Illustrators Transnational Rendezvous

Draft programme

Introduction

The objective is to discuss the future of illustration, in the framework of an Information Society; therefore access to and participation in the Internet will be included in all the proposal suggested.
Our interest in this Illustrator's Trasnational Rendezvous is to show all the diversities in cultural creativity, specifically regarding graphic illustration.
The Internet is reinforcing a multifaceted perspective on the visual arts, specially in Illustration, and this is opening new and innovative professional applications and promotional tools .

24 October

18.00 Esthetic tends in graphic illustration (Round table discussion and pannel with experiences)
The intention is to show the wide variety of aesthetic trends through history to the present. Several representative illustrators, showing the great versatility of European illustration (working with different media) and one of the great scholars of illustration in Spain will complete this round table discussion.

Moderator: Cristina Durán (Ilustrator, Vice-president of APIV)
Participants: Arnal Ballester (Illustrator); Ajubel (Illustrator, National Book Award for illustration, 2002)

25 October

11.00 Temporary Folders: Illustrating the Future (Round table discussion and pannel with experiences)
The idea would be to find an image that overcomes that of the stereotypical illustrator, in order to project the real experiences of professionals who contribute to the artistic production that reaches the public, influencing public opinion, across different fields, media, techniques and, of course, the internet.

Moderator: Nacho Casanova (Illustrator, President of APIV)
Participants: Peret (Graphic design and Illustrator, Spanish Prize on Graphic Design, 1998) Max (multifaceted Illustrator) Lennart Eng (Illustrator, Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic Designers, member of the Executive Committe)

16.00 Workshop: Illustrator's Trasnantional Network
The aim is to discuss the Conclusions included in "Graphic Illustration in Spain, White Book", specifically the possibility of launching an informal network: Illustrator's Transnational Network, as a promotional and dissemination tool showing the Illustrator's contribution to cultural diversity in order to improve the information and collaboration between Illustrators, including the state of rights protecting our work-copyright- in diferent countries.

Participants: Spanish Federation of Professional Illustrators Associations-FADIP (Carlos Ortin) // European Forum of Visual Creators // Fat-Pencil (Valeria Brancaforte) // Associazioni Illustratori (Paolo Rui) // Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic Designers (Lennart Eng) // Association of Illustrators-AOI (Matthew Johnson)

18.00 Estrategies for the future concerning Graphic Illustration (Conference and Conclussions)
The objective is to show and discuss strategies for the future of professional Illustration, starting with the Illustrator's taking control of the entire creative process of his work, and going on to the possibility of multisector professionals, that means to eliminate the intermediaries between the visual author and public in general.

Moderator: Carmen Castro (Coordinator of "Graphic Illustration in Spain, White Book", General Manager of APIV)
Participants: Nacho Casanova (Illustrator, President of APIV); Raquel Pelta (Professor of history of Illustration and Graphic Design); Paolo Rui (Ilustrator, President of Associazione Illustratori)

Reached Conclusions

Creation of a european network

The First Illustrators' Transnational Rendezvous, which took place in Valencia on 24 and 25 October 2003, produced some uncommon attendance numbers. 85 people registered, of whom only 51 were members.
The presidents, managers and several members of the Catalan, Madrid and Basque associations, the latter of recent creation, also attended and participated.
The participation level of those attending gave witness of the interest and preoccupation our group feels towards the technological and legal changes, as well as changes taking place within the profession, that can be observed within our various work environments. The objectives for this Rendezvous, let's not forget, were, first, to find out what type of consideration we feel towards our work, in other words how do we define ourselves, what do we think we are.
Secondly, we wanted to explore the different effects generated in terms of professional approaches (not just on the technical side) by the development of new technologies and their applications to our work.
Lastly, the most important objective and the true reason for the Rendezvous: to employ a good deal of our resources in setting up an Illustrators' Transnational Network, inspired mainly by the experiences acquired at the European Illustrators' Forum.

