Session One: Illustration & Lettering: The Business Stuff

In this 3 hour session which is an expansion on Jessica’s popular Dark Art of Pricing workshop, we’ll cover a ton of information on how to manage client relationships, prepare a Scope of Work and contract, price a variety of projects, and discuss the process for pitching books and negotiating royalty based contracts. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of working with agents and artist reps, the importance of delegation for growing your business, and even cover equity-based compensation as a freelancer. 

This session is for creatives at any professional level looking to tighten up their business strategies, feel confident asking for higher fees, and gain a better understanding of the complexities of running a creative small business. On top of knowledge shared in the session, students will also walk away with an SOW and contract template for future use and a handy PDF for referencing pricing in the future. Plus this session will be recorded and live to re-watch for two weeks after the workshop!

What You’ll Learn: 

• Understanding your creative process for better time management and scheduling

• Drafting a scope of work to share with prospective clients

• Creating your own contract for use on projects

• Making changes to existing contracts for better terms

• Navigating advances and royalty-based earnings

• The pros and cons of working with an agent or artist rep

• Building confidence in pricing your work to negotiate higher fees

• Tips for self-promotion and managing your online presence  

Session Two: Illustration & Lettering: Improving Your Process

In this 3-hour session, Jessica will walk through her process for different kinds of projects—commercial lettering and illustration, children’s books, and logotype work—from the brainstorming and concept stage to sketches, comps, and final art. We’ll walk through the development process from Round 1 through finished art for logo projects and do a live critique of an existing mark to show the thinking and strategy behind logo refresh work, discussing ways to perfect your logos or letterform-based work. 

This session will include live demos at each stage of the development process including best practices for vector refinement and drafting to create perfect curves and easily editable files. Students can choose to work alongside Jessica during the brainstorming and sketching phases to develop their own lettering artwork. Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, and the font design software Glyphs will be used for demonstrations. Students will walk away with a better understanding of how to use each of these softwares for illustration and lettering and with plenty of tips and tricks for maximizing their own creative process. Plus this session will be recorded and live to re-watch for two weeks after the workshop!

What You’ll Learn: 

• How to begin ideating to generate good concepts

• From the “bones” to the “clothes”: inventing letterforms

• How to spot common mistakes in letterform drafting 

• Establishing typographic hierarchy to improve legibility

• Adding flourishes and swashes to lettering work

• Best practices for vector drafting

• Knowing when to stop: establishing break points in your process to limit overworking

• How to stay motivated and push through creative blocks