It isn’t usually a disaster, and there is definitely no need to panic. But as people become more aware of the need to protect creative work, ideas, reputations, and sensitive information, and AI becomes more embedded in standard design tools, it’s worth understanding where the gaps might be before they become problems on your next design project.

Your suppliers’ terms

Assets come into design projects from a range of sources. Photography you commissioned, photography supplied by outside organisations, illustration created for a report, stock images licensed for a specific use, brand assets from another agency or supplied by a partner. You might be used to dealing with some level of licensing and usage agreements. But these agreements may have been written before generative AI was a practical tool. In many cases, they don’t mention AI at all.

Where they do mention it, the language is often broad. A flat ‘No’ on AI use sounds clear until you try to apply it to specific situations. Did the photographer mean their images can’t be processed by any AI tool? Does that include standard re-touching? Or were they designed to prevent something serious, such as their work being fed into a training dataset, or used to generate imitations of their style? The gap between what was intended, what the agreement says, and what production often requires is worth understanding, because your designer is probably working in that gap right now.

Your own AI policy

Most organisations’ AI policies are written to govern how staff use tools like CoPilot or ChatGPT. What they can and can’t ask it to do, what data can be shared with it, what outputs can be used and how. That’s an understandable place to start, but it leaves a blind spot in terms of what external suppliers are doing with AI using your assets.

If your policy says your organisation doesn’t use AI to produce creative outputs, does that cover what your designer does in their software? If it restricts AI use of personal data, does anyone know whether images of people are being processed by generative tools as part of normal design or development workflow? How are they being processed, where and for what?

Here’s an example that came up during a recent project.

Generative Expand is an AI tool in Adobe Photoshop that many designers now use regularly as part of their workflow. It can extend an image in one click, generating new pixels that are seamless and indistinguishable from the original. The concept isn’t new, it’s the kind of thing designers have been doing manually for decades. It’s useful to get images to sit better on pages or to create space for a headline or text over an image. But now, AI is generating that new content within or around a supplied asset, and that feels different somehow. It’s also where an agreement or policy predating, or silent on AI, starts to fall apart. Did the photographer, the commissioner or the licence-owner intend for their photos to be ‘processed’ using AI? Maybe they don’t mind, maybe they have strong business and moral objections to it, but without it being made clear somewhere, it’s just not possible to know.

While Adobe has positioned it as ‘commercially safe’ (it’s trained on licensed Adobe Stock images and public domain content to ‘avoid’ copyright issues), that only covers Adobe’s liability. It doesn’t resolve the question of what the contract says about images being processed by AI, or what your organisation’s own AI policy covers.

A less obvious example: Adobe InDesign now auto-generates alt text for placed images using AI. This is useful for accessible PDF production, but the default output includes an “AI-generated” tag that gets embedded in the document and read out by screen readers. If nobody notices and doesn’t disable it, anyone using assistive technology to access your publication will hear that tag. For an organisation with a policy about AI-generated content, or one that has made commitments about how AI is used in its communications, that feels wrong. Although truthfully, I’m not sure who does want that being read out in their documents!

Before your next project

Obviously, it goes without saying that all of this is worth reviewing with a qualified lawyer, and I am not one.
But here are a few things to think about before a project starts:

• What assets are being supplied, and do you know what the terms covering them say about AI?
• Does your organisation’s AI policy account for what external designers and suppliers do on your behalf, or only what your own team does directly?
• Have you told your designer about any restrictions in your own policy or your suppliers’ terms that might affect how they work?
• Do you know if and how your designer is using AI in their work so you can check that against policies and contracts?
• Are there assets in this project involving identifiable people, sensitive contexts, or partner brands that need particular care?

This is an area where there aren’t clean universal answers yet. If you’re commissioning a project and any of this feels relevant or unresolved, raise it early. Or get in touch, and we can talk about what makes sense for your specific situation.

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What “accessible PDF” actually means

An accessible PDF is a document designed for everyone to read and interact with, including people with vision, hearing, mobility, or cognitive impairments who use assistive technology such as screen readers.

Making a PDF accessible requires the document to be built with a proper underlying structure using tagged headings so a screen reader knows the hierarchy, a defined reading order so content is read in the right sequence (particularly important for multi-column layouts), alt text on every meaningful image, descrptions of complex diagrams or charts and graphs, active hyperlinks, metadata, and bookmarks for navigation in longer documents. This is in addition to colour contrast and text accessibility requirements for onscreen information.

Who the regulations apply to

The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 require all public sector organisations, such as central government, local government, NHS bodies, and universities, to meet the WCAG 2.2 AA standard for digital content, including documents published on their websites. Charities are not automatically exempt. If your organisation is publicly funded, provides public services, or works with disabled people, the regulations may also apply. If you’re not sure, it’s worth checking. The Equality Act 2010 applies to all service providers and requires reasonable adjustments for disabled people.

This means that any report, resource, or publication you put on your website likely needs to meet these standards or something close. And even without the legal compulsion, ensuring as many people as possible can access your publications is a good thing.

A note on GOV.UK specifically

If you’re publishing on GOV.UK or a government-managed platform, then HTML is the preferred format for publishing documents. The guidance says that PDFs published on GOV.UK should either be replaced with HTML versions or accompanied by one. An HTML version of a document is usually outside the scope of a graphic designer’s work.

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What your designer needs from you

Your designer should take care of the set up and structure of the accessible PDF but there are some bit of info only you, the client, can supply:

Chart and data summaries. For every chart or data visualisation in the document, screen reader users need a text description of what it shows, and a summary of the key finding. For example, “Donations increased by 34% year on year, with the strongest growth in Q4” is what’s needed. “Bar chart showing quarterly donations” isn’t. 

Diagram and infographic descriptions. Complex visuals, theory-of-change diagrams, process maps, and frameworks also need accessibility descriptions. The more clearly you can articulate what the diagram is saying, the better. You may have to compromise some of the complexity of these elements to ensure you are providing the most important information to those using screen readers.

