Making licensing legible

Context

Armadillo is a community-run platform where illustrators showcase licensable work so buyers can find them directly, and the two negotiate terms one-on-one. It's not intended to replace an artist's portfolio, and it's not a selling site like traditional stock illustration sites, and the site takes no commission for any licensing deals made through it. The site also requires that the art must be 100% created by the artist - no AI-generated works are allowed. The site was created as a reaction to AI art flooding traditional avenues for artists to sell their work.

I joined in February 2023 as a founding member of the volunteer design team. Armadillo hits the intersection of wanting to help artists make money, and artists needing to learn the very tricky rules and regulations that come with contract negotiations. As a volunteer member, I only dedicate a few hours per month to help push things along.

The problem

Illustrators have work that can be licensed in a number of ways - part of an editorial in the US can become a textile design in Bangladesh. Existing stock platforms take a cut, flatten pricing, and - as the founder learned when a major stock company told her they'd already trained a model on her art - treat the artists who fill the catalog as raw material rather than a party to the deal.

That premise creates a design problem most stock sites don't have. Because Armadillo doesn't process the transaction, the interface has to do the work the transaction normally does. Ordinary stock sites hide licensing behind a price and a checkout button. Armadillo has to make licensing legible enough that two people who may have differing experiences can do it themselves.

What I did

Researched both sides of the transaction. Licensing has two parties who rarely understand each other's constraints, so I interviewed one of each: a buyer at a major publishing house who licenses illustration professionally, and a couple of artists who are experienced in licensing their art and negotiating contracts that don't give away all their rights.

Information architecture and visual design. We based the identity off the initial armadillo logo created by the founder, making sure to follow WCAG 2.1 contrast standards when determining color combinations for backgrounds and text. From there, I built the initial component library and maintain the system in Figma as the source of truth that the volunteer dev team can build against.

Roadmapping, collaboratively. Because everyone volunteers in scattered hours, I help map the work into quarterly goals of one or two workflows at a time, so it stays manageable and the most necessary pieces get built first, and allowing time for more complicated workflows to be worked through and prototyped together as a team.

What's live vs. in build

Live: the pre-launch marketing site is a gallery of early adopter illustration work, a basic "How It Works" explainer, newsletter signup, and Kickstarter link.

In build: the CMS platform itself. We are building artist and buyer accounts, the upload and management of image galleries, search, and the contact-to-negotiate flow.

To come: An internal library of contracts, help learning legal terms and what they mean, paid accounts, and more!