Monthly Review: December

How am I doing generally?

Thankfully I'm feeling a lot better than I was! Recharging my batteries over Christmas has helped settle my mindset, and has made me excited to come back and work hard in the new year. I'm feeling more confident in my work too, as I have made significant progress on my 504 work, which has motivated me in all areas of practice- yay!

Who's work do I admire at the minute?

Whilst searching for references for 504, I came across some illustrator's work that really inspired me. As my topic is based on neurology, I came across Chris Madden's editorial work for The Lancet that gave me an idea on how I could make my work look less literal and more metaphorical/conceptual in relation to Oliver Sacks.

Madden's work has also increased my interest for editorial illustration; I could potentially see my work going in that direction when I graduate (if that doesn't count as wishful thinking!)

I also came discovered Ben Kirchner's work, who has done SO WELL to be commissioned by National Rail, gaining a huge amount of customer awareness to do with his work. I was mostly drawn to his beautiful illustration below, for the guardian, the colour scheme is restrictive yet superb, and has really helped me to distinguish the importance of colour within my prints, how to compliment them with each other and reinforce symbolic and metaphorical meanings.

What am I proud of?

Before the Christmas break, I managed to do a few test screens of my 504 prints, which really helped me to distinguish HOW I would create the prints, which is great peace of mind!
It allowed me to make developments in all three of my prints, and produce the final positives ready to print in the new term.

I have also finished my sting! Plan to get some feedback at the start of term to allow me to make any amendments before submission.

One thing I really struggled with was planning my time efficiently. I have started creating weekly colour coded timetables, with my time being planned backwards from the deadlines. This gives me a more accurate sense of when things need to be completed by.

Orange:504
Blue:PPP
Yellow:Responsive
Green:COP
Pink:Work
Purple:Down time

December Timetables

It was difficult to completely commit to work throughout the Christmas break due to having a part time job, and spending time with my family and friends. However, I used my lunch breaks at work to read my books for responsive which was very useful. I will continue do plan my time in this way in the new year.

What am I struggling with?

Although the timetables are helping me plan my time more efficiently, it is really difficult to pay equal attention to each module. It always seems as if one or more modules sit on the back burner whilst there is more pressure on the others. I'm pretty worried that I'm going to become quite behind with responsive, as I haven't completed my substantial brief before Christmas, but I'm sure that is something I can concentrate on fully when I have completed my work for 504 in the first few weeks of the new term.

Plan of action

• Try to complete all 504 work within the first two weeks of term, allowing myself more time to catch up with other modules
• Keep writing timetables
• Always take into consideration allowing time to socialise,relax and exercise it is important to feel good!

Life's a Pitch: Further Research

We all agreed that it would be a pragmatic option to rent out a studio space in which we can work in, which will serve the purpose of having a main base. We also agreed that Leeds would be a suitable location to base Visuwallise, as 3/4 of us are living and studying here as students as well as it being a large city with many creative links and opportunities.

Studio spaces in Leeds:

Temple Works: 
Location: Holbeck LS11 
Website: http://www.templeworksleeds.com/2012/09/10/we-have-space/
Cost per calendar month: from £100

Duke Studios:
Location: 3 Sheaf St, Leeds, LS10
Website:http://duke-studios.com/workspace#workspace-benefits-and-costs
Cost per calendar month: Co-working space- £85pm, Desk rental- from £250, Studio space- from £360 

East St Arts (Patrick Studios):

Location:St Mary's Lane LS9
Website:http://eaststreetarts.org.uk/studio/patrick-studios/
Cost per calendar month: £95-250 

I also had a look at the prices of regular offices to rent out that were in a central location at an adequate price. The only negative of this is that we will most likely have to source our own furniture at an extra cost.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property-to-let/property-37480845.html?premiumA=true

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property-to-let/property-54567623.html?premiumA=true

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property-to-let/property-51370849.html?premiumA=true

Having looked at a number of office spaces to rent, the prices are considerably high in comparison to those of art studios. We have decided that renting a studio space would be the best option for us starting as a new business, but also in a creative environment which will keep the level of focus and motivation constant.


