Tuesday 28 March 2017

Mega To Do List

PPP

- Wait for Tallulah's response
- 500 word report on interview
- Life's A Pitch - preperation, presentation
- End of Module Presentation
- Life's a Pitch blogging
- Presentation Slides
- Blogging

COP

- Decide on an essay theme
- Essay research
- Write the essay
- Visual journal

505

- Draw, draw, draw
- Decide on a context
- How can illustrations work on product/packaging?
- Design boards for hand in

503

 - Catch up on collaborative blogging
- A few more Illustration Friday submissions?
- Project Report
- Boards for Collaborative Brief
- Boards for Individual Brief
- Boards for small briefs
- End of Module Evaluation

I think thats everything???????

Cop's definitley an area that I've not been paying attention too and I really want to start putting a bit more effort into it, I kind of need to, the deadlines really close. I think 503 is nearly done, I just need to get the design boards done which in all honesty shouldn't take too long to sort out, it's just finding the time to fit it in. PPP also isn't such a big worry now that I've heard back from the illustrator I've chosen to interview. Life's A Pitch is a big stress, I'm slightly irritated that it's been introduced so late on in the course. Presenting isn't my strong point so to be told I have to present with only a week to prepare the content and prepare myself mentally is a big struggle for me.
I'm really disappointed that I can't have some more time on 505 as well, it's taking a backseat at the minute which is a shame because I think I'd be more engaged with it if there wasn't so many deadlines looming.

(I'm going to start crossing these off as I get them done so I can keep track of my life)

A Response!


I've finally had an email back from the wonderful Tallulah Fontaine! I'm really excited about having the opportunity to ask her a few questions and find out more about her and her practice, the only thing is, now I have to think of some interesting questions to send over! I want to try and respond to her today so that she doesn't forget about me and so that I don't come across as unorganised/uninterested

Possible Questions:

- What inspires you?

- Are there certain themes or ideas that you enjoying working around and how do you combine this into your practice? 

- I struggle with figuring out where my work 'lives' within illustration (publishing, editorial, etc) did you ever have this struggle, and if so, how did you overcome it? 

- What do you most enjoy working on? 

- You have a fairly consistent way of making images, is this something that has come naturally, or a style that has grown and developed over your career?

- Any tips for a young illustrator on the edge of trying to figure out the real world?

- You've previously collaborated with Stay Home Club, how do you find working with other people? Is it something you enjoy or do you prefer working independently? 



Slightly more interesting questions (to spice things up a bit)

- If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? 

- Whats your favourite thing to do when you're not working on arty things? 

- Cats or dogs?

- Who is your biggest inspiration in life and why?

- What song never fails to cheer you up? 



I'm really excited to hear back from her, I feel like I've asked pretty good questions and ones that will help me out with my own practice when she replies. Fingers crossed she gets back to me again! 





Friday 24 March 2017

Life's A Pitch

Today me and a group of 4 other girls got together for the life's a pitch studio brief. We decided to work together because we have similar core values, an interest in selling and promoting our work and overlapping illustrative styles.


- Light-hearted design
- Aim to resonate with people and to evoke emotions (happiness, sadness, laughter)
- Addressing everyday events with humour
- Playful
- Relatable
- Delicate & subtle 
- Want to gain exposure and experience in the industry

We identified our individual creative skills and started to think about how these can work to our advantage as a group. We also started to think about the things we wanted our presentation to cover, such as our rationale, platforms we would use (social media, etc), our individual and collective skills, and also existing collectives that inspire us and aspirations for the collective as a whole. 

Leah - people skills, selling, print processes

Polly - logistic knowledge, digital marketplaces + websites, branding

Molly - organisation, project management, written communciation, character design

Shelly - extrovert skills, communication skills, customer service, typography, branding

Megan - finances, secretarial jobs like organising and communications, colour, composition


Working as a collective gives us the opportunity to reach a larger target audience, and in turn promote ourselves both as a collective and as individuals. For me, being part of creating a collective means being part of a group of like-minded individuals who support each other and create a welcoming creative environment that we can build upon as the collective gains momentum. 

