Art Licensing : Beyond the Basics

In this follow up to my original blog post on Art Licensing I will be delving a bit deeper and addressing topics including preparing your portfolio, different product categories, finding clients, and pitching. All of these will give you further knowledge into the world of Art Licensing and help prepare you for sending your first pitches or submissions!

Portfolio Preparation

A couple of key questions to ask yourself are, ‘What should I have in my portfolio?’ and also ‘What format should my portfolio take?’ These are relevant questions and will help you better prepare for pitching. The first thing to emphasise is quality over quantity - you do not need hundreds of patterns or collections to start pitching. What is more important is a small body of cohesive work of high quality. Perhaps a collection of illustrations and surface patterns which convey your best qualities as a designer - from colour choices through to themes you are most comfortable working with.

The best way to prepare your portfolio is to first think about different product categories you will be aiming to license your work in. For example, if you are interested in licensing artwork to a puzzle company or greetings card company, then your focus should be on illustration, with less emphasis on surface patterns, similarly if you would like to work with a fabric company, then a couple of pattern collections would be more well received. Individual patterns work well for stationery but when creating your portfolio consider how the client can visualise your designs working together. Is there a colour palette that ties your work together for example?

Product Categories for Art Licensing

Here is a list of product categories you can license your work in. Not all will be suitable for your artwork, so to make sure you are not wasting your time or the clients, make sure the work in your portfolio reflects the category you are pitching for.

Toys and Games - eg Puzzles.

Stationery - planners, journals, notebooks.

Gifting - Gift bags, wrapping paper.

Greetings Cards.

Fashion and Apparel - kidswear, menswear, womenswear, swimwear, lingerie, pyjamas, accessories (bags, umbrellas, hats).

Tech - mobile phone cases, kindle cases, laptop skins.

Home Decor - wallpaper, cushions, bedding, rugs, throws.

Art Prints.

Craft Kits/Hobbies - Needlepoint, paint by numbers kits.

There are of course further categories to consider - nothing is impossible with surface design! I’ve even licensed some patterns for an Apple Arcade game. However these are the key ones above to consider and to help you start tailoring your portfolio so you can pitch with confidence to the relevant company.

What to Include in your Art Licensing Portfolio?

Ultimately you want to be including work that is commercially viable - the client needs to visualise that your designs will work well on their products, and to do this you need to think about the best artwork to include (tailored to the category you are pitching for).

Key themes to consider are:

Christmas

Valentines Day

Mother’s Day

Father’s Day

Easter

Summer Holidays

Halloween

Birthdays and anniversaries

Everyday themes - pets, florals, juvenile, garden, kitchen

Keep an eye on trends for popular themes - social media and sites like Pinterest can help with this and fashion trends are great to look at since as an industry they work a few seasons in advance.

A mixture of patterns and illustrations are great to include to show your range, and very importantly, include lots of mockups! These help the client visualise your designs on their products and look slick and professional too. I have a blog post with linkd to mockup resources so do give it a read.

How should I present my Art Licensing Portfolio?

My art licensing portfolio is hosted on my website under a password protected site and I have uploaded every design housed within a sales sheet with codes and titles. I have also ensured that my best work is featured under a portfolio section split into patterns and illustrations so that clients can take a look initially before requesting access to my full licensing portfolio.

There are a multitude of other platforms that can be used to host your portfolio too. Some worth checking out include Artonomo and Airtable.

Artonomo is a great way to stay organised and keep track of your licenses and contracts too. The back-end can be organised into themes and categories and also carry private notes which is really useful for keeping a record of what has been licensed and where.

You can also like myself, host it on a website and decide whether to make this password protected or not.

A website is a great way to present your portfolio, but if you don’t have one then a simple PDF document or some single pages with your best work (and tailored to the correct product category) will work too. You can also look at sites such as Issuu where you can host a flipbook.

Pitching

So how to actually begin licensing your work? Pitching is often the answer! Either through cold outreach via emails or submission forms. Whilst work can come from a variety of sources, actively pitching is proactive and a way to get your work in front of a company. I have been lucky to receive enquiries directly through my presence on social media - much of this is via LinkedIn or Instagram but the issue with this is you are always waiting for work to come to you and this can be affected by engagement and the algorithm.

Pitch emails are a great way to reach brands but should be well researched to ensure you are contacting companies that are the right fit for your artwork. It is always a good idea to try and find out the contact details of the people making creative decisions - this can be done via their website or LinkedIn, or even phoning a company and asking for the correct contact. A personal email is always better than a more general one, and each email should be individual to that company, rather than a generic copy and pasted message.

Submission forms are usually a better bet since they will directly go to the correct department. These can often be found from a simple Google search or something I do is to research companies that my peers have worked with and keep a spreadsheet of companies I would like to contact, based on past collaborations. It is also always a really good idea to follow-up if you don’t get a response. I find this hard at times since I perhaps incorrectly assume that means the company is not interested, however remember they receive hundreds of submissions and these things take time. Two follow-up emails are perfectly acceptable and beyond that there is no harm in following up again but less regularly.

Working with Clients

So you’ve sent a pitch email and the company is interested in working with you! What’s next? In another post I will talk more specifically about pricing, negotiation and contracts but meanwhile it is worth thinking about your pricing or whether the client has a budget, which there is no issue asking for. For more details about different license types you can read my original post.

Thank you so much for reading this post and please do leave any questions in the comments section. I would be very happy to answer these and continue the conversation.