Photo alt text. Images that carry meaning need a short description. Decorative images don’t. Your designer will handle the distinction, but for images where context matters, text that describes what the image is and why it’s there helps.
A note on working with InDesign: as of 2026, it auto-generates alt-text for images. Sounds great (and is often a good starting point), but by default, it includes an “AI-generated” tag. This can be disabled in preferences, but if it’s not and no one notices, anyone using a screen reader to read your PDFs will hear the ‘AI-generated’ message, which I can’t imagine anyone wants.

Hyperlinks. A list of any URLs that should be active links in the document, with the destination clearly noted. Links formatted as plain text are less accessible than proper hyperlinks.

The easiest way to provide all of this is to include it in your asset bundle at the beginning of the project.

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Sort it early

Accessibility works best when it’s part of the initial conversations. A few things to raise before work begins:

• Tell your designer upfront that the document needs to be accessible and will be published digitally. This affects decisions made early in the layout process, structure, reading order, and how images are handled, which are much harder to unpick later. 
• Ask what the deliverable includes. A properly accessible PDF requires more work than a standard export. If it hasn’t been discussed, it probably hasn’t been priced. A designer who knows what they’re doing will have a clear answer about what accessible PDF production involves and what it costs.
• Get your content signed off before the design begins. Every amendment made to a laid-out document is an opportunity for errors to creep in. Accessible elements such as tags, articles and reading order may all need to be sorted again if substantial changes are made.
• Ask about the use of AI in auto-generating tags and alt-text, and make sure you are comfortable with that and how it’s being expressed in screen readers, etc.

Where I can help

I produce accessible PDFs to WCAG 2.2 AA standard as part of my document and report work. This covers tagged document structure, reading order, image alt text (from descriptions you supply), active hyperlinks, document metadata, and bookmarks if needed. I run accessibility checks in Acrobat Pro as part of the process and resolve technical failures where possible before delivery.

If you’re working on a report or publication that needs to be publicly accessible and want to talk through what’s involved, get in touch.

The post Creating accessible PDFs for reports, strategies, and long-form documents. appeared first on Sam Osborne - Design and Illustration.

1: Solving visual problems means understanding the commercial ones.

In my early days, I used to think design was mostly about making things look pretty. And sure, aesthetics matter. But if the design isn’t helping someone understand, feel, or do something, it’s not doing the job. 

The longer I’ve done this, the more I’ve realised that being a good designer means getting stuck into the businessy bits too. You need to understand what the organisation is trying to achieve. You need to know what the audience needs to hear. 
What success will look like and how it fits into the overall business plan.

Design isn’t self-expression. It’s problem-solving with a purpose. It’s communication. It’s business. And the better you are at engaging with those bits, the better designer you become.

2: You can never ask too many questions.

Early in my career, I’d get the client brief and jump straight into the fun bit, layouts, colours, illustrations, only to realise a few days in… there was a gaping hole in the plan, or we were solving the wrong problem, or that I hadn’t understood what we were trying to achieve. All that work was headed in the wrong direction.

Now I don’t start anything without asking a big pile of questions first: What are we trying to achieve? Who’s it for? Why now? Why this? 

That’s how you discover that a client asking for a ‘simple flyer’, actually needs better messaging. Or brand refresh is a stand-in for a deeper identity crisis.

Good design starts with good questions. And the better your questions, the better the answers. And the stronger the work.

3: Look after yourself.

You are your most valuable asset. If you feel like shit, the work will feel like shit.

I used to think I could keep going, head down, powered by coffee and deadlines. But creativity doesn’t work like that. It comes from people, from brains, energy, and curiosity, and these things don’t run on fumes or willpower.

If I want to do great work, I need to look after myself, mentally, physically, and emotionally. That means getting enough sleep, eating proper food, drinking water (yes, that glass you’ve ignored for three hours), moving my body, and doing things that get me out of work mode and engaging with the real world.

And after struggling with a long period of “I am just bloody over this” induced burnout recently, I respect this lesson even more. 

If you feel awful, the work will too, not just for you while you’re making it, but for people on the receiving end. It’ll come out flat and uninspired. And that’s not what anyone’s hiring you for.

4: Systems are your friend

There’s a myth that creatives thrive on chaos, that mess is part of the magic. It’s obviously nonsense. Without systems, I’d be a puddle on the floor, not knowing what to do next, who owed me money, or what the next 3 months in my business might look like. Crazy. 

I have systems and processes for everything in my business, from finances and project management to digital files and folders. Plus, of course, there are business reviews and planning, client onboarding, contracts and workshops. All have a system at their core.

Just don’t hand me a piece of paper, that will mysteriously vanish into the ether, never to be seen again.

Organisation builds trust. It makes clients feel safe. It keeps energy focused on the work, rather than searching for the correct file or wondering what you should be doing and when, or if it’s working.

I love being the person who quietly sorts the mess so we can get on with making something brilliant.

5: You’re capable of more than you give yourself credit for.

I’ve had projects that made me want to run for the hills. Requests that felt too big, too complex, too far out of my depth. That’s when imposter syndrome usually swaggers in, zaps my confidence, and disappears with all my self-belief. What a wanker.

But almost every time I’ve gritted my teeth, given imposter syndrome the finger, and said yes anyway, I’ve come out stronger. Not just because I learned a new skill (though that often happens), but because I proved to myself I could. Each time I do it, I rewire a tiny part of my brain and make it easier to say yes next time.

Even when it’s terrifying. Especially when it’s terrifying.
(Though I might still need a lie down in a dark room afterwards.)

6: Solo doesn’t mean alone

I’ve always liked working quietly, head down, music on, no interruptions. I can happily go days without talking to anyone. But over time, I’ve realised that in business (and life) going it alone makes everything harder than it needs to be.