We will be meeting up in the following days in order to disucss our plans further and start to create an identity for our collective. We will all be partaking in adding to the pitch and I'm looking forward to seeing how we all work together. 

Making More Contact

It's only been a few days since I emailed Manjit Thapp with hope to ask her a few questions, but as of yet I haven't heard anything back from her. I'm slightly stressed that I haven't managed to interview anyone yet and that the deadline for PPP isn't too far away so I'm just going to send a few more emails round to some more people and hope that at least one of them gets back to me.

Today I emailed Tallulah Fontaine, an illustrator that I've been a fan of for a couple of years now, her work is super pretty and has some of the nicest colour schemes. She also uses quite interesting composition in some of her work and I'm particularly a fan of the work she did for Purity Ring (look how magic these posters are).


Here's a copy of the email I sent to Tallulah, hopefully I'll here back from her at some point, it'd be really lovely to talk to her and get a little insight into the process behind her work. 

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Making Contact

I've decided to bite the bullet and try contact one of my chosen Illustrators.

I decided to email Manjit Thapp, an illustrator who's use of colour and hand-rendered images are an ongoing inspiration to me. I feel it'd be really interesting to have an opportunity to talk with her about her practice and how she found where her practice sits within the creative industries.

I tried to keep the email formal but relaxed, I was struggling with what to put in it but I'm hoping I made a good impression. Hopefully I'll get a reply and I'll have the opportunity to ask her a few questions!



Sunday 19 March 2017

Looking Into Branding

I've been spending a little bit of time thinking about how I would go about branding myself as a professional. I feel that this is something that's going to be really important to my overall practice and professional appearance. I regret not spending time on this throughout the year as I feel I could have planned and developed my own branding and started to present myself more cohesively. Some of the things I've been thinking about is the tone of voice I need to convey through my own branding. I need to be able to encompass my practice and personality clearly so that this is something that is communicated to potential clients immediately. I've also been thinking about how branding can work across different platforms and what kind of social media/promotional materials I could use. This could include:
- business cards
- website
- professional instagram page
- Facebook page
- online store
- letterheads
- promotional mailing packages

I feel I would benefit from looking at examples of other illustrators branding and i feel this research is something that I will be undertaking over summer so that I can begin to develop my own identity. I remember going to the AOI talk earlier this year and the information we got from that in terms of self-promotion was really useful. They mentioned creating little mailer packs that you can send to studios/clients in order to get their attention. I've ordered some A6 postcards of my work in order to be able to start creating these little packages to send out to people. This is something I will be building on and developing more over the summer.


Friday 17 March 2017

Presentation Skills Lecture

I fucking hate presentations

So I went to the presentation skills workshop to try and not hate presentations so much

It was useful, but I still hate presentations.

I got a few useful things from this talk such as how to structure a presentation and how to use things like book-ending to pull a presentation together and splitting the presentation into three sections and introducing these sections at the start of your talk so that both you and the audience can keep track of how far through your presentation you are. There were also a few things about behaviour during a presentation that i thought were quite useful, such as the speed and pitch that your talking at and giving yourself pauses between words and sentences.

Like I said, there were a few things that I found useful and I feel like they'd be easy to apply to my own presentations IF I wasn't so nervous and anxious about presenting in the first place. I feel like for me I could have done with more tips and tricks and how to stay calm and how to mentally prepare before delivering a presentation because I know as soon as I get up in front of people, I'm that much of a mess that I don't give a second thought to hand gestures or the pitch of my voice, focusing on things like that when I'm already ridiculously stressed has just made me more worried throughout the whole thing.




Association of Illustrators Talk

Self Promotion:

Website - image based, simple. functional. professional, blog and keep up to date, contact details easily available on website. Another idea might be to start a collective, get work as a collective and help each other get work individually

Keep A Blog - update regularly, creative but professional, don't be too inspired by current trends/creatives, nurtures self-initiated projects and ongoing ideas, do it right or don't do it at all

Social Media - Keep professional, either separate your personal profile from your professional one or transition your personal profile into your professional profile. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are viable routes of commissioners. Bechance is good for keeping on online portfolio and showing process.

