Category Archives: Creative Products & Services

Planning your creative direction and protecting your intellectual property

Artist Goals 2015 – Be More Productive In Producing Your Art

Time is money

Time is money for business and your art business is no different

One of your goals this year (and for every year as well) should be to come up with ideas and make changes that will help you become more productive and efficient. You have heard the old saying “Time is money”, this applies to your art business as well. You may not think of creating your art as “production” or your finished art being a “product” but they are! Whether you create original pieces, limited editions or mass produce your art you need to be concerned about being productive and efficient in your art business.

Successful businesspeople know that any business or organization can reduce its costs without sacrificing quality or hampering the amount of work done (only to a point!). This goes for your art business as well. These costs may take the form of labor hours, materials used or technologies employed. There are probably some areas of your art business where you can reduce costs – what can you can come up with?

Being productive and efficient means:

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Artists – Grow Your Brand & Sales With Great Packaging

Plain packaging can protect your art during shipping but it doesn't say much about your brand.

Plain packaging protects your art for shipping but it doesn’t say much about your brand

Most every product and many services are presented to the buyer with some form of packaging – this packaging could be very elaborate or as minimal as a tag.  Manufacturers of consumer packaged goods (CPG’s) have known for years that a effective package may mean the difference between making a sale or losing it to their competitors as well as the price(profit) they receive from the sale.  Selling art is no different and you can benefit from effective packaging.

Some time ago I was talking to a successful ceramic artist about how he packaged and delivered his work to his customers. Typically his works were quite large, expensive and sold to upscale / well to-do customers.

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Making a Profit From Editions, Prints and Multiple Copies

Break Even Analysis Worksheet

Use this worksheet to help you determine your break even level of sales

One business model for your art business could be producing and selling a series of prints, photographs, sculptures or multiple copies of any artwork.  The advantage of this model is that it allows you to leverage the work or designs you have created and achieve some level of efficiency and predictability in producing the copies.  An edition can be either limited or unlimited in the number of pieces produced.  Before you embark on producing and selling multiple copies or prints, it is a good idea to know what your costs will be and how you should price the works so that you will make a profit.

 

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Intellectual Property For Artists And Creative Entrepreneurs: Creative Commons

Image of scribe copying a manuscript

Creative Commons Licenses give you flexibility in choosing how you want your works to be shared, modified or remixed, and the type of use allowed.

The Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2001 as a way to help you modify the terms of your copyright with a global license. The organization is known for being a leading player in what has become to be known as the “copyleft” movement.  This movement seeks to provide alternatives to the “all rights reserved” copyright license by adding the ability to easily present a “some rights reserved” type of license.  You keep your copyright but can change the rights you grant from none to all, commercial or non commercial, allow derivative works or not and set a level of attribution.

Generally your work is protected by copyright from the time it is created in a fixed form and becomes the property of the author who created the work. A copyright protects works of authorship, such as writings, music, and works of art that have been tangibly expressed. More than likely your works are already protected by copyright laws.

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