Take Down of Out of Order

Me take down team working hard

Out of Order

For our Out of Order exhibition, I was made head of take-down team and clean up. I haven't done take down before as I was co-head of PR last year, so I thought it would be a way to try something more practical with the whole exhibition process. 

I have to admit, my role as leader was made a lot easier because of Georgie's super leadership skills during the entire exhibition; information was passed easily through CMV to myself as a team leader. This allowed me to organise my team effectively so everything ran smoothly! 

The only hurdle in the whole process came when CMV realised they had a meeting the day of take-down, so we had to move the whole process forward three hours or so on the day! I was a little worried that my team wouldn't read my messages in time, however they all pulled through and got there in time!!

Becky and Andy were lovely and helpful as ever, and Joe pitched in to help with the loading and transportation of all the prints. I think overall the team worked well as a unit and we got the full space taken down in around half an hour! Go team!!

This experience was helpful in understanding how take down happens in an exhibition. It was really straight forward and I feel all the hard work had been down by the hanging team already. It was handy to know how to take down vinyl from the windows though; something I'll remember for future events! 

Ben Cox Portfolio Review

Ben Cox's talk and one on one work review session was extremely useful. He spoke honestly and professionally about my work and gave me a lot of reassurance about how my work would fit into a commercial context.

Notes

• Work sits together well as a collective (minus digital collage, removed this from review)
• Tone of voice can come from an 'attitude' or personality rather than a very systematic way of image-making (don't worry about slight difference in image-making).
• I draw very well just be conscious of the details in each image; make sure it all fits together. Work that sometimes has a 'naive' or loose feel to them can easily miss the mark and make the image look ill constructed. Clients will be conscious of that. Apply same level of image-making to the entirety of the piece.
• Line work (independent leeds in particular) is very transferable. The work is well made and could fit into a range of commercial practices. 
• Broaden my range of subject matter to appeal to more clients "You could make pasta look fucking great."
• Hand-rendered work has appeal value. Textures are very nice too.
• Agrees with Ben. J that La Bete Blooms gig poster should be first page of portfolio.
• Remember that doing commercial work allows pursuit of passion projects. Sometimes will do briefs that don't excite / massively interest you. Find enjoyment through trying to make a dull brief exciting. Making money from big commercial briefs will allow to do the smaller briefs I enjoy. 
• Fact I have an interest in music illustration but am open to tackle a range of briefs is v. good and opens practice up to more work.

Ben Cox Talk; Notes

Notes

After Thoughts

- VERY useful talk

- It cleared up a lot of questions I had about agencies and what they do

- I feel quite comforted about ownership of licenses and copyright

- Though the fee is 30% I can see the positives of signing with an agency (all their contacts and networking opportunities are very tempting to someone walking straight out into the wild real world of illustration)

- Would I consider signing with an agencey now I know the positives and negatives? I think I would if the right agency asked me

Ben Cox Prep

Possible Questions

- What separates CIA from other illustration agencies?

- What do you look for in illustrators before taking them on // signing them with CIA?

- Do you have any tips for a strong portfolio? 

Gig Posters: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century v. 1

Notes

Gig Posters Research

- I recently took the book 'Gig Posters: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century v. 1' out of LCA library. I've found this year, through both research and live briefs, that music illustration is something I've really become interested in. It combines my love of both visual art and music together, and I think the format of gig posters can really push illustrators to make some insanely good work.
- Though I got this book out mainly for a bit of artistic inspo, I found a few practitioners within the book that I decided to make a note of to see how their overall illustration practice works, and where their work sits (in contexts outside of just music illustration).
- Quite a few of the illustrators I looked at worked as part of specific print / poster collectives as well as working on their own. Perhaps this is something I should look into myself? (Prints of Thieves, Black Dragon Press etc?)
- The use of line and colour in a lot of these prints really stuck out to me, I feel as though I've made a bit of a break through this year in how I like to work, and line-work has become a big part of that. Though I initially got the inspiration for line through tattooists that I followed on instagram, a lot of these gig poster artists show a way of using that line-work in a more commercial field.
- I'd love to push my work in this direction a little more. Something I'm very conscious of this year is that I've had very little time to work on self initiated briefs. So while I've completed a lot of projects this year, I'm unsure how much of it I'd happily stick into my portfolio. I guess this is something to consider moving forward.