Study the industry, research the client
AOI client directories
Bikinilists.com

Physical Mailers - A6/A5
Email - Attach imagers, spell their name right, first impressions count

Invest in yourself - Print things

Keep own registered business - register for income tax (after 3 months of steady work), up to date accounts, retain all claimable receipts, keep paperwork involved with every job

Tax Returns - four times a year (use apps zero and quickbooks)


Copyright and Licensing:

- Does not require registration or a copyright symbol
- Licensing - lending to a client
- Property right - automatic when doing work
- There is no copyright in an idea/style
- Copying substantial part of a work infringes copyright
- Copying key image from the work could infringe

Copyright is assigned by you to a client, strongly advised not to do this because of money, loss of control and clients

Moral rights - automatic but can be waived
- Right to paternity
- Right to integrity
- Falsely attributed

Rights online
- low res files 72dpi and name as file name
- use copyright symbol on everything
- terms and conditions of website/social media use/filenames

Contracts can be written (formal) or verbal (informal)

Accept commission in writing before starting any work
"WHO is going to do WHAT by WHEN"

cancellation fees
rejection fees

Acceptance of commission form on the AOI website


Pricing

DO NOT WORK FOR FREE

- Quote accuratley
- Don't work on a day fee
- Find out everything (clear briefs)
- License is separate to selling an original artwork/prints
- Re-license
- Actual uses rather than potential usage
- Allows for additional negotiations and fees for additional usages

Above the line advertising - publicity
- Print - magazines, posters, out of home
- Digital - social media, adverts, banners etc

Below the line advertising
- Not paid space
- Fliers, direct mailing

Editiorial - circulation - abc.org.uk
client, usage, territory, duration

Packaging - usage, territory, duration

Buyouts - can mean copyright assignment

AOI INFO

Student membership
- access to members only section
- support via email and phone
- varoom magazine subscription

@theaoi


I found the AOI talk really useful but also overwhelming, I don't think I fully realised how much consideration had to go into how you manage yourself as a business and how you interact with clients and present yourself online. I'm really wanting to look more into my professional image and start to consider how I can attract the attention of potential clients. I think my downfall is that I don't really take myself seriously as a 'professional' and don't feel I have the skills or abilities to be asking for money, but this is just a confidence issue that I'm sure I'll get over at some point! Anyway, this was really useful, I'm definitely interested in joining up when I have a bit more money spare!






Friday 10 March 2017

Rachel Denti

Rachel Denti is an Illustrator and Graphic Designer I have recently discovered. I found some work of hers that she created for z in that focused on how the world looks to a person that suffers from anxiety, 'where everyday elements become constant reminders of bitter insecurities'. Although not my usual preferred style of work, I really love the simple shape and line based illustrations and the use of halftones to add depth and texture. I also really like the incorporation of text into her images. This is something that i occasionally like using in my work. I know that maybe you should be able to communicate a message using purely image, I do feel that incorporating text can further push that message and enhance what you are trying to communicate, especially with things that may be a little more abstract.



Wednesday 8 March 2017

Print Processes

504 really taught me a lot about how to use print as a way to enhance my work. I spent a lot of first year trying to produce things that were 'handmade'. I know realise that this can encompass printing as well as just drawing and trying to produce work in that sense. I'm really keen on all of the different print processes I encountered in 504, monotype, lino and screen printing, and started to clearly see how I can work across these processes in order to push my work a little further.

I like the messiness of monotype, it gives off a raw, busy kind of vibe. It links up a lot with the hand drawn, line based imagery that is a part of my practice. The only thing is it's a little difficult too do. It's hard drawing things backwards, the paper moves a lot, finger prints are inevitable. BUT I feel that this adds to the uniqueness of this style of printing. It is messy, it is kind of spontaneous. I feel that it's something I'd like to explore a little more, and possibly see how I can cross this method of printing into others, such as screen printing.

Lino Printing has also been something that I've been really drawn too. I like the sharpness of the lines, the precision and the texture that can be achieved via different ways of printing the lino. I also like the kind of woodcut/etched style that comes along with printing lino. Don't get me wrong, printing lino with colour looks great but I love just solid black lino printing. It's so bold. This coupled with screen printing your end results allows for overprinting, the addition of colour, and other elements to further add to the end image. 






SaveSave