Today is the Day

Porftolio and Promotion presentation is today!
Time has gone extremely fast these past few months but I think I'm ready for this.


Now, let's put my presentation skills to the test!

Online Portfolio

To see something more professional, please go to my other website.

Meeting Chris Wilcox, commercial director of Paper House.


Today I had my very first encounter with a commercial director. My mum works with his wife, who kindly set the meeting up earlier in the week.
It was a good experience as i had nothing to lose but plenty to gain.
i showed him some work in the portfolio and gave him my self promo piece. He gave me good advice (which avenues to possibly go down etc) and i'll take what he said and apply it in the future.

Idea for self promotion.

I want to have something that I can give to potential clients/directors/agents so they have something to remember me by and so far I've come up with this:

It's a badge and a folded business card contained in a plastic sleeve

I had some crazy big plans for self promo, but the more I thought about them, the more hassle they became. They were either too big, too time consuming to make, too fiddly to handle. 

This seemed like the best option. It's different enough to stand out, but the client etc can handle it easily. Plus, it's all in a transparent bag so you can see what's inside without having to open it all up. 

Craft Fair- Tewks

So, a couple months of hard work finally came to a point today when me, Holly and Sarah (Alice couldn't make it) ventured out to our first craft fair in Tewksbury.
As it was the first one, we didn't know what to expect so decided to make lots of things from cards to toys to try and figure out what would sell and what wouldn't.

We met there for 9 and got the table ready. Time wasn't really on our side and so the table presentation changed throughout the day

All in all, our first craft day experience wasn't bad. The 6 hours went really quickly and we made sales. It was pretty quiet due to the weather and time of year but we were still able to interact with a lot of people, share advice and business cards and look at what others are selling and for what price (some were over-pricing in my opinion, but there you go!).

We also learnt a lot of things for next time. Our individual item presentation/packaging was good and even people commented  positively on it. The overall presentation needs work. We wanted to put our personalities into the stall but in doing so, we cluttered the whole table up. We had a "tree" to showcase keyrings and badges but we ideally needed something to house the cards. I think we underestimated the amount of space we'd have on the table and so everything needed to be squashed up next to each other to fit it all on.

We also need a better tablecloth. Creases aren't great.

And hot water bottles. My feet are still freezing. The hall was so cold.

So here are a few images from today:



My badges and prints


A selection of my greeting cards.


Holly's blue Love-in-a-Jar man


A selection of our work (Sarah- bottom left, mine- middle and top left, Alice- Fox images)

So I decided to make badges for the craft fair stall.

It's interesting to see the difference between what sells and what is admired.
I have two "styles" of art (well, kind of). I have the more realistic textured way of working, and I have the quirky, bold, sticks-for-legs-and-arms-people style. More people admire and comment on the more realistic drawings, but it's the other style that sells more. It's modern, bold, funny, cute and that's why I've used it for the badges. The demographic that usually buys items like this are young and so you'd need a style that would appeal to them. You have to draw and illustrate to suit the demographic you're trying to aim at, otherwise whatever you've made won't sell as well.

This however could change once I go out and sell my work at fairs etc. They will give me a good insight into what sells, what doesn't, and what people prefer.

I have been working, I swear

I thought I'd start preparing for the promo module by trying out various ways of promoting myself and to see what I liked and what I didn't.

Everything so far has had it's issues, but at least I can take what I've learnt and apply it to future things. 

At the moment, I'm looking at two things; cost and quality. I don't want to scrimp on the price and compensate on the quality, but then I do want to at least make some profit (giving free stuff out is good, but I don't want to constantly lose money).

I'm planning on making a short survey to find out what people would buy and how much they're prepared to pay for it as that'll give me some indication as to what I should be producing. I'm drawn more to craft fairs etc anyway, so the items will have more of a purpose (bags, cards, jewellery etc) but I need to find out what sells and what doesn't. A few of us are aiming to go to a craft fair in february so this will be a great opportunity to get my work out there!

I've also looked at printing companies. I've ordered cards from both Redbubble and moo.com. Both are good but Redbubble is far better (albeit more expensive). The colours are extremely accurate, and are brighter than moo.com's, but moo.com allows you to print more than one design in a batch; it's much more cost effective that way.