Logo Designs

For our next meeting, we all drew up some logo designs. I found this difficult as Visuwallise is very much a broad business working on a large scale, and it was hard to summarise this in a small logo.
I decided to keep the logo clean and simple with the aim of developing it if I generate any more advanced and visually interesting ideas.

Initial Mock-ups

As of yet I am unsure in what context my work would look effective, and what kind of images I am aiming to produce for which types of customer. Initially, I have produced three mock-ups using an image I have previously created using vectors that visually represents the characteristics of Leeds.

Locations:

Colours May Vary pod

 Leeds Train Station

Colours May Vary regularly change the skin on their temporary shop pod at the train station, with designs from creatives such as Krystena Baczinski and Matthew the Horse. This is a great way of promoting illustrative practice on a personal note as well as raising the profile of creativity, as hundreds and thousands of people pass through the station every week and are sure to take notice and interest in any visual stimuli.

Wall Space/

Waiting Room

This wall space isn't really in a specific context, but many waiting rooms, offices, public places like to display artwork that reflects the character of the city, for example, a lot of the time hospitals and care homes  display old photographs of their town/city to show its history and make patients/customers feel more 'at home'. My illustration could work well in a quirky or contemporary setting, or serve the function of brightening the place up, for example making a dull waiting room look more lively, or being displayed in an independent bar or coffee shop.

White Rose Shopping Centre

The White Rose centre just outside of Leeds attracts thousands of visitors per day. Having my illustration displayed on the main welcome banner would be an interesting and colourful first impression to customers, also making them feel more in touch with the characteristics of the city. 

Evaluation/Next Steps

Carrying out more specific research has made me more aware of the contexts I can apply my illustrations to, on a personal level to contribute to the working creative practice of Visuwallise. I feel like this area of research has covered the basics of our business aims and steps to progression, and with a few more group meetings and further research we will tie together our ideas and efficiently refine our business concept.
Between now and our first meeting back from the break I/we aim to:

• Research further into costings and materials
• Look into corporations that might provide us with start up loans or funding
• Develop ideas for more refined mock ups, and research specific contexts in which I can apply them to

Monthly Review: November

Where am I up to? Where do I stand?

I have decided that it might be a wise idea to do a monthly check in with myself, just to make sure that I still have my head screwed on and to establish where I stand within my practice. This will be a good way of keeping track of my current interests and to set individual goals to work towards.

How am I doing generally?

Honestly? I'm not in the best place at the minute. I'm not at all the type to share my problems with the whole world but its important for me to recognise how my current struggles with my mental health are effecting me as a person and my work. Having low motivation, energy and little interest in things I enjoy, importantly illustration, I think is really showing in my work, especially 504, which is frustrating because I am so desperate to do well and actually enjoy this project alongside the others too.

BUT I am very aware of this, and know the steps I need to take to feel better, everything is under control and I'm getting the support I need so there is nothing to worry about :) 

Who's work do I admire at the minute?

Following my recent visit to Thought Bubble I have become really interested in the work of Emily Rose Lambert (I bought her zine called Four Days in Budapest)

She graduated from Loughborough University in 2013 with a first class honours in Illustration, and is currently working on comics and narrative work, editorial/ book jackets and patterns. I really admire her versatility and hand crafted aesthetic she applies to her practice. It also gives me scope into things which I could potentially achieve after graduating!

What am I struggling with the most at the minute (work wise)?

I am having so many difficulties with 504! My work keeps going round and around in circles, and I have completely lost interest in the brief. I think not being used to having such a long deadline has really thrown me off key, as last year was more fast paced with quick idea and process generation. But I need to keep going because I can see so many good potential things that will come out of this brief, its just the process of finding what those are thats the trouble.

