illustration | Frank Duffy graphic designer & illustrator in South Wales

A Sad and Cautionary Tale of the Fabulous Logo that Never Was

by Frank | Jan 6, 2011 | branding, graphic design, illustration, thoughts

I’ve held back posting this story in the dim hope that the matter would be resolved. I’m one of those bouncy eternal-optimist types who believes that every story has a happy ending, etc etc. But it looks like I’m never going to get paid for this job, and as the client is apparently broke, I don’t have the heart to go down the legal route. And I’m so proud of this logo I can’t just leave it on the shelf, gathering dust. I want you to see it!

A woman called me up and asked me to meet her to discuss a possible branding job for a little coffee van she’d bought at great expense. Twas a cute little thing which she could drive around to festivals and markets and what-not, and instead of an urn and a large bucket of Nescafé, within the van was housed a proper Italian coffee maker. She was a dramatic type of person and loved burlesque and the circus, and wanted a fun, family-friendly logo that reflected all this. She’d asked a few designers and agencies to come up with ideas before choosing who to go with, as she didn’t want to get messed around (oh, the irony, huh?

I was confident I could give her a good idea, but didn’t want to waste too much time on something that I wasn’t going to get paid for (ha ha) so I sketched her the rough below and sent her a description of how the final would look in my head.

She loved it, it was exactly what she wanted, and so she commissioned me to go ahead with my idea. She had a lot of fantastic ideas about what she’d also want from me – business cards that would look like a Tarot card, a whole Moulin Rouge-themed coffee shop branding, a chain of coffee shops – and, if I’m honest, alarm bells started to go off. The people who get too far ahead of themselves and are not focused on the very next step they need to take are often the dreamers. It’s one thing to think about the big picture and have an aim, but you can often tell by the way someone talks how grounded their dreams are in reality.

Anyway, I re-drew and firmed up the pencil sketch to her requirements and started to create the illustrator document you see at the top of this blog which would form the outlines of the logo. About the time this stage was coming to completion (the lettering still needs a touch of work), I started to get signs from her that all was not going well financially. I’d invoiced her 50% of the total when the pencil sketch was approved and this was becoming late, despite her repeated assurances that she would pay me “tomorrow”. I felt sorry for her as she was obviously going through a rough time emotionally, but said to her I was concerned I wasn’t going to get paid at all, so invoiced the full amount, which she said she was fine with. I said I would complete the logo as soon as I’d been paid. That was in November 2009. In March 2010, with end of tax year in mind, I emailed her and said if she didn’t pay me by the end of the month I would write off the invoice as a bad debt. She begged for an extension and promised to pay me in July, the time of many outdoor festivals where her van could potentially earn her money. Suffice it to say I never heard from her again.

So here is the logo as imagine it would have looked. The van was painted crimson red, and we planned to have the hand-drawn lettering in gold. It’s a sad story as it’s probably my favourite of all the logos I’ve done, and I was looking forward to seeing it on the side of her little van. Such is life.

The lessons I learned from this experience are thus:

– I now ask for 30-50% up front from all new clients, depending on the size of the job. All of my regular clients get the usual 30 days’ credit. If someone is serious about me pouring my heart and soul into something for them, they won’t resent this.
– Proceed with caution when dealing with dreamers. If their heads are in the clouds, check their feet are on the ground, too.
– If clients start to dawdle and keep delaying the completion of the work, they may well be attempting to delay your invoice.

I’ve been too bloody nice about things in the past, and I suppose it’s a testament to luck that I’ve only been messed around two other times like this in the seven years I’ve been doing this. If I’d been a bit more business-like from the start at least I would have got paid for half of the job. It’s a difficult balance – you don’t want to be seen as too hard-nosed, but on the other hand clients have got to understand I’m not in this job for the benefit of my health, and that I expect them to take the effort I put into their work seriously.

I’d love to hear about how other designers have handled similar situations. Do you insist on money up front? Have you had lawyers draw up a contract for you, or have you had to use them to get money you’ve earned? Feedback welcome!

