Sick of being ripped off? Raymond Biesinger illustrates a self-defense guide for creatives

The Montréal-based illustrator Raymond Biesinger is sick of wage theft in the creative industry. That’s why he’s created a whole book about it called 9 Times My Work Has been Ripped Off: An Informal Self-Defence Guide for Independent Creatives. Published by D+Q, it’s a 30,000-word, 60-image analysis of exactly nine times Raymond’s style has been blatantly lifted or directly stolen. Essentially: he got royally ripped off. Raymond started as an illustrator in magazines and advertising back in 2001 and now makes a living selling art prints and writing books while restoring and enlarging historical Canadian graphic design. It’s due to his love for the arts that he’s never cropped a signature off someone’s work (something that has happened to him).

The book began when Raymond became acquainted with a large non-profit organisation which was more capitalistically inclined than they’d like to admit. After screwing him over and offering compensation (and a non-disclosure agreement to keep him quiet), Raymond instead pitched the idea of writing about the situation, publishing it and making more money off that than what they were offering. The result became chapter nine and spiralled into a larger commentary on wage theft. “Central to the book is that to us, the legal system is uselessly slow and expensive – it just kind of floats overhead, partially informing everyone’s actions but enforcing very little,” says Raymond. “In that situation, we need to get creative about how we defend ourselves. Nobody else is going to do it for us.”

The book is adorned with a style that “chose” Raymond. He didn’t go to art school and instead picked from a “buffet of styles”, including punk gig posters, student newspapers and zines, “low-budget black and white environments”, he says. Rooted in collage, geometry and monochromatic colour schemes, his illustrations are playful, poster-like and punchy. Skilled in the shorthand communication found in advertising aesthetics, Raymond delivers his point succinctly with a giant zero sporting a sad face – of course, it’s the zero dollars he’s earned from being swindled.

Being ripped off does not feel good, obviously, but it’s so much more than just an emotional issue. Economical questions come into play (how much damage does that loss of income do to one’s wellbeing?) and power dynamics become blatantly obvious – oftentimes, the ripper-offers can afford to get away with it. Raymond is a trained historian and without his own personal archives, he claims that the book could never have been made, not without the praxis he’s learned through art history and how to bring that forth into his own work. The book, first and foremost, is designed to be of practical use to people in a field where “people talk a lot about aesthetics and not much about maintaining our existences”.

“I am very into defending the value of labour and asserting the economic value of what I do. I also love helping other people do the same. I’ve always been a worker more than an artist,” says Raymond. “ I don’t think it has the circulation to be a ‘warning’ to anyone, but if it arms artists and creatives and freelancers with new tactics to deal with what they have to deal with, I’m happy.”