Recently Giuseppe Castellano, art director at Penguin Random House, tweeted that the #1 issue he has with illustrators is lateness.
Today I was on the phone with a different art director, and he said the exact same thing.
We love to moan about how no one respects artists these days, how it's so hard to make a living as a creative, how everyone wants artwork for free, the market is so oversaturated with talent, blah blah blah. And then to turn in late work to big-time paying clients? Illustrators: what are you thinking???
It boggles the mind!
I never turn in work late, that's just rude and I don't want to upset people who might potentially give me more work! If the deadline is too short, I tell people and try and work something out, and if unforeseen problems occur I contact them to explain (before the deadline). And the small independent clients who want a portrait or something else that isn't urgent for a cheap price understand that for the cheapness, they'll get it when I can fit it in around bigger clients that I don't want to annoy. Everything has to be a bit of give-and-take. Then again, I never handed in an assignment late either, so it's probably inbuilt work ethic from having a teacher for a mother. Certainly lots of students at uni were chronically late with handing stuff in.
ReplyDelete...In fact, I could turn this all around, and say that the number one problem I have with clients is lateness. This is why those small people are handy, they give me work to do while I'm waiting three weeks for the situation to change from 'we have work for you, we'll send it through tomorrow' to 'here is what you have to do'. =P