Tattoo and Body Art Culture Editing and Proofreading Services

A client arrives with four photographs from the internet and wants "something like these, but mine". Six hours of work later there is a design on somebody's arm for the rest of their life, and two questions have been quietly left unanswered: how close is too close to the artist whose photograph started it, and who owns the drawing that came out of the conversation.

We edit what tattoo artists, studios and body art practitioners produce — design brief and consultation records, custom design agreements and deposit terms, portfolio and reference documentation, guest artist and residency arrangements, apprenticeship and studio agreements, convention and exhibition applications, cultural and heritage design protocols, and the writing that supports a portfolio submitted for publication. Our editors work on the record of a conversation that becomes permanent.

The design brief is the document that turns a conversation into an agreement, and its failure is a reference folder with no record of what was decided. Two people looking at the same photographs are seldom picturing the same tattoo. We work through these so the brief separates what the client wants taken from a reference from what they are only using it to indicate — the subject, the composition, the style, the palette, the scale — since a client who brings an image usually wants one of those five and the artist assumes another; so the artist's position on copying is stated plainly, because reproducing another artist's custom piece is a real question in this trade and it is better settled at the consultation than in the chair; so the placement, size and flow on the body are recorded with how the design behaves as the body moves and ages; so the elements the client has explicitly refused are written down, given that "no colour" and "not too dark" are the notes most often forgotten between the consultation and the stencil; so the ownership of the drawing is addressed — whether it may be reused, published, or tattooed on somebody else; so any design drawing on a cultural tradition is discussed with what the artist will and will not make, as this is where the most serious mistakes in the trade happen; so the number of revisions and the point after which changes cost money is stated; and so the deposit terms and what they secure are written. Briefs written this way produce tattoos both parties are proud of.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client records, designs and studio documents. We are editors rather than tattooists, lawyers or cultural advisers, and we offer no view on design, technique, cultural protocol or any client decision. What we can do is get the conversation onto paper before the needle.