{"id":14924,"date":"2023-11-02T12:22:17","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T12:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sam-osborne.co.uk\/?p=14924"},"modified":"2023-11-14T16:53:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T16:53:03","slug":"reliable-illustration-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sam-osborne.co.uk\/reliable-illustration-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Reliable illustration services: How I protect client work against all odds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The hardware, software, and systems that form a safety net for my creative <\/strong>workflow<\/b> and ensure I can provide reliable illustration services.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relying on computer equipment and digital services is brilliant and allows me all kinds of freedom and flexibility<\/a> 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\u2019s not just bad for business, it\u2019s bad for my health – I don\u2019t want to be laying awake at night worrying about whether something is going to go wrong and work ends up irretrievably lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have experience of what it\u2019s 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\u2019ve got a plan for reliable illustration services and the continuation of work under almost any circumstances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Track Record of Reliability<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been working for myself since early 2011 and in that time I\u2019ve only had about two days of total \u2018I can\u2019t do any work because technology has let me down\u2019 downtime. And that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Blueprint to My Backup Strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My approach to disaster recovery is multifaceted, involving:<\/p>\n\n\n\n