Freelancing is brilliant, but it’s also a pretty solo lifestyle. That doesn’t mean you should spend every day stuck at your desk on your own, though. Please don’t do that. I’ve tried it, and it’s horrible. Go and find some humans to talk to. Join a thing, start a thing, go for a walk and say “hello” to someone. It helps.

Spending time with other freelancers reminds you that you’re not the only one worrying about deadlines or stressing over projects. Connecting with other brilliant professionals – animators, copywriters, developers – means you can take on work that’s bigger and more exciting than anything you could do solo.

And then there are the people who support you: accountants, coaches, marketing folk, or that mate who’ll tell you straight when you’re overthinking. These relationships aren’t extras, they’re part of how you build a business that lasts.

For me, the mix is the sweet spot. A bit of professional overlap, a dollop of collaboration, and some honest support. It all adds up to something steadier and more sustainable than sitting in a room trying to do everything on your own.

7: Everything in your business is your business!

I mean, it’s really freaking annoying, but when you run your own business, nothing is “someone else’s problem.” It’s all yours. And I don’t just mean the fun bits.

I mean the contracts, the invoices, the awkward conversations about money, the tech setups, how the heck social media works, even how you manage your inbox and why the hell your emails aren’t appearing on your phone. Oh, and the WiFi has gone down again…

That doesn’t mean you need to be an expert in all of it. I’ve called on people smarter than me for legal stuff, accounts and dealing with the tax man, marketing help, and website and email problems. But even when you delegate, you’ve still got to keep an eye on it. It’s easy to think you can forget about those bits and focus on the “fun” part. Big mistake. The times I signed a contract without getting advice, didn’t understand what was going on with a tech setup, or ignored my numbers, I ended up stressed, broke, or both.

If you’re a freelancer, you’re a business owner. And your business deserves your full attention. But it’s not all doom and gloom, and more things to add to your to-do list. Once you take ownership of everything, you feel more in control. More confident. More able to ride out the tricky bits because you know you’re on top of the whole picture.

It’s not about doing everything yourself, it’s about being an effective captain of your ship. Ahoy sailor!

8: Stay curious.

The world is full of cool and interesting stuff that will inspire you, make you laugh, make you think, enrage you, and, who knows, maybe even come in handy for a random project that walks through your door three years from now. Plus, it’s helpful to know obscure facts in a pub quiz, so it’s win-win.

The work always gets better when you feed your brain with things outside of design. Science magazines, overheard conversations, history books, daft TV shows, the back of a cereal box. It all goes in. Later, when you’re staring at a tricky brief, your brain starts rummaging and pulls something unexpected out of the pile.

Of course, you need depth, to know your craft, your tools, your process. But you also need breadth. The wider your knowledge, the more dots you’ve got to connect, and the richer your ideas become.

I’ve lost count of the number of client meetings where I’ve been hanging onto understanding by the tips of my fingers, only to suddenly remember some late-night documentary or half-heard podcast. That little nugget can be the thing that makes it all make sense.

Curiosity keeps the well topped up and makes the whole job ten times more fun.

Stay interested in everything. It’s the best creative fuel there is.

9: Know when to say no (and why)

I’ve said yes to projects I knew weren’t right. I’ve ignored red flags because I wanted to be “nice.” Finished jobs I should never have started. And pretty much every single time, it’s drained my energy, wrecked my schedule (and my sanity), and left me wondering why I didn’t just say no.

I’ve done the late-night panics, the weekend scrambles, the “sure, I’ll squeeze it in” or “yeah, I can do that by this afternoon, no problem!” replies that left me wrecked and resentful.

Working out how work works for me was a hefty lesson that took a long time to click. How much can I realistically take on? What kind of projects do I actually want to do? And how can I say no to the ones I don’t, without having to live on baked beans? Finding those answers has helped me keep my sanity (ish) and do work I’m genuinely proud of, instead of sulking my way through another misaligned brief.

Saying no is hard when you run your own business. But it’s the only way to make space for the projects, people, and ideas that are actually worth your time. I try to keep regular hours, be honest about what I can take on, and properly step away from work on evenings and weekends. Though full disclosure: I worked most of last weekend, so it’s still a work in progress. Sometimes the best-laid plans and all that…

Setting limits isn’t about being difficult. It’s how you make sure your time, energy, and brain power go where they’ll have the most impact.

10: Set the Stage for Work.

Being freelance (or working from home) means a lot of the usual “cues” for work mode are missing. No commute, no office to swan into, no real reason to get out of your PJs. Which means getting your head in the game when there’s laundry to be done or sun to be bathed in can be tricky.

That’s why you have to create your own cues. Clothes that make you feel confident. Sitting at an actual desk, not the dining table or, worse, the sofa. Lighting a candle in winter. Playing some loud noughties emo (just me?). Chatting to yourself at the coffee machine (also just me?). Whatever it looks like, they’re all little signals that say: this is work mode, time to get on with it.

Early on, I realised even something as small as wearing shoes made me feel more “proper.” Since then, I’ve collected a bunch of these cues, certain drinks, “work clothes,” and little routines that keep me mostly on track. And after a period of not being able to face going there, I’ve made my office a place I actually want to be. I’ve just added some plants and a ridiculous rope light that syncs with my music – and it’s lifted my mood no end. Sometimes it really is the daftest things that make the difference.

And when those habits start to go sideways, when I find myself working from the sofa, ignoring my desk, showing up in grotty old joggers, that’s a pretty good signal that something is up. Time to sort my space, rethink my habits, or change how I’m working (or what I’m working on) before burnout creeps in. Again.

11: Progress Looks Boring Up Close.

Fifteen years in, I’ve realised that most growth doesn’t feel like growth while it’s happening. It feels like admin. Or routine. Or showing up when you’d rather do anything else. (Why does laundry seem so appealing when you’re avoiding important paperwork?)

