Trending insight and freelance advice yo

Well hello,

I realized the other day that I haven't posted here for about a month, I want to apologize to my dedicated fans (Mother) and give an insightful reason why that's been the case.

Well this past month has been crazy busy, I've been making out card orders and invoices, 4 artwork commissions and a host of other small bits and bobs that made me lose track of this beloved blog.

Then it occurred to me.

It's April. Of course. It's so bloody obvious!

I'll elaborate, (slightly nodding to a previous blog post about trends) I've noticed after the last few years of doing freelance (coupled with working in an art gallery/retail environment) That times of the year peak. It seems obvious now you think of it, different parts of the year are obviously more popular than some parts, with some being in particular very slow and inactive. I have made this rather amazing crude line chart based on my experiences, to give a better visual example to what I mean:

You can see that the most popular time of year is April and November - December.

April - beginning of the new tax year, people will be tight leading up to this but soon as you pass go again, it all kicks off.

November - December: Leading up to Christmas, hugely popular and busy.

Least popular months are January and July.

January - Everyone will be a bit sore after Xmas and the New Year, so wouldn't necessarily indulge in art and design bits and bobs.

July - This is a bit of a vague one as June and August can apply too - it's holiday season. The majority of people would rather spend their hard earned cash on a break away and with a few cheeky cocktails in the sun.

Like I said it's seems completely obvious when you notice it, and explains why freelancing in a creative career can not only feel massively inconsistent but can also feel like your career is a living manic depression.

Point is - for anyone who'd like to take my advice that is - don't get discouraged. It's bloody hard, but helping notice the trend in your field (I do feel that chart above can apply to a lot of different areas) can help you address where you need to improve. For me, I needed something that sold consistently which is how the greeting cards came about - because everyone has a birthday! This has proved to be a successful venture as I've sold 480 cards in the past 12 months (more than a card a day!) I'm sure you can find your 'greeting card'..

 

Anyway, enough of me trying to solve life's problems. I'm going to do a follow up blog post later in the week so you can get your fill of stimulant for your visual palette. 

Apologies for a more wordier blog entry than usual - it feels good have to a small break from making/thinking about visuals to be honest. But nonetheless reminds me of what my old tutor used to say me at art school, in his thick Belfast accent:

"We're visual animals Jamie! We need to be taught how to read but not how to look"

Until next time. Toodle do.

Fender trender.

Hello hello,

Recently I've been exploring current themes and ideas that seem to be trending in the world of design and illustration. A common theme I have noticed in particular is type in the form of 'sayings', imagery and quotes. These have made quite a surge in the form of interior design and decoration. I decided to play around with this and see what I could come up with.

The initial danger of doing or creating something in trend is that it's soon going to be outdated. I wanted to adapt this current theme and put some legs/layers onto it. This in turn bodes well for my love of word play, puns and visual jokes. 

I've come up with the following ideas, as I've mentioned before I really enjoy discussing how ideas generate and develop, so bear (grr) with my incisive annotations. They say ideas should speak for themselves rather than need to be explained and I agree. But I see this like how you would see a TV series or a film. You like to discuss how things happen, why they happened, how they could've been done differently and who killed who. 

So let's jump on board! Keep your hands in the cart at all times:

 

First off, the word 'awesome' is quite frankly, awesome. It's satisfying to say and it's pretty hilarious how well it's misused. This Eddie Izzard stand up explains well what I mean.

The 'Do and be' part comes from a few different sayings:

"To do is to be" - Nietzsche

"To be is to do" - Kant

"Do be do be do" - Sinatra

It's half tongue in cheek and half serious, it's up to you how you take it.
The circular composition and colour scheme was inspired by the warning signs for wild kangaroos. As if to say, "Hey! Stop! Be awesome!"

I really enjoyed doing this idea because of the simplicity of it - I really favour a 'less is more' approach when I can use it. The colours and composition work an absolute treat and this in turn makes the different shapes of the artwork very satisfying to look at.
I added the ' 'ding' ' in inverted commas as I wanted a sense of irony to it. Having it as just 'ding' with no inverted commas looked like it was being very serious and one dimensional.

This was another idea I really enjoyed scribbling out from my notebook and translating it into a digital format. For me, the playing of shapes, composition and negative space is like a really well done joke told visually.
For the non-film buffs out there this is a play on the JAWS movie poster. I came up with this idea when I was drawing a birthday card for a friend and out of nowhere a great idea came into my head. It reminded me of how a certain pesky shark would appear out of nowhere in their grand size and devour their victims. From there this idea was created! It's a lovely feeling when a good idea creeps up on you when you least expect it (unless it's shark sized). I spent a while playing around the with the 'jaw' and seeing what balance worked, originally I was going to use a black outline and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't as it would've made the rest of the composition quite heavy.

I'm fairly satisfied with this idea - I realize the message is somewhat clichéd but I wanted to give the image a bit of context, as without the wording it delivers a different message. The imagery itself I like as the visual double pun of the fountain pen/bomb. It was quite hard to get the right balance between the two in terms of shape so I had to compromise somewhere in the middle. One feature I'm very happy with is the textured aesthetic. In the past I've spent ages trying to find a distressed poster/pealing ink/screen print look without much luck (or quite honestly, skill).
After various online tutorials and practice I managed to combine multiple layers and masks (about 4 in total) to produce the look above, which I'm very happy with.
I should mention that this image wasn't my original doodle, it was this:
 

Amazing how much an idea can develop from the initial idea to something quite different. I still do like this idea a lot but it really lacks edge, it's missing something. It compares well to the image above as it's been given context but if I started with this I don't think it would've been good enough as a standalone idea, I'm not sure. The scale I found very difficult to do, as well as the wording and the font used (Guanine, for those interested). I feel there's more juice that can be squeezed out of this.

Anywho, that's all for now. If you have any thoughts or suggestions how I could give an extra spark to any of the above images I'd love to hear them. If a couple of these ideas prove to be popular I may make them into a print series but we'll cross that bridge when it happens.

Coming soon:
- I'm continuing work on a new collaboration project with two close friends, a bit similar to the HMS Crown episodes I've done in the past, all will be revealed soon.
- A new 'gum' artwork is on the horizon which I'm quite excited about. I'm hoping to make a series of 4/5 in total.

That's all folks! Until next time.

Bottle Design ii

Some more sexy cool bottle designs, the thing that works well with each of these designs below is that they've managed to capture a unique style and personality that almost gives an idea of what the beverage may taste like before you've even opened it. That's the sign of great packaging design. (Previous post here)

Pinch TV - Ghost Owls.

Here it is!
In a post I mentioned prior I had been working with comedians Matt Bell and Rob Hoey for a Pinch TV comedy collaboration. Here's the result, rather than embed the video itself it's worth clicking on the actual link as you get to visit our artist profiles as well as check out the schuper schlick Pinch TV website.


Pinch TV comedy collaboration - Comedian actors  Matt Bell, Rob Hoey and illustrator Jamie Kyle.

Oh Sean! Classic.