D&AD New Blood: Stockport College

So last week, a few of us recent graduates headed down to London for the D&AD New Blood exhibition in Old Spitalfields Market. The exhibition ran for 3 days (Tuesday eve - Thursday) and on our stand we had work from illustration, graphic design and moving image students graduates.


Lots of people from the creative industries came around to see the work which was really great, and there was a of of interest in our stand from various agencies and magazines. (My work was featured on the Digital Arts blog here!) I also took the opportunity to visit DDB advertising agency which was really useful and gave me a better understanding of how illustration is used in advertising specifically.


D&AD were also running festival events, going out to visit various design studios, agencies and collectives. Whilst we were there I took the opportunity to go to 3 of the festival events with fellow Foursightians Kris, Jordan and Matt. 

The first place event we went on was 'Meets the Agents at the Artworks', where we went on a walk into Shoreditch to meet agents at the Artworks illustration agency. The ladies there talked us through what they did and why, how they chose and worked with illustrators, and fielded questions from the group, giving us all a good insight into how the illustrator-agent relationship works.

We also went to a talk by Jelly London, who are also an agency that represents illustrators, as well as animators and directors. They gave us a presentation on what Jelly are all about and how it all worked, and then had a bit of fun practising what to say on the phone to clients, with various members of the group.

Finally, on the last day there we went to a talk by a collective of illustrators and artists called Many Hands, who have joined up mainly to sell their own work online and collaborate. They gave a great talk at a bar in Shoreditch (was nice to get out of the sun!), and then we split off into groups and could question various members of the collective to our hearts content about anything we wanted. This was really useful and they gave lots of great advice and information. We also managed to have a quick chat with them about our project Foursight, and they helped us out with some names of places we might be able to sell future publications. 


So all in all, I think the trip to London was really good and gave us lots of opportunities to go and talk to other creatives and people in the industry that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. 


I've posted some phots of our New Blood stand below (borrowed from the Stockport Illustration blog Picture Box) Thanks!

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Big Illustration Party Time Excellent Podcast

It was recommended that we listen to a podcast called Big Illustration Party Time, found here. The podcast is recorded by illustrators Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble, and consists of them talking about all sort of issues associated with being a freelance illustrator. The particular episode we listened to cover lots of things to do with getting work and self promotion. 

They started off by talking about cold calling art directors. Unless I'm mistaken, they were talking about cold calling AD's to talk to them and see if it was ok to email over work, and they came to the conclusion that sending a cold email was less annoying and probably a better thing to do. I don't think I'd ever considered really phoning someone up just to ask if I could email them my portfolio, but who knows, maybe speaking to them first might actually guarantee a response to your email? On the other hand, we've always been encouraged to try and speak to someone directly when it comes to portfolio visit meetings, which I think makes more sense as its quicker to get a yes or no, and arrange times etc. 

They went on to speak about how to use email as a self promotion tool. Here are some of their tips for sending emails and compiling mailing lists:

• Compile a list of art directors and send a first email to them all. Any that send you a reply, add to a separate mailing list to send your 'newsletter' to in the future.
• Email every 3 months - to both 'fans' and prospective employers. 3 months gives you lots of time to come up with lots of new work.
• Add a ''remove from mailing list' option so they can opt out if they want
• Try using BCC for the mailing list to avoid spam filters 

It was interesting to here them talk about sending bulk emails via mailing lists, as it something we've kind of been old not to do, as it goes against the idea of personalising your correspondence. I think however that if your doing it in the for of a newsletter, its obviously accepted as standard that these won't be personal. Setting up a newsletter type email is really something to think about, as long as you do a good job, as you can embed links and images into the email so people don't have to waste time downloading and opening separate files.They recommended keeping the content short and sweet, and trying to make it look interesting with nice type etc. They also suggested sending a thank you email after a job is completed is a good thing to do as shows that you appreciated getting the work and are open to more work in the future. In contrast to the Charles Hively podcast, these guys seemed interested in the idea of sending out promo Christmas cards, although they hadn't tried it yet. On one hand, there is something a bit insincere about sending out a card that is also self promotion, but on the other hand, its seems stupid as an illustrator, if you are going to send out a card, that it wouldn't be something you've designed yourself. Maybe this would be best kept for clients you've already worked with rather than prospective clients, because....it's a bit weird anyway to send a stranger a card.

