The Calligrapher's Business Handbook: Pricing & Policies for Lettering Artists

By Molly Suber Thorpe

The Calligrapher’s Business Handbook is a guide to best business practices and pricing strategies for calligraphers and lettering artists. Whether you’re starting out in creative freelancing, transitioning from a different profession, or running a lettering business that just needs a boost, you will welcome the invaluable id

• Language: English
• Publisher: Calligrafile Press
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9780692879283

Molly Suber Thorpe

MOLLY SUBER THORPE is a hand lettering artist whose focus is on branding and editorial calligraphy work. She is credited as a driving force behind the modern calligraphy movement, being among the first artists to use the whimsical, unorthodox pointed pen styles and bold color palettes so popular today. Clients hire Molly for a variety of projects, including hand-lettered logos, envelope calligraphy, custom stationery, and even tattoos. Modern Calligraphy: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started in Script Calligraphy (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013), has been translated into Chinese and Spanish, and was named one of 2013’s “Favorite Craft Books” by Amazon. Molly's second book, The Calligrapher’s Business Handbook: Pricing and Policies for Lettering Artists (Calligrafile Press, 2017), guides hand letterers to develop a thriving freelance career, and has been an Amazon Bestseller in the Calligraphy and Business of Art categories. Molly’s extensive client list includes Google Arts & Culture, Martha Stewart Weddings, Michael Kors, Fendi, AARP, J. Jill, and Victorio & Lucchino. Her work and words have appeared in dozens of publications, including UPPERCASE, Martha Stewart Living, The Wall Street Journal, LA Times, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Bound & Lettered, Country Living, Style Me Pretty, Design*Sponge, and Snippet & Ink. Molly also loves to teach. In addition to conducting in-person calligraphy workshops in the United States and Europe, Molly is a Top Teacher on the Skillshare.com platform, with over half a million minutes of watch time since her first Skillshare class launched in 2013. In 2016, Molly founded Calligrafile.com, a curated database of resource links and products for calligraphers, hand lettering artists, type enthusiasts, and creative freelancers. It is the largest site of its kind, with over two dozen contributing artists, and thousands of participants from around the world.

Book preview

Cover-eBook-front-ePub.jpg

First edition. Published 2017.

Text, photography, and graphics © 2017 Molly Suber Thorpe

Cover & layout design © 2017 Molly Suber Thorpe

Molly Suber Thorpe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof (including the photography and graphics) may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Learn more about Molly at plurabellestudio.com.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Calligraphy & Commerce

Calligraphy’s Role in Design

My Story: From Design Student to Creative Entrepreneur

Starting A Freelance Lettering Career

Naming Your Business

Branding Your Business

Logo Design

Color Palette

Complementary Typeface

Registering Your Business

Marketing Your Business

Buy A Custom Domain Name

Portfolio Website

Photographing Your Work

Physical Portfolio

Business Email Account

Business Cards

Social Media

Great Communication Wins Over Clients

All Beauty All The Time

Advertising Your Business

Paid Vendor Guide Membership

Paid Online Advertising

Guest Blogging and Social Media Takeovers

Business Networking

Make Local Friends

Guild Membership

The Ebb & Flow

Further Education: Lettering Arts & Graphic Design

Setting Prices

Set An Income Goal

Flat vs. Hourly Rates

Actual Pricing for Non-Commercial Lettering & Calligraphy Services

Setting Your Own Flat Rates

Case Study: Letters By Poppy

Price Quotes

My Own Fees

Add-on Fees

Minimum Order Fee

Setup Fee

Rush Fee

Specialty Supply Fee

Coordination Fee

Cancellation Fee (a.k.a. Kill Fee)