First Talk

The idea of the proposed round table discussions and the experience-sharing panels was to set a series of concrete discussions in motion.
The purpose of first round table, Aesthetic Tendencies in Graphic Illustration, with the participation of Arnal Ballester (APIC and European forum), Cristina Duran and Ajubel (both from APIV), was to take a brief look at the aesthetic variety of illustration from a historical point of view all the way to the present, including the versatility of illustration within different media. This basic topic served above all to set up a framework for the discussion of subjects which are truly important for the profession: the social purpose of the illustrator and the future, as it is presented by the invasion of every area of our work by the new technologies. Also, what are the legal and contractual conflicts that may come about due to all this.

Our profession has definition problems which have a profound effect. It is not the same thing to define an illustrator as an artist who embellishes the work of a writer, than to define him or her as a visual artist or creator (which seems to be the term which best applies to our profession). In other words, as a professional who, by using his or her way of seeing, complements the expression and dissemination of an idea. An illustrator gives a visual interpretation of a message. The confusion of illustrators with "decorators" of texts is one of the causes for which illustration has not been able to achieve the social and economic dignity of, for example, graphic design. The greatest change that has occurred is that illustration achieved the status of specialty eight years ago.
From this point on, both the discussion and the comments coming form the audience took two different, though related, paths: the social and intellectual work of the illustrator and the influence of new technologies on our work.

It is a fact that illustration is with more and more often abandoning its traditional paper formats by entering the realms of animation and multimedia productions. Therefore, we have been forced to learn new technological skills in order to respond to our markets in a competent manner. But along with technological development has come a certain foolishness. One can often see in the media the worrying presence of a type of illustration that is decorative and banal, that does not invite thought, and that exalts elitism, indifference and consumerism.
The dominant ideology leads us to a lack of thought about what is happening around us. Since technology is not a dike against imbecility, we cannot argue about technology apart from the uses that we make of it. The good use of technical resources is our responsibility.
In terms of our social and intellectual work, it seems clear that we are working for a market that appears to be more interested in looking that in seeing, in earnings than in quality, and that uses us without appreciation, as if it wished we could finally disappear (as authors).
¿Can an illustrator exert some sort of influence on the market, or is he or she just a mercenary?
¿Can we make people uncomfortable? It is difficult to do if nobody takes a drawing seriously, as a message. The terrible illiteracy in image culture means that we are considered mere space fillers.
If an image is worth a thousand words, a hackneyed phrase, why are illustrations not considered as messages, while words obviously are? Perhaps it is because images can contain more ideas than can be observed at first sight. Or perhaps it is simply the illiteracy mentioned above.
In terms of our work done on computers, a perverse effect has come about: we are doing part of the work of engravers and printers for free. We have set out to do a type of work that was previously done by others, providing the client with huge savings. On the other hand, technology has opened up the way for a change in the way we approach the work, and has increased the possibilities for people who in different circumstances would not have the necessary equipment to carry out their ideas. In other words, to communicate by means of an illustration or a design, it is no longer necessary that one learn to draw.

As illustrators, we have to use the Internet to communicate amongst ourselves. It should facilitate the way we run our organisations.
It is important that we value the images that travel through the World Wide Web. We have observed that there is this idea that using an image from the internet is like finding a piece of paper on the street: that an image in the internet has no value. It will be difficult to rid others of this concept.
One of our priorities as authors should be to obtain the same consideration for images found on paper as for electronic ones. The work we do for either is the same, and the internet is just another communication channel. We have to achieve legislation which does not establish a difference between one and the other.
We find ourselves in a time of change, and this is very interesting. One must learn to adapt and understand the possibilities which are opening up in front of us, while at the same time maintaining our system of work and creation. The computer is just another tool, and we should treat it that way.
It seems that images will now increase their prominence over texts in the world of communication. We must be able to take advantage of the opportunities offered up by the new media. That is why we have to maintain our copyrights, our rights in general. If we don't, then we will have wasted a great opportunity, which may not come along again in a long time.
The only thing that is clear about our work on the internet is that, as it is, it does not provide a solution to our problems. But we must work towards that end.
As illustrators, we must find a wider space for promotion and information in the internet, a greater presence in the media, one which consolidates us as a group and that allows us to be heard.

