In addition to being really big fans of Frames, we also love us some art. We have a whole sister company, Art & Canvas, that is dedicated to providing the world with killer posters. We have a whole new venture that is in the works dedicated to providing great art on demand (Stay tuned for more information on this). So how in the world do we find and get these pieces? We sat down with Angela Aronow, Licensing Director for Art & Canvas to get the low down of how those images come to be.
General Image Licensing: How the Process Works
We love to license great art for posters, to keep our line diverse and fresh. The categories that have really started to rise in popularity in the past couple of years are Humor and Art. We licensed over half of the titles listed in our newest category on Posterservice.com. A few of the newest titles our Decay Skull, Alice in Wonderland, Beer Art History and Military Alphabet.
The image licensing process starts with lots of images. The images that we gather are based on theme, art style, artist or whatever is trending in our lives. Our marketing team reviews these images each week, and decides which ones would be great additions to our poster line. The ultimate goal in this process is that the selected posters are ones that people want to hang on their walls. If a poster sells out within the first two years of us signing the title, it is considered a success. As long as their is demand for a poster, we will continue to produce the title. For those posters that continually fly off the shelves, we will reach back out to the artist and license their other pieces! For example, three artists that have done extremely well are Ralph Steadman, Marc Allante and Leonid Afremov.
Chosen Posters
After the selected art has been chosen, we talk with the artist or licensing agent about the images, and if there are any others we should also consider. As a result of the artist agreeing to let us license their work, an advance and royalty rate are negotiated and agreed upon by both parties. Advances are dollars paid upfront to the artist in order to license the image from them. The royalty is the percentage the artist gets paid from each poster sale, paid out quarterly. A simple licensing agreement is then signed by both parties to seal the deal.
Credit lines get added to the poster image, both for our company and for the artist. Once the proof is approved, we send the hi-res file to our printer, who prints a whole pallet of posters for us! These are then delivered to our warehouse. The final step in our licensing process is to make sure everyone knows about our new great posters!
If you or someone you know is an artist and may be interested in having their artwork produced into posters, contact Angela Aronow at [email protected].