Progress doesn’t feel exciting while you’re in it. It’s repetition, setbacks, and showing up even when you don’t want to. It’s the unglamorous, consistent bits. The systems you build, the habits you stick to, the things you commit to over and over that slowly, sometimes frustratingly slowly, move you forward. That’s how you hit the big goals, not through dramatic leaps, but by doing the small, boring things for long enough that they start to add up. Then one day you look back and realise you’re doing things that used to feel impossible.

I’d set myself a goal at the start of the year: a 100kg deadlift. Getting there was just steady work, turning up, making it a priority, doing the sessions even when I didn’t feel like it. Nothing flashy, just showing up over and over until the small gains added up. When I finally hit it this past weekend, there wasn’t a rush or a big moment, just a quiet sense of having reached something I’d worked for. High five and move on.

Business feels the same. You rarely get a big moment of “now I’ve made it.” You just keep turning up, doing the reps, and one day the heavy stuff feels light. Then you start looking for what’s next…

12: It Will Probably Be OK!

Files break. Deadlines slip. Someone panics about a colour. The feedback will make no sense. Whatever you can imagine will probably go wrong at some point (and some things you can’t imagine).

In the early days, I panicked. I thought everything was a disaster. But over time, I learned: this is just how projects go. There is always something. And eventually you learn to trust yourself in those situations, you get to the point where you’ve seen it all before, dealt with something like it and can stare disaster in the face and say “Not today, buddy”.

Most things can be fixed, and the rest usually don’t matter as much as you think. The trick is to stay calm, be methodical, and keep your sense of humour. Clients, and your blood pressure, will thank you for it.

Then go and pour yourself a stiff glass of something as a reward for saving the day. No cape required.

13: Evolution is part of the job.

Nothing about running a business stays still for long. Change is inevitable.

Sometimes that change comes from within, and sometimes it’s driven by the outside world; often it’s a mix of both. Change can be an absolute bastard, but it almost always leads to growth – painful, frightening growth, growth that can feel like failure for a bit, but growth nevertheless.

I’ve had times when I felt I’d lost my direction, my work looked different, I’d stopped enjoying part (or all) of my job, or I was being pulled towards new things. I felt distracted, unfocused, unsure of the ground I stood on. But it wasn’t failure. I was evolving, adjusting, learning, and responding to whatever was happening in my world and the wider one. And ultimately coming out stronger for it all.

New tools, new platforms, new ways of working pop up on an almost daily basis, and pretending you can freeze things the way they were is a shortcut to frustration. Not every twist that some unstable tech-bro billionaire spits out will be right for you (or humanity), but knowing that something is complete bollocks is better than not knowing about it at all.

Experience is great, it’s what gives you confidence and perspective. The trouble is, it can also make you rigid. Leaning too heavily on the old ‘We’ve always done it this way’ or ‘I’ve seen this 1000 times before’ is a sure-fire way to miss something brilliant. The longer you’ve been doing something, the easier it is to stick with what you know works, but that’s not how good ideas happen. I’ve learned to keep a bit of beginner energy alive, to stay curious, to question what I’m doing, and to try things that feel slightly uncomfortable.

The trick is to learn to roll with it. (And don’t let anybody get in your way .)

14: Work with people who care

There was a long stretch in my career where I said yes to anyone who waved a budget at me. Big bland corporates, vaguely questionable businesses, companies I didn’t believe in. I helped rich businesses get richer, helped put money in the pockets of people who, frankly, didn’t need it or deserve it. All while adding a whole heap of design litter to the world. It paid the bills, but it never sat right. It wore me down if I’m honest. 

That all changed when I realised I wasn’t tired of design, I was tired of doing it for the wrong people. People who care about profit, the bottom line or KPIs, rather than people who care about something bigger. So I shifted. I moved towards work that felt good to make. Towards companies and organisations that actually give a shit and want to make things better: charities, not-for-profits, B Corps, ethical businesses, education, arts, music, sport. Clients who see the world as I do, so I can use my powers (such as they are) for good.

The conversations got easier, the work got clearer. I stopped feeling like I was propping up things I didn’t believe in and started feeling like I was making a difference in a good way. Now I choose clients based on more than the brief (and the budget). I look for people and organisations that care about purpose over profit. And man, does that feel much better!

15: Have fun.

For all the stress, the admin, the chasing, the deadlines, and the doubt, being a creative for a living is ridiculously lucky. You get to play with ideas. You get to learn about industries you never knew existed. You get to make things that matter to people. And if you’re really lucky, you might even make a small difference.
Fun is what keeps you going when everything else feels heavy. It’s what keeps the lights on creatively. If you can find the play in the process, the rest gets a whole lot easier, and even the crappy bits don’t feel so crappy.

The post 15 lessons in 15 years on running a creative busines appeared first on Sam Osborne - Design and Illustration.

The organisations I work best with tend to share something. It’s not just that they’re charities, B-Corps, arts organisations or education teams. It’s more about intent. Energy. A desire to do things properly and to do them well.

They tend to be:

• Change-makers.
• Storytellers.
• Good doers.
• Educators.
• Movement builders.
• Campaigners.
• Policy shapers.
• Solution seekers.
• Hopeful realists.
• Big-hearted brands.
• Optimists with a plan.
• People rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it.

In practical terms, that usually means charities and non-profits, ethical brands and B-Corps, arts and cultural organisations, and education institutions. Teams working hard for people, place and planet. Organisations driven by purpose, not just profit.

What they often need isn’t just design. It’s a visual communication partner. Someone who can think strategically as well as creatively, and shape how ideas are expressed, not just how they look.

Someone who can challenge a brief when it isn’t clear. Someone who understands scrutiny and stakeholder pressure. Someone who knows when to simplify and when to amplify. Someone who can turn that change-making energy into design that moves people to act.