Due to my 504 problems, I am finding it difficult to get started on my Responsive projects due to struggling with time. This has reinforced the importance of keeping on top of work to not completely nose dive in every module. However I have established some briefs that I am interested in, which include the Penguin Random House Design Award, and the Royal Watercolour Society, and am looking forward to tackling those.

COP and PPP are dwindling on the back burner ever so slightly, but there are no near deadlines for them as of now so they aren't priority.

Plan of action

(between now and next month)

• Take it easy and don't overwork myself, have a rest over Christmas and don't put too much pressure on myself to complete work
• Keep chipping away at 504, an idea is sure to come!
• Try and work backwards from deadlines, then I will gain a better sense of when I need to do things in time so that I am not in a mad panic/rushing my work in time to complete it

Life's a Pitch: Session Three

Before the start of the session, my group and I had a catch up as to where we are all at in terms of the brief. We had each done some research into competitors and had a think about where we are all generally up to in terms of planning, this was all re-iterated in the group session. We have decided to have a half an hour meeting once a week, and we have also set up a Facebook group to discuss progress outside of taught sessions.

Task One: Business Concept(personal)

What is your business idea?

'Visuwallise'; a creative service offering the rejuvenation of interior and exterior spaces with bespoke murals.

How did you come up with it?

We all discussed our strengths and weaknesses-played to our strengths in terms of existing skills and thought of a potential gap in the market.

What excites you about it?

Working together to visually transform spaces, meeting and working with clients and seeing my work on a large scale, potentially in public places.

What industry does it belong to?

Service/creative

What improved features/services do you provide? something new? something better?

Rather than just ordering a photographic mural from the internet, we visit the space and craft the final outcome by hand to a high standard to meet the customers needs.

What is your market- who are your potential customers?

The market is wide; people of any age wanting something more visually exciting for their home or business.

Which companies or types of companies do you think of as potential competition?

Freelancers that are well known in the area, online companies such as wall sauce.com, artists  who provide similar services  e.g. bespoke murals.com

Task Two: Business Concept (global)

This was a little harder because we had to discuss our individual thoughts within the group and agree on the most appropriate language to appeal to our market.

What is your business idea?

An illustration collective specialising in the rejuvenation of interior and exterior spaces.

Trying to stay away from the word 'mural' because it is too generic...

How did you come up with it?

Celebrating our differences to identify a gap in the market.

What excites you about it?

Freedom; the fact that we are not restricted with ideas, method and process. Also, seeing individual work on a large scale being exposed to a wide audience.

What improved features/services do you provide? something new? something better?

We aren't just a mural service- our ideas are more edgy. We can cater for a multitude of audiences. 
There isn't an active group doing it already.
We are all specialised illustrators, no job is too big or too small.

What is your market?

Established businesses, events and brands (we want to target these first) and when we are more established we can focus on expanding into a home service.

Which companies or types of companies do you think of as potential competition?

Illustration agencies, online mural companies, freelancers.



Task Three: Business Manifesto (personal)

Core business concept

Creatively rejuvenating interior and exterior spaces through illustrative processes.

Core business values

To provide a high quality, hand crafted and bespoke service to meet and satisfy the needs of our customers.

Core business goals

To visually enhance spaces that visually impact on and improve personal and public places.

Core financial goals

To be financially stable enough to produce the highest quality service possible, and pricing competitively and sensibly enough to cover our costs.

Task Four: Business Manifesto (global)

Visuwallise this, a collective specialising in rejuvenating interior and exterior spaces. A dependable, creative service providing unconventional solutions to like minded businesses, events and initiatives.


Today's conclusions

The discussions today have been extremely productive in terms of establishing what we want to offer as a business, what we stand for and who we will provide for. The statements we have written are only first drafts, yet are strong foundations which will develop over the course of the remaining time on the project in correlation with the research and knowledge that we will build.
It was sometimes challenging to bring our ideas together and agree on statements as a group, as we all have different levels of knowledge and interests surrounding our business idea. I found it most difficult to use the correct language in particular proposals, especially the manifesto as our market research is only basic at this stage. Also, the market for creative rejuvenation/mural constructing is extremely wide, and with wanting to offer bespoke services it is difficult to try and sell this as a whole to our audience as each customer will want to gain something unique and individual from us.