Second Talk

The second round table discussion was titled Temporary Archives: Illustrating the Future. In it we tried to think about what a twenty-first century illustrator would be like. Quite early, though, we realised that the ideas expressed in the first discussion had a lot to do with the future of our work. Nacho Casanova (APIV), Peret (Illustrator and designer), Max (APIC) and Lennart Eng (Swedish Association of Illustrators and Graphic Designers) made up the round table panel.
In order to illustrate the topic at hand, we plugged into the internet, on a giant screen, and went through a few representative sites used by illustrators, designers and comic strip authors to develop their work. (See El Pes, no. 22, back cover).
One thing became apparent at once: apart from the technical fascination with the medium, content is what is truly important. And these sites did not offer anything new in terms of a narrative system with the exception, perhaps, of Chris Ware's site. But in order to be fair, we recognised that thanks to the internet, we were able to access these authors' work with unprecedented speed and precision.
None of these examples demonstrate that we are witnessing the triumph of the image over words. We are only witnessing the triumph of the inconsequential over the relevant and the complex. Technology can open a whole series of opportunities, but nobody can tell what they are, yet; we can only intuit them, that is why the prudent thing would be perhaps to not let ourselves be blinded by these possibilities and make some objections. If the messages we receive are lighter every day, or even more foolish, it is because those in power wish it that way. The general trend is that people think less and less, and when they actually do, it is in terms of consumerism.
If we compare the technological revolution with motorways, nobody can doubt that they are important, and we assume that it all depends on the use we make of them. Any technical novelty will obviously be contaminated by the virtues and defects of human nature.
But there is a dark side to the work we do with computers. They are in part responsible for the way in which the great media companies are plundering our work. There was the example of La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper, which includes the illustration of an article when it sells that article to a foreign newspaper, without paying anything for the reprinting of that illustration. They consider they have already paid for it once and can make use of it as they please.
Next came an audiovisual show of Peret's work. He commented on it himself. And it served to illustrate topics which had been discussed before: self-expression and the placement of the artist's opinions within the illustration; technical perfection; the censorship of images and ideas when dealing with a client. We must be aware of our condition as writers who work with images, our work is neither neutral nor ingenuous. A good part of the correct execution of our work means that we should be aware of who we are working for and what we do with it.

The Swedish association includes illustrators and graphic designers. It has been in existence for fifty years and has 1,250 members (80% of the profession). Most professionals are members.
A very positive achievement for this group is that clients who need an illustrator look for one through the association.
They are well organised, they offer advice and orientation on prices and have a group of people who specialise in different aspects of the profession. This group is in charge of solving concrete problems. They also offer legal advice (contracts) and they take up lawsuits when the case is representative of a certain situation and the illustrator can't afford to do so on his own. They also have competitions and other group activities. They publish a bi-monthly magazine, which includes news, events, techniques, and serves to strengthen the sense of group.
Since the mid nineties, though, they have been facing a difficult situation: prices not only do not rise, they are going down, and publishers do not want to renew contracts under different conditions.
Our profession has become a multidisciplinary enterprise, involving not only the fine arts, but also video, cinema, social research, writing. Students, nowadays, are learning many different techniques, which Lennart Eng finds interesting because it signifies a whole new attitude on the part of artists. For the Association, this means having to deal with a whole series of new problems and experiences.
They work with other organisations: those of writers, actors, playwrights and journalists, with whom they lead joint negotiations with government agencies. As a result of the latest research, Eng believes that in about ten years there will exist a single organisation encompassing all the creative professions.
In Spain you can only transfer a copyright for fifteen years, in Sweden you can do it for the rest of eternity and for any planet that might contain intelligent life. That is why they advise their members NOT to cede their rights (or to do so only for a short time), because even if they get a lot of money now, it will never be comparable to the money the client may make from their work. One must bear in mind that the new technologies have increased the possibilities for the reproduction and dissemination of our work. We also have to fight against bad contracts, especially now when there is a movement to reduce royalties for children's books.
The Swedish Association is having problems with two newspapers, which say that an on-line edition is the same as a paper edition, so they are not paying the author if his or her work appears in both. The illustrators have won two cases in the courts, but the papers have appealed; they are waiting for a final resolution.
They are also thinking about older illustrators who are no longer active.
As a result of this presentation, it was acknowledged that our associations, just like they do in Europe, should include both illustrators and graphic designers. We need to work under the same criteria. That is why we have to promote a Transnational Network.

