, simply because they take longer to do the same thing? For me, and at the risk of being melodramatic again, hourly rates are a confusing and soul destroying hell-hole we should all run screaming from.

Daily rates are better, but make sure you’re realistic about what that rate is. I’ve known some people to go freelance and set a rate by dividing what they’d like to make in a year by 365. Firstly, you won’t work every day. In fact, it’s possible you won’t charge out half those days, so bear that in mind when setting a rate. Not only do you have to account for time spent working, but you also have to account for time not spent working directly. Administration, hunting for more work, emails, promotion all take up time. Of course, this doesn’t mean to say you can aim to work one day a week and charge a fortune for it. It’s a tricky thing to balance and if you’re asking clients to be fair by you, you need to be fair by the clients too. Ask friends what they charge – you’ll be amazed at how candid some people are about it amongst friends. You’ll soon start to see a pattern emerge, and that’s generally a fair rate.

Fixed fee is also good, but you need to treat it carefully. Don’t be pressured into accepting one too lightly. You need to figure out how many days you think it’ll take to complete the project and see if this fits inline with your daily rate. If it does, fantastic, but be mindful to let the client know how many days they’re paying for and that any additional work will incur further charges. This should all be in your contract of works, but that’s another issue and a whole other article.

Exceptions

You’ll find certain types of work don’t leave a lot of room for negotiation. For example, editorial work is fairly flat-fee based, and while there can be a little wiggle room, most of the time you pretty much take what you’re offered, as magazines have budgets they need to stick to based on their circulation and their own production budgets. Publishing budgets work in a similar fashion. In both cases however, it’s often wise to check whether the rights for the work extend into use in other imprints or territories as you really should look to retain those rights in case you can sell on the artwork elsewhere later on down the line. Pitch fees are similar in that a client is paying you to help them try to win work, so there’s not a lot of room for negotiation.

I do wonder if there’s anything we can do longer term though. Maybe colleges and universities should be teaching more about the business side of the industry to their students so more are coming out better prepared for the financial side of things as it can often be more stress-inducing than the work itself. If you’re a student, why not ask your lecturing staff if they’ll seek out a working illustrator in your area to come in and discuss the realities of working life with your intake, maybe it will be an eye-opener, and maybe, long term it will mean graduates entering the industry and making better wages from the outset, helping to keep a good standard across the board for us all.

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I was invited down to SAS London the other week to give a short talk to some of the assembled staff about my work, and how I’d gotten from A to B in my career over the last few years. As someone who spends the vast majority of my time working on my own, it’s always great to get the chance to get out and spend some time visiting great agencies, and the guys down there, especially very talented Design Director, Michael Dowell, made me feel incredibly welcome. As luck would have it, London is one of my favourite places so it was a great excuse to take a few days off and go for an overdue visit.

The first half hour was spent briefly chatting about my early influences and how I wasn’t aware of them until I’d been out on my own for a while, how I was drawn to type related work, and spoke briefly about a few recent projects from brief and concept, through to final delivery. Afterwards we had a quick Q&A before it was about time to knock it on the head and let folks get back to work. Or more likely, before they fell asleep.

Thanks once again to Michael Dowell for the invitation.

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This is a test letter I did as part of a recently completed project for Ballantines Scotch Whisky.

The idea was to create a letter that told the story of it’s flavour; in this case, vanilla. The project moved ahead and took up a fair bit of time towards the end of last year, and I’ll be showing it as part of the main portfolio very soon.

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This is a new editorial piece I was asked to create for Germany’s Hohe Luft magazine. The feature was about egos and self importance, and ‘Ich’ means ‘Me’ in German, so I thought it might be quite apt to draw the word as a big neon sign.

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Continuing a great ongoing relationship with Future Publishing’s top digital design magazine (see more examples in the editorial part of the site), Art Director Mike Brennan asked me to create an illustration for a feature on User Experience. I always think this basically comes down to getting inside people’s brains to make the experience work for them so I thought it’d be interesting to do a literal take on that. OK, it’s a bit of a stylised brain, but it’s a brain nonetheless.

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One of the problems with working from home is that you often feel like you never really ‘go to work’. Either that or you never feel like you leave.

Recently, I started to feel like I needed to organise my workspace more efficiently and wanted to create an office that I’d feel comfortable spending a large proportion of my time working in. The only choice for me was to visit Vitsoe as I’ve always coveted the Dieter Rams designed ’606 Universal Shelving System’. It really is a simple, hassle free solution to organising all my odds and ends, and the good thing about it is I’ll be able to add to it as the years and my needs change, as the system is the same as it was in 1960 when it was designed. Perfect and worth buying just for the ingenious spirit levels! Artwork by Von and Craig Ward.