In the next part of the podcast, they spoke about social networking and portfolio sites. This was something I'd recently been involved in a discussion about, so it was interesting to hear what these guys had to say. Here are their suggestions:

• Spend money making your own site awesome rather than paying for portfolio sites that may not be worth the money
• Things like Illustration Friday can be good for networking and also building your portfolio quickly
• Putting work up on sites like Flickr can be good exposure and help increase traffic to your site
• Using social networking like twitter might not get you work directly, but can get you invites to gallery shows or exhibitions

 I definitely agree that networking and getting your work seen is so important. I'm already on a few social networking sites, but Flickr is something I'm definitely going to look into. Getting your work everywhere will definitely make your life easier and increase your odds of getting work, however I do think its good to edit where you put your work in one sense, and just stick with reputable sites and one with strong illustration communities otherwise its probably just making more work for yourself to update them. I think it's probably trail and error to find the places that work best so I'll hopefully try a few more places in the future and see how it goes. 

Finally, the guys made a point at the end of the podcast about the importance of networking and keeping in contact with other students from your course. I definitely hope to keep in contact with students from my course where possible, and work together in the future. They also recommended getting involved with whatever you can, such as groups or podcasts, and to keep yourself involved and motivated if you want to make a career out of illustration.

 
Overall, the podcast was really helpful and they had lots of good tips and advice that I can use. In contrast to the Charles Hively podcast, their advice seemed to come more from an illustrators perspective, and even contradicted some of the things Hively suggested. I think from this I can draw the conclusion that self promo isn't a science, and some types of promo will go down better with some people than with others, and it might just be a case of giving things a go and seeing how it works out.

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Jill Calder

Illustrator Jill Calder recently paid a visit to college to talk to us about her work and experiences as illustrator. She was really fantastic to listen to and went through a lot of aspects of working as a professional illustrator.

For instance, she spoke about what it was like being represented by an agency (or two) and how that has helped with the business side of things as well as providing interesting projects to work on. She gave really good advice on the money issue, and as most of us leaving uni at the moment probably won't be represented by an agency when starting out, it was good to hear how a working illustrator deals with getting paid. The main point she made was to not let people mess you around with money, and that illustrators are providing a service and deserve to be paid for it, so I think it probably gave us all a bit more confidence when we might have to chase payments in the future.

She also spoke about how it can be a positive to have a more interesting looking portfolio to show prospective clients. She had had a couple hand made in bright colours and decorated to get people's attention. This isn't really something I'd thought about with my portfolio, as I generally didn't think I'd be showing many people a physical portfolio hat often, so mine is just a standard looking one. It could be something to think about in the future, especially if you have to leave it with someone to look at; I suppose a personalised folio could make the work stand out if you're not there to talk about it yourself.

 Jill went on to show u some of her work and how she worked on a project start to finish. She stressed the importance of drawing, and spoke about drawing anywhere, and on anything. Whether it be a sketch book, scrap of paper, or even an ipad, it all has its uses and doing a quick sketch of something when you're out and about, could then help inform or be part of a new piece of work. I though this was really interesting to see, especially as I have done much drawing or sketching from life very recently. My own work is quite precise I suppose and I use a lot of straight lines and grids to make shapes etc., so seeing Jill's sketches actually made me want to do a bit more drawing, and not worry to much about how it looks, as its just another way of gathering information.

She made a couple of suggestions for a good way to work, and these were both 'be silly' and 'be serious'. This made me think of what must be a quote I'd heard someone say once, which was about the best people to work with are people who take their work seriously, but not themselves. And I think that it's similar to what Jill was saying about illustration, which was to take the job seriously and always try and do a good job, but also don't be afraid to have fun and be silly and playful with your work, when appropriate of course. Inject a bit of your own personality and sense of humour into the work, whilst still doing a good, professional job. I thought that was really good advice, because it not only makes the work more interesting to look at, but I suppose it would also make the work more enjoyable and fun to create. I think I could really do with taking this bit of advice on board and being a bit looser and more playful in my work. Although last time I added a sense of humour to my work *cough* mother Teresa card *cough*, people did not get it....oh well!

Over all the lecture was really interesting and funny, I could have listened to her for hours! She made some really good points and gave me some stuff to think about in relation to my own work. And it's always good to her another persons experiences and advice, as it helps answer some questions and give you more confidence in your own ideas. 

And I also have a collection of envelope inside patterns scanned in. Go team. 

Cheers Jill!

 

Mapping the ocean's hidden worlds: Robert Ballard

Posted below is a talk by Robert Ballard on ocean exploration that is really enlightening. For my FMP I'm looking at exploration of both the oceans and space, and I think that I probably considered space exploration to be of more interest or to be less explored than the oceans, but this talk convinced me otherwise. Love his enthusiasm, take a look...