Writing Illustration Quotes
Image by Scott Graham
We’ve covered a decent amount about the importance of understanding contracts and how to write your own, but contracts aren't the only kind of document that you’ll need as an illustrator. If anything the one you’ll be using even more than contracts is a quote. The person enquiring about working with you is unlikely the same person in charge of the money. Superiors have given them budgets and they want to get good quality work that fits that budget. Potential clients will often ask you for a quote to determine this. This is the beginning of the negotiation phase, I wouldn’t recommend just throwing out a random number in an email. Writing out a proper quote gives you time to calculate the fees, a place to break it down for the client, and a paper trail for your negotiations. You might even have to write more than one quote for a project if the client changes the amount of work or licencing they want from you. The quote is a precontract document and this shows in its formatting too.
The Format
Now you want to start my titling the page as “Quote”. The formatting is so similar to a contract we want to make clear what this document is. Now you put in your contact information. Your full name, address, email, phone number etc. Is this starting to sound familiar yet? The next section has the client's information, name, position, company, address, email and phone number. Then we want to put the date we are writing this quote.
The next section is where we write down all of the information about the project. A schedule of the project, when do they want sketches and the final? What the client wants us to draw, how many images, their size, if they're in colour. How the images are being used. Is it for a printed magazine, a book, or a website? If it is being printed how many copies? How long does the client want to use the image? Where in the world they’re using the image? All the information that you need to effectively price your work. Then we break down the fees for them. How much for one image, or how much for one print run? And then the total.
Finally, at the bottom of the document, we have our terms and conditions. These are the same terms and conditions that you want to put on your contract. This part is more of just a preview for the client to let them see what the final terms and conditions might look like. We are still in the negotiation stage so, they might even bring up something they want to add or change now. These terms and conditions also don’t have to be as big as on the formal contract. They’re more like a taster and not the full focus of this document. What’s important here is the pricing breakdown.
As you’ve probably figured out the formatting is very similar to that of a formal contract. That's why it is so important to title this document. Below you can find an example of what this finished document will look like.
