History, Objectives and Purposes
The Associació Professional d’Il•lustradors de Catalunya (Professional Association of Catalan Illustrators, APIC) was founded in 1981 by a group of illustrators who were keen to defend their professional interests collectively.
Year upon year we have grown not just in our services and demands but in our membership numbers. Currently we represent over 500 illustrators from all branches of applied visual creation, and are open to all professionals working in this sector.
Read our statutes, registered at the Catalan Ministry of Work
Aims and objectives
APIC brings together illustrators who fight to defend their professional community. We aim to build the future of illustration from a dignified, legitimate, innovative perspective.
Consult our Code of Good Practice for Illustration Professionals.
APIC is made up of image creators who are – or aim to be – professionally dedicated to illustration, in any of its areas:
Books, textbooks, comics, advertising, packaging, press, greeting cards, animation, multimedia publishing, online publishing, infographics, posters, fabric printing, caricature, educational games, murals, storyboards, layout, scientific illustration, licensing and textile graphics.
In our portfolio section you can discover the many talents who form part of APIC.
APIC’s objectives and purpose
Represent, manage, promote and defend our members’ common interests.
Recognise and defend the rights we are entitled to as creators, ensuring that they are protected.
Contribute to improving social recognition for the profession.
Improve employment and hiring conditions.
Facilitate contact, shared knowledge and collaboration among members.
Work for the profession’s growth and projection
Board of directors and Management team
APIC members elect a Board of Directors every two years to manage the association. They meet once a month in meetings that are open to members who wish to attend. Once a year an Annual General Meeting is held for all members.
Periodically, the various commissions within APIC meet and work on issues such as the activities the association undertakes, or analysing the sector’s employment and hiring conditions.
There are likewise temporary commissions for projects that run for a limited time period.
Services and Benefits
Professional Support
- Professional and employment guidance.
- Professional and legal support.
- Regular online information about our activities, sector news and news of professional interest.
- Publications and practical resources.
- Communication through internal newsletters and regular email newsletters.
Promotion
- APIC member portfolios, aimed at publishers, art directors, advertising agencies and other clients.
- Ecommerce directory of APIC members.
- Publicity and promotion at international illustration fairs.
- Attendance at trade fairs in the sector.
APIC training, knowledge and community
- Specialised courses and webinars.
- Single editions.
- Review of portfolios with editors, art directors, agents and other professionals.
- Events and meetings on illustration.
- The APIC Café: virtual community debate.
Activities
Throughout the year we have an extensive programme offering a wide range of activities to raise the profile of Catalan illustration and meet illustrators’ needs.
All APIC members enjoy the paid activities we offer for a special price, but these are also open to any professional who wishes to attend.
Junceda Illustration Awards
The Professional Illustrators Association of Catalonia (APIC) knows it is vital to recognise the work of professionals in the world of illustration. For this reason, we created the Junceda Awards in 2003, with prize categories that reward all areas of illustration.
The Junceda Awards aim to reward and publicise illustration in all its fields of application.
The Junceda Awards create exposure and media impact that help legitimise our sector, while spreading knowledge on illustration among the public at large.
We invite you to view the work of previous years’ participants on the Junceda Awards website.
Barcelona Illustration Festival, Bill Festival
The Bill Festival is your annual illustration event. Illustration – and all the fields comprising what we understand as visual communication – is a discipline that can improve people’s living conditions. It can raise awareness, inform and communicate about society’s urgent problems. It does so from the perspective of innovative, creative, up-to-the-minute solutions that have an impact on the collective imagination within a specific spatial and temporal context.
The Bill Festival is organised around a theme that becomes the programme’s cohesive thread each year.
The conferences and round tables in which creators participate highlight how they undertake their commissions in relation to the proposed theme.
Every year, the festival invites both illustration professionals of recognised prestige and those who can provide valuable insight on the theme.
In 2021 edition, the Bill Festival reflected on the concept of illustration and travel. It was held in a fully online format via direct videos on APIC’s YouTube channel.
You have this year’s programme along with documentation from previous years on BILL FESTIVAL.
Professional talks, webinars and debates within the profession
At APIC we organise sessions to explore specific aspects of our profession. These are proposals from the sector in response to the matters that most concern illustrators. They aim to transfer knowledge from experts and key members of our professional collective out to the APIC community.
Browse our collection of one-off talks.
Explore them and join in! Tell us what you’d like us to discuss. We’ll keep it in mind for future talks.
Training
Throughout the year we programme courses that are open to all illustrators in the sector, people linked to the profession and illustration students.
The aim of these courses is to provide specialised training and promote the sharing of experiences within the professional illustration collective and people related to the sector.
Currently, all training is undertaken online, enabling all illustrators to participate, regardless of where they are based.
Browse our training opportunities
Portfolio review
APIC is a professional mechanism for connecting the various stakeholder groups within our sector. With the aim of acting as facilitators and a meeting place for professional development in the illustration sector, we organise regular portfolio review sessions. We invite stakeholders from all areas connected to our profession to judge illustrators’ work.
These sessions consist of a virtual meet-up in which illustrators can enrol by email invitation. We select part of their work and exhibit it on our virtual meet-up platform at the scheduled time.
Browse the portfolio reviews undertaken
In our 2021 Activity Report you have all the activities we ran throughout the year.
Do you want to join the APIC community?
Code of Good Practice
Best Practices for Clients
A guide to orientate clients on how to go about commissioning an illustrator, ensuring the expected result and avoiding misunderstandings and problems later on. Good communication and respect between the illustrator and client are key to obtaining a satisfactory result for both parties.
Best Practices for Illustrators
A guide to good conduct which APIC members should respect, as far as is reasonable, so as to best protect the interests of the entire collective.