Setting up shop—the business of art licensing

I have been spending a lot of time in front of my computer these days. As we all know, there is a wealth of information out there for all of us, no matter what we are doing. Since deciding to take ketubah design seriously, I have also realized that there is more than one way to express my creative self.

Imagezoo is a local Vancouver stock illustration company. As it happens, I also know the owner, Stephanie Carter. In the early days of her career and mine, Violet and I hired her to illustrate a brochure we designed for the Vancouver Opera. More recently, we hired Stephanie again work with us on a Canada Post project (Christmas stamps 2007 images below).

I have known about imagezoo for a while, but I only recently figured out that imagezoo and art licensing are actually the same thing.

I connected with Stephanie a week ago, and since then, I have been trying to learn as much as I can about the artists that are on her site and what they have to say about imagezoo. What I have heard so far is all positive. I have also bumped into some good blogs and some very talented people.

One of the artists I googled is Heather Castles.  She is an amazing artist and apparently a great business woman as well. Her blog is packed with great tips. click here to reach her blog.  In her tips section, she has an article titled: Set up an Illustration Business in 10 Steps It was very informative. For anyone just getting started, as I am, Heather is a great source of inspiration and support. I have just sent her an email and she replied immediately. Here is what she had to say about imagezoo:

I really enjoy working with ImageZoo... the lady who founded it is alumni from my course at Capilano College, all the staff I've had contact with there have been very friendly and helpful. They have great online exposure, I find my images everywhere around the web leading back to them. They pay their royalties regularly and on time, are very reliable and are just a nice bunch to work with!

That works for me!