9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off

A veteran illustrator imparts practical advice for the working creative with candid humor


New York Times and New Yorker illustrator Raymond Biesinger has over twenty years of experience as a self-employed creative. You might say he’s been through it all: from chasing down a concert promoter for payment on a fifty-dollar Megadeth poster design, to a regular stint at Monocle, to confronting a government agency for stylistic theft. Biesinger’s ingenuity for solving the most unexpected issues extends far beyond his primary task of filling the page.


Sure, everything an aspiring creative needs to know might be at their fingertips. But the question of what to do when their work has been exploited remains. In 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off, Biesinger undertakes the challenge of answering that ever-present question by revisiting some of the most unforgettable―and at times―irrationally absurd moments in his career with a wink and an encouraging nudge. 9 Times… proves time and time again that creative problems will more often than not require creative solutions.


This portable, and elegantly illustrated guide to navigating and maneuvering the least glamorous aspects of the creative industry is a future classic suitable for everybody from the earnest novice to the seasoned professional.

Raymond Biesinger is a Montreal-based illustrator, artist, and author. He has completed more than one thousand assignments for magazines, newspapers, and ad agencies since 2002. Other interests of his include minimalism, maximalism, world and local history, equality, diversity, economics, music, science fiction, historic buildings, pictorial maps, Canadiana, and preserving a 145-year-old home, etc. His 2022 collection of drawings 305 Lost Buildings of Canada was a national non-fiction best-seller and his latest joy is a noteperfect and 2:3 scale recreation of a 1960 Civil Defence booklet titled Your Basement Fallout Shelter.