PS: Regarding the Graphic Artists Guild. It is emerging as the best business organization going that has a chance of standing behind you when you are negotiating the jobs that make your living. So far it is the only organization with the clout to affect legislation, as has the American Society of Media Photographers. Director, Paul Basista, is practically a fanatic for artists rights. Join it if and WHEN you can afford it. Can you afford not to? The art world makes decision according to past precedent. Every deal you make affect everybody else to some degree. Think. Organize. In any case, subscribe by email to the GAG Contract Monitor. It's free and it's by email. It's the best vehicle for business information going around. For instance, I happened to get one of the contracts they reviewed as "nasty" a couple of months after reading about it in the Monitor. I negotiated a better deal on reuse rights with this notorious client: they paid me double the original price in their budget for buying all rights. They were nice to deal with and we did not have to get adversarial in negotiating these changes. You don't have to be a member of the GAG. The GAG will still answer your questions about contracts and regularly publish the contracts that artists send them with reviews and analysis. See: www.gag.org ------------------------ Closing Remarks 1999 Illustration Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico October 25, 1999 By Maria Piscopo "You are NOT alone. So, do not be alone. Today, we learned how to educate ourselves and to promote ourselves. Today, we learned to re-invent ourselves. We are not just illustrators. We are Creative Professionals and this means several things. 1) Creative professional is not an oxymoron 2) With this new identity we have taken back the business leverage Milton Glaser referred to in his video address. 3) We will commit to educate our clients in our professional business practices. 4) We have learned this education is best done before our next job with the client and after the job, not during the job. No one is listening at that time. 5) To be a creative professional, we will join our professional association TODAY and we will involve ourselves. We are not alone." Paul Mirocha -- _____________________ Paul Mirocha Design 425 East 17th Street Tucson, Arizona 85701 Phone/Fax: 520/623-1515 _____________________ http://www.CoArt.com/mirocha/ "Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us." -- Henri Matisse