The Essential Guide to Business for Artists and Designers is a comprehensive business start up book and a practical enterprise skills guide that should appeal to a wide range of artists. This excellent guide is designed to help artists acquire vital knowledge and skills to develop a vision and strategy for the future and make that vision into a successful business. Specific topics that are covered include: self-employment v. employment; starting up a business; funding and sponsorship; building networks; self-promotion; legal issues and creative crime; negotiation tactics and contracts; records, taxes and basic bookkeeping; trading via the Internet, innovation and future trends. All in all, this is a thorough guide for all visual artists who want to start up a business.
Alison Branagan is an author, business consultant and associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London where she runs a number of business, entrepreneurship and marketing courses for artists, designers and creative professionals. She is an ethical adviser for the Association of Illustrators, an associate member of the Institute of Consulting, a consultant to Hidden Art and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.