Good design partnership involves shared responsibility for the outcome. Clear thinking. Honest conversations. Mutual trust.

When that partnership works, the results feel different. The work is clearer. The message lands. The organisation feels confident putting it into the world.

That’s the role I tend to play, a visual communication strategy partner (if you want to give it a business-card-breaking title!) as much as an illustrator or designer.

If you recognise yourself somewhere in that list, there’s a good chance we’d work well together.

Let’s discuss how I can help with your next project. Get in touch. I’d love to help you share your message with clarity, confidence, and impact

The post Finding the right design partner as a purpose-led organisation appeared first on Sam Osborne - Design and Illustration.

That’s not because the work isn’t valuable. It’s because these documents are doing several difficult jobs at once.

• They need to satisfy governance and compliance requirements.
• They need to speak to multiple audiences with different levels of interest and expertise.
• They need to reflect the organisation accurately and responsibly.
• And they need to communicate clearly, not just exist.

For charities and non-profits in particular, these documents often carry additional scrutiny and responsibility.

That combination of requirements makes reports hard to organise, plan and complete. This applies whether you’re commissioning an annual report, impact report, or multi-year strategy document.

And it’s not just the jobs the document needs to do that make things complex. At the heart of most report projects are a series of tensions:

There is too often much content, and not everything can be treated as equally important. Deciding what to leave out, what to prioritise and where to place information can feel impossible.

Different stakeholders care about different things. Finance teams, leadership, programme leads, funders, and communications teams all bring different priorities and concerns. Agreeing on what matters most and whose input carries weight at different stages can be difficult.

The report is usually trying to speak to multiple external audiences. Supporters, partners, funders, regulators, and the general public may all encounter it in different ways. Trying to satisfy every audience equally often leads to documents that are cautious, dense, and hard to read.

Stories, data, and messaging all compete for space. Without clear priorities, planning and design have very little flexibility. Important stories are diluted by the need to say everything, and structure becomes a compromise rather than a choice.

By the time design starts, the document is often already very full. None of this means anyone has done anything wrong. It’s the reality of working on high-stakes documents with multiple stakeholders and audiences who all care deeply about the outcome.

What makes a report effective, not just compliant

Good reports are not defined by how much they include. They’re defined by how clearly they communicate. That usually means:

• Being clear about who the report is actually for. Proritising audiences can feel difficult and risky but it makes the communication more focused and effective. Are your readers time-poor? Are they data-literate? Do they want numerical evidence, or do they want to understand the impact through stories and voices?
• Deciding what really matters, and what supports it. A clear narrative or theme that runs through the report is a great tool for deciding what belongs, what can be reduced, and what can be left out. Stories and data then support that core message, rather than compete with it.
• Helping readers find their way through complex information. Lean on designers and copywriters to help pace and plan the information. Treat the document as a journey rather than a container. Balance dense information with ligher sections.
• Using strong hierarchy, so people can skim without missing the point. If someone only reads headings, pull quotes, and data visualisations, do they still get the gist of what you want to say?
• Giving important stories room to land. This can mean adding more pages to give important information space, it can mean reducing word counts, or finding alternative ways to tell these stories.
• Creating assets that can be reused beyond the PDF. There are heaps of people who won’t read the full document. Designing charts, illustrations, or summaries that can be reused on websites, presentations, or social channels helps your stories reach further.

Design can’t fix unclear thinking, but it can support good decisions and make them visible. The earlier you bring your designer in on these conversations the more you can lean on their expertise about how to manage tensions and create an effective report.

How to kick-start a report project

Before getting into formats or page counts, a few questions tend to make everything easier later

Who really needs to read this, and what do they need to take away? If you had to narrow the purpose of the report down to a single paragraph, what would it be? What do your key audience need to hear?

What would success look like for this document? Are you counting downloads, responses, fundraising, column inches? Or is it more about creating something the team can align around and feel proud of?

Who needs to be involved, and in what way? Who contributes content, who gives feedback, and who signs things off? The more people that you ask, the more opinions you’ll get, so being clear about roles and timing can help prevent design and planning by committee. Key people, such as Marketing Directors, Financial Directors or CEOs should be on board early and understand their role in the process.

How might this content live beyond the final report? What other channels do you have to deliver this information? How can you leverage them? Does the report need to be a document in the traditional sense? Could it be a graphic novel, a movie, a deck of cards, a microsite?

What assets do we need to tell these stories properly? Maybe you need to commission some photography, maybe a suite of illustrations. Maybe the document is part of a much larger push and needs a stronger identity of its own, turning it into a small branding project rather than a one-off layout. Do you need copywriting support? Data visualisation?

Thinking about these questions early doesn’t make the work smaller, but it often makes it clearer and more effective. It creates shared understanding across all parties before the detail sets in.

If you’re planning a report and it already feels complex or difficult to untangle, that’s normal. These documents benefit from early conversations, shared priorities, and clear decisions. Sometimes it’s useful just to talk through the thinking before committing to formats or timelines.

If you’d like to discuss how I can help with your next report design project, get in touch. I’d love to help you share your message with clarity, confidence, and impact

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Below are six ways charities can use illustration to boost clarity, engagement, and results.

How can illustration strengthen fundraising campaigns?

Fundraising campaigns rely on quick, emotional connection. A photograph can capture a moment, but illustration lets you tell the whole story in a single, hopeful image. It balances the realism of a situation with an approachable tone that inspires generosity.

For example, my work with CAFOD’s World Gifts campaign used bold illustrations to turn abstract donation ideas into something supporters could visualise, remember, and share.

Fundraising illustrations for CAFOD World Gifts

What’s the role of illustrated infographics in donor reports?

Annual reports and research documents often drown in dense text. Illustrated infographics turn data into clear, engaging visuals that highlight key statistics and achievements.

For Feeding Britain, I designed infographics that helped partners and donors quickly grasp impact data — making the reports easier to read, more persuasive, and more likely to be remembered.

