Contacting Professional People

Talking to proffesionals is important but something I am usually good at in person as i find it hard and usually too formal to contact people over email. This is something i need to get over better as it's less likely i'll be talking to people in person in the future.
During Hanbury I talked to all the professionals i am most interested in such as

Advertising:
I got the opportunity to interview the advertising people which gave me the chance to also talk to them myself i was more interested in Matt at Ogevly as he was a creative director which is a job i would be interested in the future. When asking him about it he said it was a good job for someone that can come up with ideas and help direct anyone who wants to develop there ideas. I followed up with an email to him but yet to hear back from him.

Agents
I also Contacted  the agents after Hanbury as the role of being an agent really interested me after the talk. I talked to Sam after the talk and he told me all the benefits of being an agent however, i wasn't sure on the experience or how to get there so i contacted him after for any other advice i still haven't heard a reply.

It's Nice that
Following on from there talk i thought it would be good to send over my website just to show interest in me I would prefer to email them when i have a more complete project such as my cakes as this will give them more of a reason to pick me up and do an article about me. It was worth a try anyway

I also contacted others such as
- Nobrow press on publishing
Had a conversation with them at Hanbury and talked about publishing and also becoming a publisher as that interested me too. I have e-mailed since Hanbury but not heard anything back
- Mima art museum on exhibiting
I talked to the coordinator of mima in real life (when visiting the MIMA museum in middlesborough) I have always wanted to exhibit work in here being my hometown and he gave me advice on how to do this and who to get in touch with the potentially exhibit my work here.
- Plum pudding on my children's illustration (following a chat with her at hanbury) I asked her in real life and over email how to build a good children's illustration portfolio and what it takes to get into children's publishing

- Greg Burne from big active also following from a chat i had with him at hanbury
- Dusk studios on becoming a smaller company in advertising
but unfortunately none of them have got back to me

I need to work on emailing a lot better this is something i wish i learnt more during PP as I don't feel confident in contacting over email anywhere near as much as i do in real life.
In the future i would rather meet these professionals face to face as Hanbury taught me that i learn a lot more from a real life chat than emailing as i hate the formality of an email. Feel like my emails are so formal they are fit for the queen

Presentation Notes

Presentation Notes:

Introduction 
my journey 
from start to end 

What I was expecting to do this year??

• develop my practice ( inclusion of dry brush and line techniques in drawings)
• develop my humour (more consistent jokes for everyone)
• experiment more with unfamiliar practices 
• Get myself out there more ( contatcting people and attending more events such as print fairs and exhbitions)
• Build up my confidence in my practice ( develop my humour and jokes to reach a wider range of people)
• Become more explicit ( more naked ones)

Have I managed to do these getting a taste of being a proffesional ?

• banner for gross exhibition
• Talked and communicated more with people in the industry 
• Collaborations such as animation and mass art and with friend jack to help boost my communication, confidence and team work skills
• Print fairs have helped me build up my communication skills and sales with my work 
• Sell myself better 
• Experimented more with unfamiliar practices 
• Ideas have been more regular and developed this year (I have managed to work out problems in less of an immediate manner giving myself time to analyse whether this is funny or effective.)
• Drawing rude things more but without them feeling to crude by sticking with a naive style 

Good points of this year strongest elements

• my humour has been more refined then ever before or at least I like to think so 
• My work communicates more with the majority rather then myself 
• I have got less into drawing and more into 3d and ideas such as cakes
• Exhibitions and print fairs with gross studios and friends have helped me with communication and organisation of my work. ( Increased in organisation for print fairs and packaging) so my drawings look like professional items
• Increased portfolio and places to show my portfolio such as website.
• Enjoyed animation and video work more 

Bad points weakest points 

• a lot of ideas but still not enough confidence to execute them 
• Less love on drawing which is good in some ways but also slightly sad 
• Not enough exposure for my work still need to build up my portfolio online post more on insta
• Still need more organisation on sorting my own exhibitions out 

What I want to do in the future 

• less likely to be a freelance illustrator and more a career that looks more into ideas

E.g. creative director or an agent sounds cool 

• I want to build my freelance knowledge at first just to create a better portfolio of applied illustrations and ideas
• Put on a exhibition 
• Get more into baking maybe think of doing this as a big side thing as cakes is niche and fun 
• Start looking for work experience in publishing agency or just a creative company to get my teeth into the real life
• Develop my humour into other areas such as video work 
• Look into my work applied into something such as advertising 

worries for the future 

• becoming confident enough to talk to people other then face to face chat such as develop my emailing and reaching out 
• not being able to sustain a job and a career in illustration 
• being still into drawing where's the love gone?
• still trying to find my individuality within the illustration world
• being more organised to get a drive to go out and do more things  

Presentation

Life As a Freelancer

PP3 Life As A Freelancer

What are your concerns : 

My concerns are not being able to bring in enough income for it to be a sustainable job. 