Productivity plan

We plan to meet weekly instead of relying on the timetabled fortnightly session, just so that we have less of a long winded time in-between each meeting allowing us to keep on the ball and current with out productivity and progress.

For next Monday, 7th December:

• Come up with five thumbnail sketches for a logo idea
• Figure out our own individual contributions to the business in terms of creative practice; which methods of illustration will we use to transform the spaces we are given; how much would this cost?
• Pick a client that we could see ourselves working for: produce a mock up of an interior space in the dimensions of 5x2
• Research the cost of renting a studio space and the units within

Life's a Pitch: Market Research

'Visuwallise' aims to 'rejuvenate spaces with diverse approaches', in other words, create bespoke murals for places and spaces.

Competitors:


Wallsauce.com 

'stunning made to measure feature wall murals'

Principle: Regular/self adhesive photographic murals to be printed to bespoke dimensions and delivered for self installation. Choose from a range of photographs, or upload your own.

Price: from £26 per square metre, delivery is free in the UK and mainland US.

Muralsyourway.com 

Principle: Murals your way have a collaboration of artists available to choose artwork from, as well asthree main customer categories:

• Home: gives you the option of material choices, also has an idea book available to help choose the best option. It also has the option to sign up to the newsletter to keep up with upcoming trends. 
• Business: As well as material choices and idea book availability there is the option to view case studies of businesses that have used murals your way to visually enhance their spaces. 
  
• Designer: giving the eligibility to sign up as a designer and order samples, save and track images, samples, projects, and orders, checkout with designer pricing, and store  designer information.

I couldn't find any information on pricing, but I imagine that it will be a similar process of cost per square meter.

Bespokemurals.com

Oxana Syntik is a freelance mural artist who has a relatively large portfolio of murals in public places, in a range of different styles such as classic, modern and childrens.

This is the most similar of the businesses that I have looked at in comparison to ours. Unfortunately the pricing information is rather vague due to time scale and skill used.

From having a look into other existing businesses that offer similar services to which Visuawallise aim to has given me an insight into processes and setups that we could potentially use, for example pricing per square meter and charging hourly rates etc.

Next steps:

In the next meeting we will finalise how much we wish to charge per square meter, but prior to that we will need to discuss the sourcing of materials and funding to buy these before any prices are fixed. Also we will need to figure out if we will need to take into consideration any premises that we may need to rent as a studio space, and things such as as logos and advertising methods too.

Joan Cornellà

Whilst having a tour of the Colours May Vary exhibition space for our launch in February, we had the opportunity to look at Joan Cornellà's latest exhibition entitled Contains Adult Themes.

The work on display was an array of Cornellà's black comical and surrealist humour comic strips and art work. 

I found his work so disgustingly hilarious, his crazy imagination is somehow charming through the use of bright colours and clever correlation with sarcasm. I really admire how gutsy and bold he is, with his illustrations intending to make you laugh out loud yet make you feel uneasy at the same time.

His use of sequential imagery is really relatable to how we react to things in real life, you almost feel like you're having a sort of conversation with the picture itself or being involved in some way. I definitely think that you have to have an open mind and not be easily offended to appreciate this fantastically clever series of prints. Cornellà has executed his target audience in a very outgoing way, by pushing all of the boundaries of sensitive subjects and adding a light-hearted feel to them.

Cornellà's work has sparked my interest for sequential imagery just that little bit more, and opened my eyes to the extremes in which humour can be used in illustration. Humour is a theme that I would like to emphasise more in my practice, so that an audience can relate to it better and make them feel more engaged with the images and the meaning behind them.

Fortnightly 'Critchen'

Today's Queries

• Need feedback on ideas for prints and how I can develop them (504)
• Feedback on sting ideas (504)
• Could I realistically complete a responsive brief for Monday?? (503)

Most of the feedback required today was for OUIL504 the authors brief; as I have struggled immensely in productivity in the past few weeks with the exception of the past two days where I have generated a few potential ideas.