Infographic illustrations for Feeding Britain

Can illustration make educational content more engaging?

Yes. Education and awareness campaigns need to simplify complexity without losing nuance. Illustration breaks down big ideas into accessible, bite-sized visuals while maintaining a consistent brand style.

For several charity clients, I’ve created illustrated materials that helped learners absorb new information faster and inspired them to take action.

Materials for education created for various charity clients

How can charities use merchandise to raise more funds?

Merchandise does more than raise money — it turns supporters into ambassadors. Illustrated designs on t-shirts, bags, or notebooks make everyday items into conversation starters. The more distinctive the design, the more likely supporters are to wear it proudly, spreading awareness organically.

For clients across different causes, illustrated merchandise has boosted both fundraising and brand visibility.

Merchandise designs for various clients

What difference does illustration make in donor communications?

Regular supporter communications — from newsletters to magazines — only work if readers stay engaged. Illustration adds warmth, professionalism, and visual storytelling that draws readers in and keeps them connected.

Projects for clients like Earth Kind and Active Essex have shown how illustrated layouts can transform even routine updates into polished, eye-catching publications.

Magazine and social media designs and illustrations for various clients

Why choose illustration for big-impact campaigns?

Above-the-line campaigns, billboards, adverts, social pushes, have only seconds to capture attention. Bold illustration creates fresh, memorable visuals that stand out across formats.

For the Electoral Reform Society and other mission-led organisations, illustrated campaigns provided a strong, cohesive look that worked from posters to digital ads.

Illustrations for adverts and campaigns

Why charities should explore illustration in their marketing

If you’ve been searching for creative charity marketing materials, illustration might not have been your first thought. But it’s one of the most effective ways to enhance campaigns, reports, education, and donor communications.

As a designer and illustrator experienced in the charity sector, I specialise in making complex messages clear and creating visuals that resonate with audiences. I’ve worked with Great Ormond Street Hospital, CAFOD World Gifts, Feeding Britain, the Ethical Property Company, the Electoral Reform Society, Save the Children, and more.

If you’d like to discuss how illustration could elevate your next project, get in touch — I’d love to help you share your message with clarity, confidence, and impact

Quick FAQs

Isn’t photography cheaper than illustration?
Sometimes, but photography can’t always cover sensitive topics or abstract ideas. Illustration gives you flexibility, brand consistency, and the ability to show things photos can’t.

How much does commissioning illustration cost for a charity?
It depends on scope and usage, but I always scope projects transparently. For a deeper dive, see How much does illustration cost?.

The post Creative charity marketing and how illustration can make the difference appeared first on Sam Osborne - Design and Illustration.

The hardware, software, and systems that form a safety net for my creative workflow and ensure I can provide reliable illustration services.

As an illustrator and designer, my working world revolves around a functioning computer, access to design programmes, admin software, client and personal files, extensions, typeface, images etc – the list goes on and on.

Relying on computer equipment and digital services is brilliant and allows me all kinds of freedom and flexibility but it comes with the risk of things going wrong. Computers can break, files can get corrupted, hard drives can die, the internet can go down and much worse. Any of those things happening runs the risk of me not being able to service my clients, losing work and letting people down. That’s not just bad for business, it’s bad for my health – I don’t want to be laying awake at night worrying about whether something is going to go wrong and work ends up irretrievably lost.

So that I can sleep at night I have a series of backups and redundancies built into my systems. This also means my clients are reassured that their work is safe and I’m not going to suddenly throw a broken computer-shaped wrench into a project schedule or lose an important file right before it goes to print.

I have experience of what it’s like when things go wrong, really wrong. Before I went freelance the office of the agency I was working for burnt down from a power surge during a thunderstorm. It was a nightmare, everything was gone. All the computers, all the on-site backups, the desks, the paperwork. Everything. Putting it all back together was a daunting task and it stuck with me when I started working for myself. I do all I can to ensure that I’ve got a plan for reliable illustration services and the continuation of work under almost any circumstances. 

A Track Record of Reliability

I’ve been working for myself since early 2011 and in that time I’ve only had about two days of total ‘I can’t do any work because technology has let me down’ downtime. And that’s through three computers dying on me (thanks Apple), our broadband getting turned off months too early when we moved house, a 160-page brochure file getting destructively corrupted and countless other little dramas.

The Blueprint to My Backup Strategy

My approach to disaster recovery is multifaceted, involving:

• Cloud-based backups and software subscriptions
• Local backup systems
• Using multiple devices

Here’s a closer look at my setup:

• Dropbox: For syncing and accessing files across all my devices.
• Time Machine: For daily backups of my main iMac, ensuring I can quickly recover lost work.
• External Hard Drive: For archiving old work and storing irreplaceable assets, with additional backup to Dropbox.
• Multiple Computers: To ensure I’m not solely reliant on my main iMac.
• Subscription-Based Design Programs: Allowing me to download essential tools on any computer when needed.
• Cloud Storage for Design Assets: Using Adobe’s cloud storage for easy access to client assets and design elements.
• iPad Backup: Work created on my iPad is backed up to either Dropbox or iCloud.
• Online Business Tools: For tracking and planning, accessible from anywhere.
• Mobile Internet Backup: Using the 4G network during internet outages.

I rely pretty heavily on Dropbox and that comes with risks. Will they still exist in 5/10 years? What if they have a problem and lose my backups? That’s why I run local backups so I’ve always got my own copies of live work files. I keep an eye on what Dropbox is doing, how their system service (uptime) is performing and what they are doing to ensure data is safe.

Putting It to the Test

A recent computer failure underscored the effectiveness of my backup system, enabling me to quickly pivot and continue working without significant downtime. In fact, most of my clients didn’t know that my hard drive had completely died (after months of being terribly unstable) as no files were lost and no deadlines were missed. A win for my system!

