{"id":352,"date":"2014-01-26T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/?p=352"},"modified":"2014-01-31T17:15:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T22:15:30","slug":"dealing-with-creatives-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/?p=352","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with ‘Creatives’, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you don’t remember part one of this, follow this link<\/a>. Having been fired by my cover designer after only one cover, I was forced to hunt down a fresh one at elance.com<\/a>. And after receiving fifteen proposals in less than a day, I was actually pretty encouraged. Sure, I wasted a month with the first artist, but at least there were more out there to choose from.<\/p>\n

A bunch were easily eliminated (too expensive, irrelevant portfolio, etc.) My initial contact was a new artist in New York City, working to expand her portfolio. At first she seemed like a good match, but after some discussion she withdrew from the project, saying it was too complex for her to deliver at a reasonable price. That was pretty much the complaint of my first artist \u2013 not exactly an encouraging trend.<\/p>\n

So I moved onto the next one, located in (of all places) Columbo, Sri Lanka. Former home of Arthur C. Clarke. An omen?<\/p>\n

Well, maybe. I spent a bunch of time Skyping and swapping emails with someone who used just the nickname ‘Black’, describing in great detail exactly what I wanted. I also provided a good amount of information on the story and the characters.<\/p>\n

Black took about a week to get back to me. And when he finally did, he came back with something that eventually evolved into this:<\/p>\n

\"W+L_mini\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which was, in my humble opinion, a beautiful piece of cover art that really captured the key elements of my story. Far more eye appeal than the first one. U<\/span>tterly different from what I’d asked for<\/span>. And almost certainly easier to execute, from a graphic arts perspective, than my original request.<\/p>\n

Back in my real life as an engineering consultant, very often I joke about giving clients what they need, in contrast to what they ask for. And here I was, having that exact thing done to me!<\/p>\n

What’s ironic about it is that if either of the first two artists had made that leap, I’d be working with them instead of reaching halfway around the world (10.5 time zones) to get an e-book cover made. Now, in both cases, I began my interaction with \u201c\u2026I’m new at this, so I need you to educate me on what’s reasonable to ask for and what’s not.\u201d But neither of them took the initiative to do exactly that.<\/p>\n

So it would seem my disdainful attitude about learning how to ‘deal with Creatives’ needs a reassessment. The solution was actually for me to be educated by<\/i> a Creative.<\/p>\n

So pass the humble pie. And, given the end result, actually I don’t mind the taste at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you don’t remember part one of this, follow this link. Having been fired by my cover designer after only one cover, I was forced to hunt down a fresh one at elance.com. And after receiving fifteen proposals in less than a day, I was actually pretty encouraged. Sure, I wasted a month with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,9,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}