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The BBC’s science based Focus magazine commissioned me to create some custom typography for the ‘Breakthroughs of 2013′ issue. Printed using four colour litho with additional metallic gold and silver spot colours.

Art direction by Sam Freeman.

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I just finished a little type piece for Delta Airlines in-flight magazine. An exercise in expressive type, I was asked to illustrate some interesting words.

Unfortunately my first take on ‘Sexting’ was rejected as being a bit too risqué; maybe heavily salivated tongues licking each other are too much to view when eating your in-flight meal.

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Wired magazine has used Muirside as it’s headline font throughout it’s new special edition ‘The Wired World in 2013′.

The mag looks amazing with a whole host of creatives including studio friend Neil Stevens commissioned to illustrate each section, tied together by Muirside as the main display font choice.

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Speaking of Jamie from Magpie Studio (see the previous article), he let me know they’d just used Muirside in a campaign for National Prison Radio.

Here’s a few pics of the work – very nice indeed. I’m loving the clever graffiti styled illustrations.

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Jamie from the brilliant Magpie Studio asked me if I’d design a ‘JR’ monogram tattoo for him, and he just sent me a pic of how the inked version is looking.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but monograms are pretty much my favourite thing in the world so this was a lot of fun to do.

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Mike over at Art & Graft recently asked me if I’d create a poster for them to help commemorate their 2nd birthday, and I was only too happy to oblige.

More over at Art & Graft.

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The latest book in the popular Los Logos series from Gestalten will be out in mid-September and features a selection of my logo work.

This series has traditionally been an invaluable resource to pretty much every designer I know and it was a pleasure to be involved. If it’s half as good as all the others, it’ll be great.

See the book here.

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My mate Ali from the great Up Up Design in Glasgow asked me to draw some custom lettering for his new guitar using his grandparents names. It was a nice thing to do and the end result looks great applied to what I’m informed by people who know these things, is a rather good instrument.

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I’d love to take the credit for it but unfortunately I can’t. I enlisted the help of two of the best in the business to help me get this site up and running and the dream team of Studio Mister and Mayfield stepped up to design and build it respectively. Seriously, if you’re looking for some beautiful online work, you really can’t do much better than these two.

Design: Studio Mister

Development: Mayfield

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I really don’t mind doing them at all – in fact I’m actually very grateful when someone asks me for my thoughts on something. It’s a bit of a compliment that someone out there thinks my opinion is worth a damn – and the publicity never hurts either.

However, they do serve as a reminder to me that I should’ve listened a bit more at school. Where is it appropriate to use semi-colons? How many times can I get away with using the same word in a paragraph? Why are my fingers so clearly dyslexic? That sort of thing.

They are a great way of forcing your thoughts onto paper though. If no one ever asks you about your opinion on what design trends are this year (and do I care?), or whether you think clients are receptive to startups, would you ever really sit down and formulate your definitive opinion on the matter? Or would you merrily go along and just get on with work? I find they are a good way to focus on where I see my own business going; a way to break everything down in my head and channel all the random crap into some sort of plan for the future.

Just don’t tell the grammar police.

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However, pitches aside, the thing that’s been concerning me more and more lately, is the increase in people not only asking for free work, but trying to convince us that they’re actually doing us a favour. Seriously, I get at least half a dozen emails a week from companies asking me to spend time and effort on the basis that it will be a great opportunity for me to bolster my folio. Really? Sorry but if I want to bolster my portfolio, I’ll do some personal work. It’ll be completely driven by me with no input from anyone and will be my vision – not theirs.

Then follows the promise of exposure. Why didn’t I think of it before? I’ll do some free work for a small startup company, then more small startup companies will see it. They’ll then ask for the same thing and at some point it’ll all pay off because eventually, somewhere down the line, one of them might actually pay me half what the original fee was worth. It’s foolproof.

Anyway, how many companies have you seen telling anyone who’ll listen that you did the work for them? If you want exposure, ahem… expose yourself.

During one masochistic moment a few years back, I saw the ‘opportunity’ to design a new, exciting magazine on a creative community site. I emailed them to ask for more details and find out what budget was attached so I could make an informed decision on whether to apply or not. The reply I got back was that there would be no financial rewards but it was an “exciting opportunity to see your creative work in print”. They wanted concepts, research, art direction, layouts, style sheets, production and artwork for free, but wait, I’d get to see it when it came back from the printers! Hold on, isn’t seeing my work in print just the end product of me doing my job? Well, sometimes it’s screen based but you get the gist. It’s not a perk, it’s part of the process.

Out of respect for the site that hosted the project I won’t mention any names, there needs to be greater care in what is allowed to be placed under the banner of an opportunity.

The sooner creatives realise that doing these projects just proliferates the notion that spec work is acceptable, the better. Between spec work and crowdsourcing (don’t get me started on that), we’re digging our own graves. Time to throw away the shovels.

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