Juggling free lance with a part time job could crush motive or inspiration to work on it

Not being payed enough for a job or a late payment could be demotivating

Not being confident enough to ask for work when I hit a low point 

Having to pay for resources and them not being covered

Working for companies that I might not agree with or on projects that I don’t have much excitement with for the pay check 

What is the shape of your working day/week : 

I usually work on serious briefs juggling more than one from Monday to Friday 

Doing more than one project at the same time is useful for me as I can get bored.

At the weekend I would do more fun work for myself such as fill sketchbooks with future ideas

These ideas can be developed to fit a brief later.

I always like to allow myself with one day of new experimentation too 

This helps motivation in my work and practice

What are your strengths – practical skills/ management / people skills etc:

I have very good social skills and communication skills this helps with collaboration and team work

I am confident so I can communicate my ideas without being too nervous

I am very quick with ideas and can immediately get them down in some sort of way with immediate quick work.

I am very experimental with my work and like to keep changing my style to keep it original and fresh

I have good knowledge in practical skills both analogue and digital

What do you feel you need to develop :

I need to develop my management and organisation of things better 

I need to be more confident in contacting random people that I haven’t met for advice and potential work

Become less defeated by motivation when I am unmotivated my ideas and work can lack this could be difficult when being a freelancer

Networking : identify and contact a minimum of 10 people who will potentially be useful to you in the future:

Publishers

Advertisers 

Agents 

Illustrators

No brow press

It’s nice that 

Anorak 

Creative directors 

Exhibitions 

Museums (Mima boro)

Where are you going to be working and what do you need to buy / prepare for a future career:

Potentially at home 

I need buy a scanner and more technology based items as I work mainly analogue and I already feel well stocked in stationary.

I also need to find a print studio to potentially work in

Creative CV

When making my Creative Cv i wanted to give it my playful immediate aesthetic but still readable therefore, i gave it a serious layout but included a drawing of a angry dog i did and used my own font for the titles.
I am happy with how this looks as it has a nice drawn aesthetic to it. I would like to develop this more with experience over time as so far there isn't much creative experience but the layout and design i am happy with and overall, i think my creative cv looks fun and playful but yet still readable.

portfolio & online portfolio

with my portfolio i wanted to make sure it had a nice flow through my different styles and media. I started it off with more drawing based work which showed off my textures and my humour then followed by my more colourful screen prints. I wanted to show all my skills. this follows with my digital work which i inculded a digital drawing and a character design/ potential logo design. After this is my more experimental stuff like my cakes finally followed by paper cut finishing it off with my rude paintings and an orgy.

Overall, i'm happy with this as a body of work although i did think more development could be needed on certain areas such as:
- show off more character creation
- more applied drawings in publications and such things
- more experimental stuff like video work
- stronger layout on the orgy
i will review this portfolio more and update it with more recent work over time to make it a stronger portfolio. 

MASS art

For a week in March we had visitors from Boston working on a collaborative project for a week. This was one of the first collaborative projects i have done and it was a big learning curve in how my practice applies into real products and collaboratively.

I helped with the idea on making it a newspaper celebrating the students of leeds without it being cheesy. My work consisted of the graphic designers asking me to do editorial illustration to help with the articles in the publication. I also suggested a comic spread in it too.

It was nice to work collaboratively as it gave my illustrations the chance to sit in some nice swanky graphic design from designers both from the uk and the usa.

I thought that working with people from the USA was a good experience as i will hopefully be working with people internationally in the future. Therefore, this was a good experience of overseas collaboration and building my communication too. 

Nest Magazine

This year i decided to submit work to Nest and luckily my work got chosen. The subject was "gender" issue. I took this brief relatively serious but still wanted to push my humour within it. It was nice to see my work fit into a publication especially one based on a serious topic as i was worried my naivety wouldn't apply that well. This magazine has shown me that i can add application to a publication and has made me interested in potentially some editorial work.
It's nice that also picked up the magazine on their website which is good exposure for me and the rest of the students involved.

Hanbury London

I came into Hanbury very open minded as i wasn't sure where i wanted my practice to take me.
I wanted to talk particularly to the publishers and agents as these are both things that i think would relate to me. I was also interviewing the advertisers at the event so this was a good opportunity for me to converse with professionals. When it came to the publishers i talked to the children's publisher  about the process of publishing a children's book as this is something I wanted to potentially do in my career i also talked to Plum Pudding agency about this and being a children's illustrator and i was happy to hear that it doesn't have to be a full time thing as i like to do adult ideas as well.
Interviewing the Ad agency really outlined the competitiveness of advertising and that they usually hire illustrators within their own companies. From talking to them I realised from the guy representing Ogilvy that being a creative director within advertising sounded like a job suited for me.
I enjoy processing ideas but less enjoy executing them. The agents also helped me decide this as when i talked to them/ heard their talks it open my eyes to how interesting being an agent is. I talked to a couple of agents after the talk and they outlined how the job would potentially suit me and i will try and keep in contact with a couple to see if i could gain any more experience in becoming an agent.
Overall, this event was a good wake up call for me as it outlined creative jobs outside illustration that would still incorporate my skills without it being too direct as i would like to work more within creative ideas rather then process in the future.

