Theory Lecture by Lee Corner & Dr Graham Lister. Commercial practice.

Today's lecture on contemporary art and illustration theory given by Lee corner was an overview of how to kickstart yourself as a freelance artist or illustrator. A very useful website to referred to here would be business.totes plus.com.

The lecture covered the idea of how to create costings, with the constant proviso that one should never forget the cost of doing nothing. It costs money in order to make work too. It costs money in order to keep the heating and lighting and food and general upkeep of the studio. Cost is always present.

With regards to pricing however, this can be based on
a) reputation, status, and experience
b) location
c) what the market will pay for your work.
d) and most of all the cost it takes to make, including your wage and profit that needs to be set aside to continue to have new ideas and to work generally.

Graduate aspirations of earning £24,000 per year would require a day rate of approximately £165-£200 per day, and that is every working day which from my calculation is approximately 220 working days per year.

• Guidance for the day rates appear on the artists news network (a-n.com) and it is a fantastic site which is a good source of material.
• Another good source of information is Sarah fell wall and her website "my cake.com"
• It is worth considering the ideas of pricing and perceived value, versus pricing and goals. Another interesting source of information is cockpit arts. Their website helps to articulate some of these points.
• Further information can be found on www.arts.AC.UK. This is the University of arts website.

Contracts.
For a contract to be made there are four elements that are required. These are

1. an offer, 
2. consideration, 
3. acceptance and 
4. intention.

The offer is the proposal of work or something of exchange.
Consideration is the term given for the price, that is something in return for the work conducted.
Acceptance is simply an agreement to proceed on the basis of what has been discussed within the offer and the consideration.
And finally the intention is reference to an expectation for the above to be legally binding.

Therefore a contract can be made which is not in writing and is verbal, providing it meets all of the above criteria.
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Generally;
It is worthwhile to register yourself as a freelancer as soon as possible, as a sole trader.

Intellectual property.
The following information was provided by the intellectual property lawyer Keith Arrowsmith, entitled IP and exploitation of assets.

IP, intellectual property is defined as creations of the mind. (See creative Commons license for example)

There are generally three types of protection of IP. That is, copyright, patents, and trademarks.

Some time ago, our tutor, Lee Corner, wrote the book which is now entitled "Super-Highway Robbery"; - an introduction to copyright law for freelance journalists and photographers.
This was published by the National union of journalists.
Within the book, it outlines how copyright is something that inherently exists. Everyone just has this right, unless you have specifically given up your rights, for example; if you are an employee of a company, or if you are a student of an institution.
In those cases it is the employer who owns your work.

There is also a different type of copyright which can be applied to Design Rights. This refers to the shape of a product, if it is instantly recognisable as a particular brand.

Intellectual property rights.

• The idea is not copyrightable; it is the manifestation of that idea which is given copyright. 
• There is no test for quality in copyright, so no matter how bad something might actually be, if there is a manifestation of it, a drawing or recording or otherwise it is still subject to copyright.

There is no need to register copyrights, but there are copyright collection societies. For example the design and copyrights society (DACS) and also the performing rights Society (PRS).

These societies are used to redistribute the royalty value that a work might have, when it is used by third-party. For example the painting by Edvard Munch "The Scream" is used in various manifestations in magazines, mugs, T-shirts and all manner of different representations and it is the Digital and Copyrights Society (DACS) that redistributes the royalties to the Munch family and the Munch foundation.

The most important lesson to learn from copyrights is;
never
 never
   never  assign your own copyright, but instead license the ability to use an image to somebody instead.
If you do this, remember to set terms such as the duration, the territory, the amount, and the likely audience.

Keith Arrowsmith advocates the idea of "the post-it trick". This is where you create a copy of your idea onto paper and post it within a sealed registered letter to yourself. Store the letter un-opened in perpetuity just in case somebody challenges your copyright and your idea!

The 7% rule is an urban myth.
This is where in the past people have copied up to 7% of the drawing and stated that if it is below 7% copyright is 'not applicable'. This is not true. It is the court that decides how much of an image or works has been copied and whether copyright infringement has taken place.

Moral rights.
These refer to paternity, integrity, and privacy.

And finally we covered the concept of regularly carrying out an Intellectual Property Audit.

To complete the audit one need to identify;

•  existing intellectual property,
•  make intellectual property part of the creative process. 
• Consider registering the intellectual property by the post it trick? 
• Consider abandoning particular types of intellectual property?
• And the other question one always has to ask is are you using other people's intellectual property, and if so do you have their approval to do so and you are not infringing copyright?