Tattoo Etiquette: Respecting Your Artist's Time
Welcome to The Mothership Tattoo Collective. We’re excited to be part of your journey in creating meaningful art that you’ll cherish for a lifetime. Before we dive into the ink, let’s talk about something important: respecting our time and understanding the realities of tattooing.
We are wild creatures forced to live inside a system.
The Reality of Tattooing
Tattooing isn’t just a fun luxury experience; it’s a demanding profession that requires our full focus, energy, and dedication. Many people don’t realize how busy we are and how tattooing can take over our lives. The line between our personal and professional lives often blurs, leaving little room for downtime and our own personal interests. Therefore, we can be a little protective of our time.
When you’re at your consultation or tattoo appointment you have our full attention. We’re all about you and your tattoo, but remember, we’re juggling a lot—design, customer service, and everything in between, so outside of the time you’ve reserved, we are not always available. Every interaction matters, and we want to give you our best, but/and we are human beings with limits and needs.
Understanding the Process
Here’s how we make the magic happen when you decide to get a tattoo:
Filling Out the Booking Form: Before we schedule a consultation, please fill out our booking form. This helps us understand your tattoo dreams and plan accordingly. Make sure to add reference photos that communicate what you are generally going for. Adding random images because you're being lazy or hasty doesn’t help convey your idea. What is it about each reference that you like or dislike? Is it a cover up? Include a photo of the body part you want to work on. This is the beginning of midwifing your tattoo and serves as the foundation your artist will build off of—it's Communication 101. This is where we decide if your project is a good fit for us or not.
Booking a Consultation: After you submit the form, we’ll email you back with dates, rates, and set up a design consultation. We will collect a deposit for our time, and set up a consultation to not only discuss your ideas, preferences, and any questions you may have, but we will actually dive right into designing together in person! Our “consultations” are much more in depth than a 15 minute discussion. We take photos of the area, and mock up the design on our ipads in real time. This is the time to create the vision and be heard… not later. Not three weeks from now. Right now, in the design session, is the time to lock in. This insures that you will have a good idea of what your tattoo will be, and that you’ll like it, and reduces the stress of emailing back and forth about it.
Keep in mind that in-person consultations are a one-time deal per project, and are included in our rates. Each additional message about new ideas or desires for more design time can lower our hourly pay, and we want to keep things sustainable and fair. If your project needs more in-person design time beyond the time we already invested in-person, just offer to pay for it or don’t throw a tantrum if you’re asked to forfeit the old deposit and pay a new one. We don’t have lots of free time to give away. We have blogs to write.
Placing a Deposit: A deposit secures your appointment and shows us you’re ready to move forward. Deposits are non-refundable, but they do get credited toward your total when the tattoo is completed in full. If you haven’t placed a deposit yet, let’s hold off on discussing even more new tattoo ideas until you’re ready to commit to getting tattooed.
Design Revisions: After our chat, we’ll create a finalized design based on our discussions and mock up. Small adjustments are acceptable, but please note that I do not provide multiple revisions for free. If you decide to change your ideas completely, that will require a new deposit. We’re happy to make small adjustments, but complete redesigns and new ideas are a new project entirely.
Respecting Our Time
We understand that getting a tattoo is exciting, and you might have a lot of ideas. However, it’s important to respect our time as artists. Here are some guidelines to help keep things running smoothly:
Avoid Unpaid Labor: Discussing multiple tattoo ideas without a deposit can lead to unpaid labor. We often invest hours discussing one idea, only for it to change. This "bait and switch" can trap us into doing extra work outside of our scheduled hours, which isn't fair. It can also result in us feeling trapped into a comittment we didn’t actually make, for a design we never actually agreed to.
Limit Messaging and Micromanagement: While we appreciate your enthusiasm, constant messages and attempts to micromanage the design can be overwhelming. We want to collaborate with you, but remember, we have many clients to serve at the same time and we might be focused on one of them at a time, in order of our schedule.
Be Mindful of Last-Minute Changes: If you cancel or reschedule last minute or change your ideas after we’ve invested time, it can disrupt our workflow. We ask for your commitment to the process to ensure a smooth experience for everyone.
Respect Our Hours: We know creativity and your ideas can come at any time, but we do have lives outside of out 12-7:30 schedule. Messaging us at odd hours might not get the response you’re hoping for. Let’s keep our communication to reasonable times and avoid major holidays.
The Bottom Line
At The Mothership Tattoo Collective, we’re committed to providing you with a fantastic tattoo experience. By respecting our time and following these guidelines, you help us maintain a professional environment that allows us to focus on what we do best—creating beautiful tattoos.
Thank you for your understanding. We look forward to working with you on your next piece of art.