Knowing that cultural associations cannot fix minimum tariffs, it seems logical to think about the convenience of establishing a sort of Bar Association (like lawyers and other professionals have). But this is a complicated measure, because the present government is against granting licenses for this type of associations, precisely because the government maintains that tariffs are contrary to a free market situation. On the other hand, labour unions have ceased to evolve in terms of our needs. They represent most workers, but only those who work for a salary. This has nothing to do with our present situation. Most illustrators are independent professionals, or are hired as such. We are not entrepreneurs or businessmen, we are professionals who do their work independently. We depend on clients who pay for that work, we are not salaried workers, we manage our own social security. Thus, we are not taken into account by the labour unions. When we go to a union and ask about what they can do about our demands and the representation of our rights, they come up with confused answers because they really have not thought about this. The most obvious and direct answer we have heard is that the unions' governing councils tend to think of us as management (as we do work independently), even though that has nothing to do with our case.

Third Talk

This third talk was really a Work group. The point was to debate the need to create and promote a Transnational Illustrators' Network in order to disseminate professional information among the different illustrators' organisations working in Europe. It would be a network that would serve as an instrument to promote and disseminate our work and to exchange information and experiences dealing with, among other things, the situation of our rights as authors in different countries.
This work group was made up by Carlos Ortin (FADIP), Arnal Ballester (European Forum of Visual Artists), Valeria Brancaforte (Fat Pencil), Paolo Rui (Associzioni Illustratori), Lennart Eng (Swedish Association of Illustrators and Graphic Designers) and Matt Johnson (English Association of Illustrators-AOI).

In the UK, authors are the automatic owners of the copyrights to anything they create. When you sell an illustration, you are selling the right to reproduce it, no the work itself. The image is always the property of its author, and he or she retains the right to sell it again. Some artists work with agents, whose commission depends on the complexity of the work and the negotiations.
They have had problems with contracts with large companies such as Time Out magazine or the BBC, who force artists to sign abusive contracts where they must cede all their rights, forever and for the entire world. Unfortunately, many authors accept these conditions. These companies are setting up image banks for their own use.
The AOI, along with other artists' organisations, are fighting the BBC over these contracts.
The AOI trains young people because those who do not know their rights work under miserable conditions and make other professionals lose their clientele. This brings down prices, and if a professional declines to work under those conditions, the work is offered to a student. The government ignores these matters in the Law.

Unfortunately, they have the same problems in Italy. The state of Italian publishing houses is depressing and many illustrators look for clients in France or the United States (where rights are not respected either, though sometimes the pay is good enough to compensate). Lorenzo Mattoti left because he was sick and tired of the situation in Italy. We have to try to make things better at home, before we leave.
In Italy, there exists a truly progressive law, though nobody obeys it, and lots of illustrators just give up. That is why something has to be done.
Another goal for this organisation is to make itself known, as many illustrators do not know of its existence. The Associazioni has been around for 23 years, but a lot of illustrators simply live in their own world. From the point of view of this organisation, the creation of a European platform seems absolutely essential. To begin with, there needs to be greater communication between the different organisations.
After putting together all their information, they need to prepare a common document, to be signed by all, which includes their common causes and codes of conduct. This document will then have to be disseminated everywhere, not only among the members. Many of those who sign bad contracts are young. Sometimes it is simply that they do not know the law. If they do not respect the codes, everyone is affected, and this has a greater negative effect on the market than people think. This is the clients' great excuse.