Housemates' Feedback

• The side profile ideas are good, but they seem a bit too literal, especially the prosopagnosia idea. I could develop different metaphors as an advancement from the first idea by pushing it further.
• I could explore the more scientific ideas of the conditions?
• I could try and do prosopagnosia for the animation instead, but not for the print?
• Another idea for the animation could be to split the face into three and create a flip book?
• Any three print methods would be effective, try and use hand rendered techniques?
• With the responsive brief; probably unrealistic. Might be a good idea to timetable in specific times to focus on that module.

Things I will take forward from here/reflection

• I will spend the next couple of days focusing my time on refining my ideas for OUIL504, as I need to be certain on what I am doing in the project proposal form for Tuesday.
• Either work on prosopagnosia or look into an alternative condition to illustrate if I am struggling to make it less literal
• The responsive brief due for Monday probably won't happen :/ find another one that I can sink my teeth into, and timetable myself in properly.

Life's a Pitch: SessionTwo

The first task we had to do today was discuss the initial ideas we had a fortnight ago and refresh our minds about where we are going with the business plan.

We then had to talk about ourselves on an individual basis, identify  strengths and weaknesses about each other; this is what George wrote about me:

• Playful artwork
• Organised
• On time
• Good typer
• Good analyst 
• Business Skills 
• Talking and presentation skills
• My dad has decorating tools..haha
• Procrastinating!
• Concentration lapse

More discussion notes

Tom also came up with the first draft of a business proposal whilst we had the two week gap.

Our final task was to come up with a haiku to pitch our business idea to the rest of the class

Outcomes of today

I feel much more confident and and positive about the business proposal after todays session. We are all becoming more friendly as a group and seeing eye to eye more, which has resulted in more ideas being generated and setting realistic goals.

After each session we as a group have set each other a task, and this week we have to research the market, our competitors and find examples of the services we would like to offer that already exist.

Thought bubble

Yesterday I went to check out the thought bubble comic convention, I would't usually attend an event like this but I thought it would be something a different and interesting.

As I said, I'm not a massive hardcore comic book nerd myself so I mainly looked at things that would appeal to me, and that I could see myself producing. These included postcards, greetings cards, images printed onto products such as phone cases and stickers, and also zines and books. It was very inspiring to see these products being sold at a well known organisation; it's given me some inspiration and something to aspire towards.

I especially loved these screen printed children books. I noticed that with conventions like these that there is sometimes a niched market stereotype of 'comic book nerds' like I even said myself. But it was great how there were products like these to appeal to younger audiences too.

Here was the BA Illustration zine table!! (Sophie and Joe were camera shy)

It was great to see a huge range of zines on display reflecting all of the hard work that had gone into producing them. 

I also had some good feedback, somebody bought my zine and wrote a post on instagram about it! YAY! 

My haul

I didn't have a massive budget but I managed to come away with some great postcards, stickers and zines. My favourites were 'four days in Budapest' by Emily Rose; I loved the red and blue colour scheme and how the zine documents her findings in a new surrounding in a reportage kind of style. I also loved the ABC of buildings, as I am really enjoying taking in and recording architecture myself at the moment, I am kicking myself because I didn't take down the name of the illustrator!!

Reflection

Thought Bubble was a great way to open to my eyes in a direction that I could potentially take my practice, as well as informing myself about the world of comics and narrative imagery. There is a huge market and demand for these kinds of products out there, as well as things and ways of working that I have already started to develop.

Talking to illustrators and artists on the stands about their lives and individual practices has given me a sense of reality too, and some of them gave me some good advice in terms of finding myself within illustration (mainly just to stop being so uptight and relax and enjoy the process more!).

I'm just thinking that in a years time, that could possibly be me on a stand selling products and publications that I have produced. It is a massive step for me but who knows how far I will come in a year!