Contracts Help You Get It Right - But I Want to Get the Contract Right!

August 27, 2007 12:31 PM

I need to write a simple, simple contract between myself and a freelance artist.

We are going to ask someone to make a show poster for us. The poster should be tabloid sized, and should reduce elegantly to letter and legal sizes. We also need vector graphics for a banner sign that is about 6'x3' (we are nailing down the dimensions as we speak). This person is a student and we are offering to pay a fixed price for the work. I am looking for advice and/or an example or a website to help me draft a simple contract. She would of course be able to use the sign as part of her portfolio. Preferably I want something simple to read and understand - I've found a couple of very-legalese ones but they are way overkill for this. Thanks in advance.

posted by Medieval Maven to work & money (6 comments total)

The Graphic Arts Guild boilerplate agreement is a good starting point.
posted by jamaro at 1:05 PM on August 27, 2007

Agreement between so and so. (put contact info and mailing addresses)
X agrees to do this "tabloid sized etc." by this date.
Y agrees to pay this amount upon approval of the work.
Signatures, dates.

You don't need much more from your end, unless you want to be punitive and reduce the fee for late work. Do you have a good relationship with the artist? I mean, how will you deal with artistic differences? Is it established that since you are commissioning it you need to have final approval? And if you ask for changes, you are not going to pay more. That's the only thing that has to be crystal clear.
posted by typewriter at 3:58 PM on August 27, 2007

Yes, it's someone I know and we have a good relationship. I've talked with her a little about it already and she's really into the whole concept that we have going. Thank you!
posted by Medieval Maven at 7:19 PM on August 27, 2007

Thing to remember is that contracts are there to deal with disagreements; if things go smoothly, you hardly need a contract at all. So when you're writing contract terms imagine interpreting them in the middle of a bitter, hateful dispute.

From watching some software contracts go bad, one thing you really want to try to write down is how you're going to decide the work is done or acceptable (as typewriter says). This is probably the hard part.

It sounds like you'll want to own the resulting work, but give the artist license to use it in their portfolio, etc.: state that clearly in the contract.

Figure out whether you're paying a flat rate or time-and-materials. This and the acceptance criteria kind of go together.

Figure out what happens if the artist puts in a lot of work and you don't like it and you eventually say, "Never mind, I don't want this poster after all." Or what happens if the artist messes around for a long time, you need the poster yesterday, and they eventually say, "You know, I don't really have time to keep working on this thing."

It doesn't have to be huge and complicated but I think it should at least touch on all of those points.
posted by hattifattener at 7:33 PM on August 27, 2007

You might want to include the point that the work is a work for hire, and you own all the rights to reproduce it later or sell it or whatever. Because if you don't say this, the copyright defaults to the artist.
posted by extrabox at 7:38 PM on August 27, 2007

I commissioned a piece of art several years back from a professional painter. To my astonishment, he had no basic contracts that he used; all his agreements came from companies that hired him.

So I bought this book, which has oodles of templates. It was very useful for outlining all the things we needed to agree on, including the schedule, the decision making process, and ownership issues.
posted by bruceo at 12:13 AM on August 28, 2007