Fat Pencil is a free and virtual association, which bases its outlook on the will to emphasize the values of illustration. It is a web-based organisation. It has a permanent forum for discussion of information and the exchange of experiences. A recent Fat Pencil initiative has been the sending of an open letter to Italian publishers, newspapers agencies and institutions, dealing with the question of tariffs, which keep going down, even though the social and communication value of the work is clear. They have no faith in the letter being published by the media, but it might wake a few people up. The opportunity to renegotiate tariffs in Italy has passed, and only the rights of the most prestigious illustrators are respected. Fat Pencil tries to fight against low prices and the indiscriminate use of images on the internet. The Fat Pencil web site is open to all types of contributions.

Sometimes, facing up to a client means losing that client. These are clients who do not understand the nature of the business we are all in. The client tends to use his power and has in his favour that everyone involved wants the illustration to be published.
What we have to do is to make it clear that we do these illustrations for a reason. They have to understand the qualities and potential of illustration as an artistic form, aside from their function as elements for communication.
The associations have achieved the institutionalisation of contracts, even if they are not always very good. The return of all original work. The development of joint actions. Now comes the turn for illustrators to unite at the European level. To demand exactly what the law determines. We are authors; we do not work for so much an hour. The law says we should be paid proportionately, according to the commercial success of the work. We should follow Fat Pencil's example.
All the organisations stress the same point: that we should unite. None of us can face the industry alone. Do we hold a strong enough position so that we can negotiate a minimum set of conditions and guarantees? No. Let's do away with the argument that "if I don't take this job, someone else will." We need to find that which will bring us together. We all face the same problems.

Do these associations have what it takes to act as illustrators' agents?
The Swedish association has tried to work as an agency, with little success, as few illustrators have shown an interest in that.
Other ideas abound: creating an image bank, for images that have already been used, so that they can be used again. Could this be run by an illustrators' association or some other sister organisation?
In Denmark, there is an experimental project called "image to use", which also includes photographers. It is a sort of agency that also fights for rights. If it is successful, then Sweden and other Scandinavian countries will join. But they are only beginning to get the project together, they are at the pre-production stage.
In terms of tariffs, in Sweden they have a list of examples of different situations and cases. It is not a price-list but a guide. They are trying to put together a brochure with interviews with professionals talking about what they try to keep in mind when putting together a price estimate. It is not easy to find the correct price, and every artist has his or her own way.
Can we educate our clients? The truth is that this is a strange market because we consider ourselves a group, while competing with each other at the same time. We need to talk to the politicians in order to get better laws. In Germany there is a law against unfair contracts, even though the publishers are strong and the illustrators weak. If an unfair contract is signed, it can be declared illegal if it was forced upon the illustrator.
A good plan would be to compile the better aspects of each country's laws and create a common plan, an ideal contract for use all over Europe, similar to the German law. According to its own rules, the Italian association cannot work as an agency. In order to be able to do so, they would have to stop being an association and become an enterprise. They have talked about it and if all goes well, they might try to put together an ethics first company. But if illustrators knew their rights such a company would not be necessary.
Furthermore, these associations promote their members in different ways: they publish catalogues, illustrators' guides on the internet, minimum price lists, they publish information on competitions, on how to write contracts, and they provide legal advice, among other things.
An interesting thing would be to put together an ethics code, since we are all each other's competition but we share the same problems.
What seems to be clear is that we all understand that we need to regulate the profession, follow an ethics code and establish prices and conditions below which no one should work. Paradoxically, in practice illustrators are always reluctant to take up corporate and/or mutually beneficial attitudes.
But the circle is beginning to close, and we are coming around to the beginning of this Rendezvous. We realise that there is not a sense of the social value of creative work in the visual arts, and this implies a lack of value in terms of money. That is why these organisations are necessary, they are the only way to achieve goals that the individual cannot reach on his or her own.
We have also talked about the need to introduce these associations in schools as a good way to train the young artists who will be the professionals of the future.