Flat Rates That Turn into Hourly Rates

Raising Your Established Rates

Don’t Work for Free, and Don’t Be Swayed by Hagglers

Pushing Back

The Side Effect of Making It Look Easy

The Destined Use Conundrum

Wise Words

Commercial Design: Copyright & Licensing

Commercial Lettering & Calligraphy

Work for Hire

Copyright Law Outside the United States

Licensing A Copyright

Exclusive v. Nonexclusive Rights

Pricing Licensing Rights

Actual Pricing for Commercial Hand Lettering Services

Policies & Best Practices for Lettering Entrepreneurs

Confidence Is Contagious

Sample Company Policies for Non-Commercial Lettering & Calligraphy Services

Contracts & Invoices

Components of An Invoice

Components of A Contract

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Bibliography

Chapter One:

Calligraphy & Commerce

During my career as a professional calligrapher and freelance graphic designer, I have taught calligraphy to hundreds of students and worked with countless peers in the lettering arts industry. There is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the business of calligraphy and hand lettering and, over the years, I’ve heard the same questions and run into the same misconceptions time and again. My goal in writing this book is to provide answers to these questions and to clarify misconceptions about the business side of hand lettering by creating a guide to the best practices and pricing strategies of successful, professional lettering artists. Common questions include:

What prices do professional calligraphers charge for their services?

When should I charge a flat rate and when should I charge by the hour?

I’ve heard I should charge a lot more to design a logo than to design something for an individual to use personally, but why?

What is the protocol when a company wants to buy the copyright to my work? (Wait, do I even own the copyright to my work if a client hired me to make it?)

What are exclusive rights? How are nonexclusive rights different?

What should a fair project contract include?

When, if ever, should I agree to do work for free or for considerably less than my customary rates?

What are the best ways to advertise on a budget, especially when I’m just starting out as a freelancer?

Do I need to go to art or design school to become a successful, in-demand lettering artist?

Within these pages you will find detailed answers to these and many other questions that you won’t find elsewhere, specifically targeted to freelance lettering artists.

Study, dedicated practice, and refined skill are simply not enough to succeed as a competitive freelance lettering artist in today’s market. I give you actual, recommended rates for the most common lettering projects, help you lay the groundwork for a successful freelance company, outline the best practices and policies for working with clients, give tips for contract negotiations, and share my own learning experiences – good and bad – as a professional, freelance calligrapher. In short, I will help you launch and grow your lettering or calligraphy career, whether you’re a beginner straight out of school or transitioning from a different profession, or you already have a business that needs a boost.

The desire among the hand lettering community for professional standards and unified best practices is growing as fast as the community itself, and a unified artist community benefits all of us who work within it. Thus, my second goal for this book is to inspire others in our field to speak transparently about how we price our work and establish our business practices, in the hope that we can encourage one another to set fair, competitive rates that fairly align with our talents. I do not suggest that we become open books about everything we do – your secret recipe for the best lilac ink or the tools you use to create your signature style are your own trade secrets and are what make your work unique. But when it comes to the business side of our work, including our rates and policies, I cannot think of a single good reason why sharing the basic principles that make us successful entrepreneurs will diminish us professionally. In fact, I can only see that it will strengthen a respect for our entire profession, as well as the reputations and sense of fulfillment of the individual artists within it.

Calligraphy’s Role in Design

Since the time letters were first styled into artwork, signage, and advertisements, lettering and commerce have been inextricably linked. Indeed, hand lettering has existed as an occupation for millennia, but in recent years the field has witnessed an unprecedented rate of growth. Calligraphers played a vital role in design and communication before computers and the advent of digital type, before printed layouts were mocked up with X-acto® blades, before Shakespeare’s creatively-lettered playbills dotted the streets of London, before Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized the transmission of the written word, before monks slaved over the gold-encrusted letterforms of illuminated manuscripts, before Chinese scrolls were adorned with dynamic glyphs representing movement as much as words. Even after the invention of the printing press, hand lettering was still the only way to create typography that could not be rendered from wood blocks and moveable metal type. Although we are now well into the digital era and those with access to the internet have literally tens of thousands of fonts at their fingertips, hand lettering and calligraphy are more fashionable and sought-after than they have been since the pre-computer era. Its role and significance may have changed dramatically with time, but hand-crafted typography remains a crucial design component, and, in turn, an integral feature in creative commerce as