Has this ever happened to you?

[jimkaplanart]

Ok, I am wondering if this has ever happened to any of you?
Have you ever had a promoter contact you asking you if you would like to do a poster for an arena show. They weren't really willing to pay you a lot, but you did it anyway because it was a cool event and you had a cool idea for the poster.
You spend a lot of time on the poster to the point where you are making just a few bucks an hour. They love the poster.

Here is the puch line:
It turns out they only wanted to get them printed up as gifts to their sponsors and VIPs. It won't be used for advertising. So basically you gave away your time for peanuts so that a promoter in a far away place can give gifts to it's important people. They didn't tell you that, and you assumed that they wanted to use it for actual promotion of the show, because they said that the posters were not going to be sold as merch. What else could they use them for? I never considered they would just be giving them away.

Boy next time, that is going to be a question I ask before I do something like this again.

My point is, I like my work to have a use, such as helping a show sell tickets, or raise awareness for an event. Some fat cat hanging it on their wall is secondary.

I know I can only blame myself for assuming things.

[squeegeethree]

Your work may be in a better venue on some "fat cat's" walls then on some stoned kid's floor.

[vrooooom]

Especially if you remembered to put your contact info on it!

I read this article yesterday on pricing and discounts, and it's got a pretty good point. Work full price or work for free, but don't work cheap for some kind of fringe benefit/exposure/free t-shirts/ride to the mall.

Two Choices For Rates And Cheap Isn't One Of Them

[MrBlonde7]

Do you have a little sister named Jen Kaplan?

[Nicholas Wilson]

that totally sucks, don't ever work for them again and tell them we'll do it from now on.

[Unitus]

One of my friends does work for a venue like that. It's a big venue that has huge, arena sized acts come through. He makes posters and prints them basically as mementos for the venue, and gifts for the performers...

...but, he gets paid well for his time/energy.

[jimkaplanart]

Sometimes I think the way this gigposters thing works is not set up to benefit the graphic artist. It seems to be rare for promoters to pay a large sum for an artist to make a promotional poster for their event. A lot of times artists do the artwork for free, the posters are used to promote an event, and some extra posters are sold. So a lot of times the promoter gets the artwork for free, gets reimbursed for the printing after the sale of the remaining few, and the artist could get pocket change or nothing. And some promoters can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling tickets, and drinks. And the posters helped sell some of those tickets. I have never heard of any other industry doing things this way. If a grocery store needs a poster made, they have to pay a design firm to design it and print it. But because gig posters have kind of an exciting allure to them, most artists are expected to produce the artwork for free. Do I understand this correctly?
I might be mistaken, but I think even top artists like Emek are making their money from the sale of their posters to collectors. I could be mistaken, but I don't think many Emek posters now adays are getting taped to windows.

Why is it that people are willing to pay a guy to work on a car, but not design a poster? It just seems that not a lot of value is placed on our time.

Just curious. Please educate me (not too rough please)

[squeegeethree]

The reason it's the way it is is because there is always somebody who will do it for next to nothing. If there ever came a day when that part ended then you might make as much money as waiter or lawnmower.

[jimkaplanart]

I think they call this price fixing, but it would be funny if we all got together and said we will only make an illustrated poster for $xx per hour. Yea no one would make a poster for six months, but eventually they would need posters made. For some reason auto mechanics all make $70 to $90 bucks an hour. Why do they all charge around the same amount? The same reason most of us charge cheep amounts, because that is what we are willing to do the work for. But what happens when a poster designer has to pay to get his car worked on. How many hours do we have to work on posters to pay for 10 hours of auto repair?

[jimkaplanart]

"The reason it's the way it is is because there is always somebody who will do it for next to nothing."

Yea, like this concert club that is in my town. They opened up and needed stage hands and lighting technicians. This one guy in a band said he would work for $7 per hour, so that he could have his foot in the door and maybe have his band open up for national acts and that would be the road to stardom. Yea right. Well guess what, every stage hand and lighting guy makes $7 per hour because he set the wage.