Conclusion

My comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan not only secures my work and peace of mind but also ensures that my clients can rely on uninterrupted service. Through careful planning and strategic backups, I’m prepared for whatever challenges may come my way.

Not everyone is as prepared for the unexpected as they could be. It’s crucial to ask about backup and continuity plans when entrusting your projects to a creative professional. After all, it’s not just about safeguarding the creative process; it’s about ensuring the resilience and reliability of the entire workflow from start to finish. So, when choosing a partner for your projects, make sure to consider if they offer reliable illustration services as an integral part of your decision-making process.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss how I can help with your next illustration project.

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A brief is an essential tool when commissioning creative work. It is the foundation on which everything else about the project and relationship is built on. Investing time in writing a good illustration brief will pay dividends later in the project and give you a common understanding of what is needed.

What’s the point of a brief?

Wikipedia describes a creative brief as “a type of educational or business document including desires and requirements” i.e. what you want and what you need. And, despite the name, it’s usually better to write more than less. Here are just a few reasons why writing a brief will be the best thing you ever do for your project:

• Helpful for you: A brief is a blueprint for your project and should be as helpful for you as it is for your illustrator. Going through the process of writing the project details down can often highlight areas of risk or things that need thinking about further.
• Gives peace of mind: A brief provides confidence that you and your illustrator are on the same page when it comes to the project scope and that you’re not going to end up with any costly surprises. You can be sure that your illustrator knows exactly what you expect and when.
• A good investment of time: All commissioning involves a bit of back and forth with questions and clarifications but taking the time to write a good brief reduces this a heck of a lot. The more you can preempt an illustrator’s questions the less you’ll have to fire off additional emails. This is especially good news if you are approaching more than one illustrator with your brief.
• Get the best person for the job: Think of the brief as your sales pitch to reel in the best illustrator you can. It gives an illustrator confidence that you are an organised client, that you will provide the right information at the right time and be generally cool to work with. Good briefs are full of little details that make us excited about your specific project. By taking the time to craft your brief you are showing us that you value illustration and what it can add to your project and that we can work together as partners. This makes us happy! Working with an illustrator who is enthusiastic about your job for reasons other than getting paid will always result in a better end product.

What’s in a bad brief?

Let’s start with what is not a good brief. All too often it’s three hastily written lines that contain almost no information, take the following example:

“Hi, I’m looking for an illustrator to create some images for my website. How much would it cost and when can you have them done by”

That leaves us illustrators with more questions than answers. How many illustrations? What are they of? When do you need them by?…. the list goes on and on. If you catch an illustrator who is lucky enough to be busy you might find you get no response at all from an email like this. It all seems too vague, too difficult, too messy. It’s OK to not know all the answers and to ask for advice when commissioning but we need more than two sentences to start from.

What’s in a good brief?

Every illustrator works differently and approaches pricing and project management from a slightly different angle but there are some bits of information that are standard across all creative briefs. Try to think about it from the illustrator’s point of view. They know nothing about your project, your business or what you are trying to achieve, so you need to provide them with as much context and information as you can. Good sections to start with are:

Project name
This helps with communication and paperwork, whatever you call it is what will appear on our estimates and invoices so it’s best to be clear and descriptive so we can all easily keep track of it.

About you
If you are a new client to the illustrator you’ve approached then give us some background info about your organisation. What do you do and why? This helps us put the rest of the information in context and means we can make informed decisions about our clients.

What is the project?
This is where you explain what you need and how it fits into your organisation. Writing “We need an illustration for a poster” is good but “We need an illustration for a poster that will help us sell our new widget that is going to change the face of washing up forever” is much better.

Target audience 
Who are we aiming the illustration at? Designing something for new mums is different from designing something for hedge fund managers. Who your audience is will set the tone for the illustration.

Vision
If you have a particular style in mind then write that in your brief. If you can provide visual examples then that is even better. If you’ve seen something in our portfolio that you thought would make us a good fit then mention that. By doing this we can see if you are drawn to complex, detailed styles or a more simple, graphic look. Often the style will affect how long the illustrations take to complete so this becomes a factor when pricing work.

Goals
What are you trying to achieve with the project? Do you want your audience to do or feel a certain thing? Do you need them to understand something, visit something or donate? How will you judge the success of the project?

Deliverables
Now you can go into details about specifically what you need. Do you need 40 small spot illustrations for a website or 12 double-page spreads for a children’s book? Do you need one illustration that can work across multiple formats? This helps give us an idea of the scale of the job and how best to approach it.

Distribution and uses
How will you use the illustrations? The price of an illustration is often set based on your end uses (see my pricing blog post here) so knowing whether it’s going to be part of a long-running campaign in a national newspaper or handed out to people at a local community meeting will make a difference to your costs.

Artwork specifications
What size do you need the illustrations to be and what file formats do you need us to provide? Large illustrations can take longer and if you need everything as low-resolution jpgs for the web and high res pdfs for print plus each illustration needs to be split out so you can use it separately then we need to consider this in the scope of work.

Brand guidelines
Are there any colours, fonts, logos, etc that we need to ensure are included? If you have an official brand guidelines document then include that with the brief if you can. This helps us understand your style and will dictate what we can and can’t do.

Key milestones
When do you need the work completing? We can then work out if the job you’ve specified is possible in that timescale and will fit into our studio schedule around other jobs we have on. It also helps us with our own financial planning. Knowing that your project wouldn’t be billable for several months may mean we need to take on other jobs in the meantime to keep the books balanced. Often clients will have staged milestones to meet stakeholder requirements – e.g. we need roughs for next month’s sales meeting so the team can approve them. Let your illustrator know this schedule as far in advance as you can.

