We’re happy to share with you this year’s results of the annual illustrator’s survey that Ben O’Brien (AKA Ben the Illustrator) started in 2017. We did our own survey of illustrators in 2014/15, but until Ben came along we didn’t have time (or the energy) to work on an updated and current round of questions. That’s no longer the case and we’re excited to revive this public service.

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Illustrators’ Survey 2018/19 https://illo.cc/survey18

There were lots of really interesting results, some good, some discouraging, and some that’ll encourage conversation about specific subjects for the long term. We didn’t address the open questions and answers that we were sent as part of the survey results, but we hope to put those to good use in the near future to give additional insight into our cherished community. A word of warning before you view the results: be careful not to jump to conclusions. Although just under 1500 illustrators took part in the survey, that’s still a very small percentage of our industry as a whole. If we’re able to do a survey each year, we hope that number will grow exponentially, allowing us to build on the results each year to give them more legitimacy and context. As with all surveys there’ll be user bias in play and results can be twisted and manipulated to work in favour of opposing views and opinions, so be careful of the connections people may make between the results and state as facts. Remember, correlation is not causation.

One thing we will need to address if we do more surveys in the future is the way we handle mental health questions. What we realised after receiving feedback from various sources is that having self-confidence issues and sometimes feeling anxious about things is not the same as having a diagnosable mental health problem like an anxiety disorder or depression. We did not make a distinction between the two in the survey, which was a mistake that would need to be updated with the correct terminology and wording in the next survey. Also, while talking about mental health, a lot of people have made a connection between mental health issues and low incomes – there was no defined connection between these two factors and the data was completely anonymised for the sake of our contributors privacy. This means that even if we wanted to, we can’t make a connection between the two as we don’t know who did or didn’t say that they were affected by both mental health and had a low income. GDPR advocates would be proud.

We were able to correlate some of the data we collected and it would be great to use that to make some really interesting infographics, as some people have suggested. What would be great though is if we’re able to collect a few years’ worth of data so that we’re able to show how the industry is changing from year to year. Even better is to be able to use the survey results to encourage change for the betterment and health of our colleges and friends. We all want a decent wage and a good life, and as a community making that happen is in our own hands.

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Illustrators’ Survey 2018/19 https://illo.cc/survey18

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