This year I have identified that I am an illustrator, image-maker and designer. I enjoy working with character, applied illustration and typography, which form three avenues of my practice. When creating more personal, character based work, Western comics, Japanese manga, edgy-cute phenomena and intersectional feminism influence me. The design aspect of my practice is fuelled by my passion for developing new skills to make more specialist commercially viable work, such as brush lettering.
The audience for my practice is primarily young women in the 18 to 25 year old age range. I have identified this through my use of social media and the resulting interaction with my work. The tone of voice for my personal work is often fantastical, mystical, edgy and gothic, whereas my applied illustration and typography is much more flexible depending on the brief.
Going forward, I want to position my practice as a brand specialising in cute merchandise of characters and motifs. In order to do this, I have created an appropriate logo to use on promotional material, packaging and stickers. To further promote my practice, I have created a professional website and additional social media including Instagram, a blog and a Linked In.
The blogging element of my practice is really important because I like to have quite an open dialogue with my audience and it helps me stay connected to current trends and discussions. It's also a really good platform for me to talk about what is currently influencing the content of my work, processes I am enjoying or events I will be taking my work to.
My ultimate goal is to own my own shop/brand offering products such as bespoke books, prints, apparel and giftware. To further my applied illustration and typography skills, I would like to gain experience in a design studio and continue working on collaborative projects through my collective, the Pink Cat Club.
20/04/2016
Summative Evaluation OUIL602
This year I have really tried to focus on what kind of practitioner I am. Since the beginning of this course, I have struggled with exactly what type of illustration I want to produce and I have come to a conclusion by process of elimination. Building confidence in my practice is something else I wanted to work on this year so that by the time I finished I really felt like a professional.
It wasn't until the final presentations that something really clicked and I was able to identify what kind of practitioner I am. Through hearing some of my peers declare that they did not think of themselves as illustrators, I think it gave me the confidence to state that I am not an illustrator in the classical sense of the word and I have different aspects of my practice. For too long I tried to confine my practice to one area so realising that this doesn't have to be the case was a big relief. With this in mind, I think this was why I struggled to identify agencies or studios to contact - I was looking for something that encompassed my whole practice (which is quite broad). I understand now that I should target agencies or studios based on one area of my practice - for example I could send some of my character work to one or perhaps some of the typography work to another.
Contacting people in general has really helped me with my confidence. Initially I was hesitant to write emails to people in case they just ignored me - which was the worst they could do and I soon realised it wasn't anything personal, they were probably just busy. The few responses I did get from other practitioners were really encouraging and motivated me to reach out to others. It also got me to consider who else I could contact, so I set about finding opportunities to get my work out into the world - now I have a few art markets booked and I'm excited to start selling and meeting new people!
When it came to addressing my creative and online presence, I don't think I really had many issues and I really enjoyed the whole process. The only problems I came across were related to decision making when it came to what artwork to use - and this stemmed from not really knowing what sort of practitioner I was. I am pleased with the promotional material I have created so far and I'm confident that it is consistent and looks professional. If I change my mind about it in a few months, then I have made it easily update-able. If I did have longer to work on it however, I would look into creating different promo packs for the three avenues of my practice (one for character, one for typography and one of applied illustration). These are reflected in my portfolio however, so I don't think it's necessary to make this change until I have a substantial amount of work for each.
Forming a collective/partnership with Abby (the Pink Cat Club) has probably been one of the most defining moments for me this year. It made me consider how we can present ourselves as a brand and encourage each other to find as many opportunities to get our work out into the world. When it comes to my individual practice, I would also like to shape that as a kind of brand because I am really interested in creating products with my work. Creating a blog for my practice and another for the Pink Cat Club will be essential to defining them as brands. I think it will also be a really valuable tool for reflection as I will no longer have my programme blog!
Overall I have had a really positive experience with this module. I have had many moments of self doubt but having the opportunity to reflect on my goals as well as hear about other peoples has helped me identify what makes my practice unique. Although I haven't been hired by any one just yet, I am confident in my plans for after I graduate and what I need to continue to do to get people interested in what I can do!
It wasn't until the final presentations that something really clicked and I was able to identify what kind of practitioner I am. Through hearing some of my peers declare that they did not think of themselves as illustrators, I think it gave me the confidence to state that I am not an illustrator in the classical sense of the word and I have different aspects of my practice. For too long I tried to confine my practice to one area so realising that this doesn't have to be the case was a big relief. With this in mind, I think this was why I struggled to identify agencies or studios to contact - I was looking for something that encompassed my whole practice (which is quite broad). I understand now that I should target agencies or studios based on one area of my practice - for example I could send some of my character work to one or perhaps some of the typography work to another.
Contacting people in general has really helped me with my confidence. Initially I was hesitant to write emails to people in case they just ignored me - which was the worst they could do and I soon realised it wasn't anything personal, they were probably just busy. The few responses I did get from other practitioners were really encouraging and motivated me to reach out to others. It also got me to consider who else I could contact, so I set about finding opportunities to get my work out into the world - now I have a few art markets booked and I'm excited to start selling and meeting new people!
When it came to addressing my creative and online presence, I don't think I really had many issues and I really enjoyed the whole process. The only problems I came across were related to decision making when it came to what artwork to use - and this stemmed from not really knowing what sort of practitioner I was. I am pleased with the promotional material I have created so far and I'm confident that it is consistent and looks professional. If I change my mind about it in a few months, then I have made it easily update-able. If I did have longer to work on it however, I would look into creating different promo packs for the three avenues of my practice (one for character, one for typography and one of applied illustration). These are reflected in my portfolio however, so I don't think it's necessary to make this change until I have a substantial amount of work for each.
Forming a collective/partnership with Abby (the Pink Cat Club) has probably been one of the most defining moments for me this year. It made me consider how we can present ourselves as a brand and encourage each other to find as many opportunities to get our work out into the world. When it comes to my individual practice, I would also like to shape that as a kind of brand because I am really interested in creating products with my work. Creating a blog for my practice and another for the Pink Cat Club will be essential to defining them as brands. I think it will also be a really valuable tool for reflection as I will no longer have my programme blog!
Overall I have had a really positive experience with this module. I have had many moments of self doubt but having the opportunity to reflect on my goals as well as hear about other peoples has helped me identify what makes my practice unique. Although I haven't been hired by any one just yet, I am confident in my plans for after I graduate and what I need to continue to do to get people interested in what I can do!
Setting up blogs!
As talked about in my presentation, I have set up a blog for my practice. I haven't finished adding everything to it just yet and I'm not sure what my first post will be, but I think this will be a really important aspect of my practice in the future.
http://www.sophie-hargreaves.blogspot.com
I've also set one up for mine and Abby's collective so that we have more of a platform to write about what we're doing, where and who with. I'm quite proud of all the HTML I've had to edit/add in to make sure there were all the right sections and so that the right links opened in new tabs etc!
http://www.pinkcatclub.blogspot.com
Hopefully these should be up and running by the end of the week. The plan is to get a proper domain name for each of them and I want to add links to each of them onto my main website.
I'm really excited to get the first posts up - I'd like to include videos/timelapses of my process one day and I think regardless of the content I am going to have to be super organised to make sure I post regularly.
18/04/2016
Print n Pint Fair Shoutout
I just thought I'd put this up here because I'm super excited about the upcoming Print n Pint art fair (it's been so long since I got to do something like this!) and they gave me a shout out on the event page which is pretty cool!
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