CIO Connect Magazine winter 2010 issue design

by Frank | Jan 4, 2011 | CIO Connect, graphic design, illustration, magazine design

I never get bored with designing CIO Connect magazine. I’ve been doing it since 2003, the year I went freelance, and every time I start a new one I try to improve on the issue before. There’s a real knack to magazine design, I find, and once you’ve got the hang of it it’s one of the most satisfying design jobs out there.

You’re creating something that has to have a coherent look and feel and, in this case, complement the branding of CIO Connect the organisation. But each article must stand out in its own right as a unit separate from the rest. It’s getting this balance right that’s the difficult, and fun part. My aims are to keep the magazine looking fresh, elegant and dynamic, and to have the design reflect both the tone of the text and the various photography and illustration we use.

I’m particularly proud of this issue. It’s my favourite so far. I don’t feel I can claim too much credit though – I find the photography of Martin Burton and the illustrations of Tony Sigley very inspiring – they (to me) make it obvious how the rest of the article should look.

One thing that I image is a headache for all art editors is getting a consistent quality of photography from all contributors. Unless your Vogue magazine or some such, it’s often logistically impossible, for budgetary or distance reasons or whatever, to get a good photographer to the subject, so we have to rely on photos supplied by the interviewee or their PR. Some PRs seem to understand that if they send an amazing photo through, their client is more likely to be given priority in a spread. Unfortunately, most have yet to grasp this sacred truth, so the majority of photos I’m sent are low-resolution atrocities taken by amateurs, or at best, wooden head and shoulders shots taken in front of one of those terrible backgrounds photographers usually reserve for school photos. Puh-leeeze! I’ve been sent a passport photo in the past. No word of a lie. Anyway, for one particular spread we didn’t have many decent photos, so I did an illustration, and used the photos small. I’ve done illustrations for CIO Connect before, but only smooth glassy “brand” type ones of the marbles they have in their logo. This was my first splotchy ink-and-brush affair for them, on the subject of negotiation, and I’m rather happy with it. By the way, you can click on any of the images to see a bigger version.

Matador from Pink Narcissus still for Amelia’s Magazine

by Frank | Dec 9, 2010 | illustration

Superlative online fashion publication Amelia’s Magazine put out a twitter call for illustrations for a review of cult 70s homoerotic film Pink Narcissus and I thought it would be fun to have a go. I was asked to illustrate a still from the matador scene, where our devastatingly beautiful hero /muse “bullfights” with a handsome young man on a large motorcycle. As you do.

The film itself is a masterpiece of kitsch, shot on 8mm film, opulent saturated colours burning into the retina. It was created over seven years in a New York apartment, released without the permission of its (long-time anonymous) creator James Bidgood, and has been a highly-influential underground classic. In fact, after watching the bits available on YouTube I noticed that my music-video-making friends Casey Raymond and Ewan Jones Morris referenced some of that saturation and stop-motion animation creatures from it in their excellent video for Cate Le Bon’s single “Hollow Trees House Hounds”. The little thieves.

Anyhow, here’s my take on the still. The image was composed and sketched out in pencil, solidified with ink and brush, scanned into Photoshop where cardboard and fabric textures were added along with the intense colours. My aim was to retain the kitsch and the camp of the original, along with the colour, without losing the erotic power and active dynamism of our matador – although objectified, he is no passive wallflower. Click on the image for a bigger, more detailed look.

Robin

by Frank | Dec 5, 2010 | illustration

Click on the image for a close-up. Very proud of this little fella.

As featured on…

by Frank | Dec 4, 2010 | illustration

…Illustrators Wales, a website which showcases and promotes Welsh illustration. Yay!

Dwdl

by Frank | Dec 2, 2010 | doodles, illustration

Hello there, lovely people. Just a quick post to show you this. I doodle a lot, and sometimes I love a doodle so much I have to keep a record of it. Mr Lion here was drawn in Chapter, where I drag up some of the most interesting articles from my subconscious. In case you are wondering about the speech bubble, he is singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to a friend of mine.