Online Presenence

I have always been putting my work on social media such as instagram as this is a very effective way for me to promote myself. 

I have always been not great at posting reguraly and this is something i want to improve on I usually pick my best work to place on my instagram but it would be good to post more developments and other silly drawings to show that i have many ideas to potential clients.

I have also created a linkden (https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-turner-30412017a/) for my work however, I don't think this platform works too well for me as it seems very adult and not a great way to show off my work. I think this site is best used for more business related aspects however i do think that it would be a good place to reach out to proffesionals for advice.

I have also created a website and an online portfolio so it's easy for clients to see my work in case they want work from me 

https://simonturnerillustration.com/

Website: simonturnerillustration.com

Here is a link to my website:
https://simonturnerillustration.com/Home-1

Making this website was one of the most confusing parts of this degree. It was like being thrown into a big pond of coding and web builders, which all felt like they didn't do the things you wished they did. In the end i used the web builder Cargo Collective this made it easy to give your website a trendy look. However it still felt like a horrible website builder to navigate around. I feel like though my website communicates my projects and work well with clear text. I spent a lot of time working on a correct layout and font colours as i felt like this was important with a website presentation wise and naivigation. I wanted it to feel easy to scroll through showing all my different elements of my work.
I still need to develop on the other pages other then my drawings and prints one (https://simonturnerillustration.com/) as the content is mainly strong on this. Which isn't a problem as this is my illustrations however, i want to bring forth my more experimental projects. I would also like to work more on the navigation of my website so more people visiting get interested in some of the stranger projects on my website such as my cakes.
I made sure the URL was simon turner illustration as i learnt a while ago the alga rhythm on searches is more likely to be your name plus illustration then something strange such as Example: Simondoingdrawings.com ( however this would of been a much cheaper domain name overall.)
This website was a struggle and drove me up all the walls however it feels satisfying to have a professional place to exhibit myself and my work other then casual forms such as social media. Now if clients as for my work i have a website to send them that i do feel semi proud of.

Business Cards & Physical presence

For an event such as Hanbury when i was exposed to so many people in the industry I felt like it was important to begin to make business cards. This is something in the past i haven't done well getting right and this time wasn't much different however i do think they have developed since my last effort.
This time i thought it would be a nice touch to screen print them.
I wasn't sure what to include on it to best represent me so i thought it would go with my work aesthetic to just use the word "business card" as the main image as a sort of meta joke and naive humour to kinda show off my humour to potential employees. I do think a better joke could of been put into place and i will work hard on writing that However, from handing it out people understand the humour and in most cases the joke has landed.

 

I Tried screen printing and self writing the information on the back but both of these methods don't give it a professional look and i think it will be much better to type this info up in future as it's both easy to read and clean cut which people in suits usually favour. I should watch American Psycho for more experience and maybe even think about splashing out on some gold leaf text.
At Hanbury it was much more effective to hand these business cards personally instead of them just sitting here. It felt like a nice way to give your details out after a conversation with someone in the industry and hopefully it will look nice enough for someone to end up contacting me.
I also handed out a5 original drawings as a personal touch to potential contacts. People thought it was silly for me to hang out originals but they where silly ideas and small visual jokes that didn't mean much to me giving them away. I don't think this is something I will be doing often to be honest. It's a nice quick way to give a potential client some work though to represent the immediacy of my humour.

Gross Sudios (Exhibition & Print Fair)

A Couple of students on our course started a collective under the name Gross Studios in which they offered me to get involved with both their exhibitions and print fairs. Both of these where a lot of fun taking part and really showed me how to set up a small print fair or exhibition by taking part.

Exhibition

For the exhibition the theme was self titled (gross). I obviously took a sexual twist on this as this was what my practice sometimes focuses on. However, i wanted it to have charm for the exhibition. I produced an orgy on a 2 meter banner. Setting this up was easy we decided to set it up together and following Katies curation i hung it up on a wall big enough for my large piece. The evening was a big success and lot's of people came down and enjoyed the work by all the artists. I also helped out with music at the event. This really helped me experience the work behind setting up your own exhibiton and what it is to be involved within one.

Print fair

The print fair wasn't necessarily my first however it was my most experienced one yet. I set up my stall with much more thought and it paid off with much better results. Each print was individually wrapped to give it more of a professional product feel. I had a price list of my prints and t shirts plus it was all presented in a large box offering potential customers the option to flick through my products whether they want to talk to me or not.

customer looking through prints

My pricing menu and box

I felt like conversation is a very important part of the sale as an illustrator you have to sell your personality as well as your work. If people like the chat they feel more confident in the purchase this is something at first i was nervous to do but after a few print fairs i have started to break this wall down. I know find it easier to talk to the customers (unless they are not up for the chat)

Overall, Gross has taught me a lot about setting things up as a freelancer and how to expose my work outside of uni and how this feels much easier to do with . a group of other creatives.