Project budget
What is your budget for the work you’ve outlined? I know that a lot of people don’t like doing this but it makes the process so much quicker. It’s often thought that illustrators will just bung in a quote for the full budget amount but in my experience, that isn’t true. A budget gives us an idea of what you think the project is worth, sometimes we’ll agree, sometimes we’ll think it’s more or less than you’ve mentioned. If I think it’s less then I’ll quote less. This is especially true if you are clear that you have put the brief out to several illustrators.

Next steps
Explain what you would like back from us in response to your brief. Are you just looking for a price or would you like us to put together a more detailed proposal? Never ask illustrators to do work for free but it’s OK to ask for a written outline approach to your brief and to provide examples of previous work. Would you prefer to schedule a call to talk it through? Are you the final decision maker or do you need to take it to someone else or a committee of people? All this information allows us the tailor our response to your needs and prevents you from having to come back to ask for more information from us.

I hope that has demystified the process of writing a good illustration brief. To find out more about how illustrators price work then check out my blog post about that

If you’d like to discuss your project brief then get in touch and we can talk!

The post How to write an illustration brief that saves time and gets great results appeared first on Sam Osborne - Design and Illustration.

I would like to know how you got started in your field. How did you get into the position you are now and what steps did you take?
I studied graphic design at university and worked as a print and branding designer for over 10 years after I graduated. I worked for small agencies were I got to see the whole range of skills and jobs required to run a creative studio – from the creative bits themselves to quoting, working with suppliers and dealing directly with clients. In 2010 I started looking around for my next step. I interviewed at various agencies but couldn’t find anything that got me excited. At the time I really missed drawing – my job role was very straight graphic design and typography so not much room for drawing or illustration. At some point in the job hunting process someone suggested going freelance and a little light bulb went off in my head. I figured it was a pretty good way to allow me to get back to creativity on my terms and the adventure of it seemed exciting.

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One of the first questions I get asked by clients is how much the job is going to cost. It’s never a simple question and having a nice neat price list is almost impossible for most illustrators. If you’re not used to commissioning illustration it can all seem a bit of a dark art, so here is my illuminating guide to how illustrators work out their fees.

It may seem obvious, you want an original illustration of a women gardening for your advert, you ask an illustrator, they work out how long it will take and give you a price. It would be great if it were that simple but pricing rarely is. There are a lot more variables than how long it will take that effect the cost of a job. If you make contact with an illustrator they are likely to come back with a whole bunch of questions about your project, such as:

• What the illustration will be used for? Is it for print or online? How big is the print run? Is it local, national or global in scale? How long will you be using it?
• What size is the client? Massive global companies are understandably likely to be charged more than small local businesses and start-ups.
• Do you want to licence the work or buy outright? Licensing the work involves a rights agreement based on the time, markets and territories the illustrations will be used for. After and outside of this agreement the rights to the illustration revert back to the original illustrator. Buying outright can be more expensive but means you own all the rights to the work in perpetuity.
• How complex do you need the illustration to be? More detailed illustration styles will cost more money.
• How will the project be structured? If you want to see lots of rough sketches at the start or need several different sized deliverables at the end then the price will reflect this extra work.
• What timescales are you working to? If you are in a mad hurry for the work then you may end up paying rush fees.

A lot of these questions are to try and work out the business value of the project to the client. If the illustration is going to be used by a global business on worldwide TV adverts and be the ‘face’ of that company for a long period of time then it’s of mammothly huge business value and they should be spending more then a few thousand pounds on it. A lot more.

How I price work

As a member of The Association of Illustrators I have access to pricing guides that help me understand what the industry standard cost would be given all the above criteria. This is an incredibly useful resource that I use to confidently work out what my final quote for a job will be. I also take into account what I’ve charged previously for similar jobs, the overall project requirements and if the job is a good fit for my style. Because I’m an illustrator and a graphic designer there are often additional elements that I can help with, such as brochure, brand or packaging designs using the illustrations. These are either included in the overall cost of the project or listed as separate line items so my client can decide how much they would like me to help with.

Project fee vs hourly rate

Generally I work on a project fee basis rather than an hourly or daily rate. I’ve never been a fan of charging by time for a number of reasons, not least:

• I work quickly and efficiently and I don’t think I should be financially penalised for that.
• Inspiration and creativity doesn’t respect the clock. It doesn’t show up the moment I sit down and start a timer!
• An hourly rate doesn’t reflect the business value of the job to my client.
• Lots of types of jobs have standard accepted pricing, editorial illustration being one, so an hourly rate is useless in this situation.

The only time I find an hourly rate is useful is when a project starts to creep outside the scope of the original agreement. If that happens then I usually revert to my hourly rate to charge for the extra elements. If there is lots of extra work this can result in the additional work costing more in total than the original job! A side note: – this is why it’s really important, for both parties, to have a detailed and agreed brief and project specification before starting any work and to understand the financial implications of scope creep.

Then the remaining bit of the pricing puzzle is to work out licensing or buyout fees. I come from a graphic design background where licensing doesn’t really exist so it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I started working in the illustration world. There are some jobs where it’s obviously very useful and others where it really makes little sense to me. I have a few ways of dealing with this and approach each project on a job-by-job basis in conversation with the client. As an industry standard illustration work is generally bought on license and is charged according to its usage, the more rights you want to buy the more expensive it becomes.

Reveal your budget

I know that a lot of clients don’t like to do this but, honestly it makes this process so much easier. If you tell me what you need and how much you have in the pot to pay for it I can quite quickly work out if the two tally up. If they do, then great we can get to work, if not then I can probably work something out to bring the project in on budget – a slightly different style, less revisions, a more specific licence etc. Commissioning design and illustration is about taking a journey together so it’s in my best interest to make your budget work if I can. Playing your cards close to your chest on this often means that we can’t ever meet in the middle and so we both lose out.

I hope that has demystified the process of costing an illustration job for you a little. If you’d like to talk about my prices for a specific job get in touch and we can talk!

If you’d like to find out more about writing a project brief then check out my blog post about that here

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