Out of Order @ CMV

Bit-luv

We recently had our opening night of 'Out of Order' at the lovely gallery Colours May Vary. The night was a huge success and it was so great seeings everyone's displayed professionally.

I'm not too confident about selling any work at this exhibition (though that may sound a little pessimistic) as I'm not sure my work fits with Colours May Vary's aesthetic. My work isn't very shapey or minimal like a lot of the design work that is shown there. However it is a wonderful venue and one I love exhibiting in, and I did sell one print last year so I guess you never know!

Either way I love being a part of an exhibition, and the opening nights are so often the best. It's great to have a chat with people about the work and generally just enjoy a job well done.

Me being happy AND responsible cleaning up empty cups as leader of clean up and take down team

Website; It's Finished!!

Screenshots from website

Which site to use

- Decided not to go with cargo collective to use as my final site. I wanted more custom-ability for the price and I just could't find a 'theme' that presented my work in the way I wanted it to

- Played around with Format for a while, a lot more user friendly and enjoyed the themes on there a lot more, however still felt very limited in terms of what I could change. The space limits also put me off, I didn't want to pay for a website and then have to pay again halfway through the year for more space. Seeings as my site was to be primarily image based, space was an important factor

-Finally found squarespace. Heard good reviews from other creatives and the two weeks free trial allowed me to start building my site and see how I liked it. I really like the ease of access with sqaurespace, it's easy to customise and the loading times are fast. The fact you get '20 pages' as a space allowance rather than X-amount of GB was also a huge plus!

Prep and pages

- Decided to stick to a fairly simple layout as with my other sites, main pages include; Work, About, Experience and Contact. I thought the experience page would act as a nice filler until I get my creative CV properly made it. It allows people to see my past jobs and clients at a glance.

- As soon as I bought a subscription to squarespace I got to automatically register a domain name with them for free (1st year) which saved a lot of time waiting for domains to swap over, and saved me some pennies this year.

Choosing work

- I've found this to be the most difficult task to date. It's pretty much an online portfolio so I want to be selective about the work I put up there. I chose to go with my La Bete Blooms piece as the first image as it's got the best response so far and also feels indicative of where I want my work to move towards. 

- There are a couple of projects I can't put on my site yet which I'm looking forward to getting on there. I still sometimes worry that my work is a little too varied or broad; would clients look at this site an understand what they want? I definitely agree with Ben that I'm much more of an image-maker than an illustrator but I still want my work to be cohesive, does it sit that way to outsiders? I hope my website looks like it has a tone of voice to it and not too mumbled all over.

Moving forward

I'd like to have the time to complete some self initiated tasks so I can get some more commercially viable work onto my site. I think putting my illustration into context is vital, and maybe what my site is lacking a little at the moment?

WEBSITE HERE

Tweet to promote website

Business Cards for CMV Show

Business cards with print for Out of Order show at CMV

The Business of Business Cards

- For upcoming show at CMV knew I wanted to have some business cards on display

- Went with La Bete Blooms image as it seems to have had the best reception from tutorials etc and feel it is an accurate representation of my practice

- Photocopied them onto coloured card (saved money and time from print dungeon) but more importantly fit with DIY aesthetic I like some of my work to have

- Considered what details to put on the back, in the process of making a website; will have these added onto more professional finished business cards

** UPDATE; All my business cards had gone by the following Saturday! Had to go place more during the week and these too had all gone by the end of the show!

Front and back of cards for printing 

Joining A.O.I.

After hearing Lou Bones talk about the A.O.I. I know it's something that I'm really interested in joining. The benifits of having an institution behind your work also gives a lot of confidence too I feel, to make sure you're being treated as a professional and a business. I don't currently have the funds to join but I will make an application after Easter!