Fourth Talk

In order to show and debate a series of Future Strategies for Graphic Illustration, Carmen Castro (APIV manager), Nacho Casanova (APIV), Raquel Pelta (illustration and design historian) and Paolo Rui (Associazioni Illustratori) struck an aliance with the audience and tried to summarise the concepts being discussed at the First Transnational Illustrators' Rendezvous.
Raquel Pelta observed that there are reasons for optimism, considering the situation illustrators were in 15 years ago, although our topics for discussion have been the same for much longer than that: Authors' rights and social consideration.
Both illustrators and designers have been deeply involved in the construction of modern reality. This should offer a clear enough reason for why we should relate among ourselves much more, following in the footsteps of other European associations.
It was in this context that Raquel Pelta warned against the dangers of image banks, which promise to promote an illustrator's career while giving companies the exclusive rights to that illustrator's work, which abuse their freedom and mark a distinct tendency towards the uniformity of the messages they emit. An illustration submitted to an image bank loses its fundamental value of providing an original and subjective vision. These companies tend devalue illustrations.
Even we have the tendency to underestimate the value of our work without thinking that these companies buy and sell our work because they see the possibilities for profit. They do not waste their time on activities that do not provide big enough profits. It would be advisable that illustrators cease to collaborate with these companies and take full control of their work.
In terms of stylistic tendencies, there seems to be a move towards the humanisation of drawings, after a long time in which machine-like perfection was preferred. There seems to be a reaction against the perfection of the illustrations. Design work has no use for chance, so illustration is bringing forth new ideas.
On the other hand, there also seems to be a proliferation of neutral, cold illustrations. This has to do with the trend towards uniformity apparent in global capitalism. They look for illustrations that are good the world over, which include no opinions, only information. It is a sort of Alienated Aesthetics, which takes its inspiration from Letraset manuals, where any sign may signify anything, including its opposite. Let's not forget that Illustration is still a weapon. People who want to tell a story use illustration. One only has to look at political propaganda for the latest anti-war campaigns.
In other sectors, illustration is seen as not being objective enough, that it somehow places obstacles for the transmission of information. But, as Art Spiegelman says, in a world where magazines can no longer compete with CNN, and where CNN can no longer compete with the Internet, it doesn't make sense to use a magazine format as a primary vehicle for information. What magazines can do is offer perspective and attitude. And that is where illustration is gaining ground, thanks to its subjective approach. And, to quote Spiegelman again, in a world where Photoshop has forced photography to lie, you can allow artists to be the reporters of every day life again. As Max said before, we write with drawings.
Let's not lose sight of something: at this point in time, we are in a position to offer something nobody else can offer: a personal and original vision of things. And that is why we encounter censorship and blacklists.

To close this Rendezvous, several participants made a few suggestions of things to keep in mind when putting together the Illustrators' Transnational Network. Here is a list of them:

First steps toward a Transnational Illustrators Association

We'll start by putting together a list of addresses for the participants in this Rendezvous.

This organisation should be bilingual, with English as the common language, while the second language would be the one spoken by the communicant. No attached files will be allowed. Messages sent to the list are a space for work and discussion. These conclusions will appear on this web site provided by APIV, as resources to reach common initiatives.

New members: proposals should be made within our working space and the participants should discuss whether or not to admit them.