Final Presentation

Creative Presence

Life's A Pitch

Presentation Script

Online Presence

New email

I decided to create a professional email account, seeing as my current address 'emchappell@hotmail.co.uk' is always being flooded with spam emails, and doesn't look that professional anyway. I've had good experience with my college gmail account, which is the server I chose. I wanted to have a short and snappy address, but a lot of the 'elliechappell' or 'elchap' options had already been taken. Therefore I went for 'elliechappellillustration@gmail.com', which is a bit of a mouthful, but its a good start!

Website

I researched into setting up a wordpress website (as I have NO clue how to use code) which seemed fairly straight forward. I experienced the same problem again with domain names, as currently a middle aged woman blogging about motherhood is currently using 'elliechappell.com'. I haven't fully committed to setting up a wordpress yet as I don't have enough content that I am confident with to post online, as well as the money which would not be efficiently utilised at this point in time.

I hope to set up a behance and a linkedin account too, but going with the same principle with lack of content, I have decided to wait a few months before I set these up.

Social Media

I was debating whether or not to set up new accounts for social media, but in the end I decided to keep my instagram and twitter accounts and tidy them up a little (remove cringey photos and tweets that I posted when I was sixteen). Although I have kept my original accounts, I won't solely use them for work purposes. This may seem a little unprofessional, but I prefer following illustrators who post about their personal lives every now and then, as it re-iterates the importance of having a work/out of work life, and sharing other interests with followers.
I stayed away from making a Facebook page, purely because Facebook annoys me so much, and just reminds me of chavs and pregnant teenagers writing mis-spelt status' complaining about their lives.


Shop

I have set up an Etsy shop, which I am really excited about developing. At the moment, I have only listed one product on my shop which are my positive postcards that I produced for 505, but I hope to develop my product range over the summer and properly get some sales going.

Olivier Kulger

Today we had a talk from German reportage illustrator, Olivier Kulger.

Notes:

• When he was 8 years old he bought his first comic book, 'Tintin' which was his main inspiration to get into art
• His dad, also an artist, encouraged him to draw from life instead of comics, which he found hard at first but eventually made progress
• Life drawing classes were the most valuable
• In Hamburg (aged 24-25) he developed a self-driven project where he drew every day for six months and made a book from it. He took this to a book fair in Frankfurt and didn't get any responses sadly
• Kulger took on graphic design jobs following this as he couldn't get any illustrative work
• He applied and was accepted for a scholarship in NY!
• His tutors told him that to be successful he needed to add colour to his work
• As well as adding colour, he also began to add text to drawings, and this is where his practice really took off.
• He started working for the guardian who commissioned editorial jobs for him within the travel column of the paper 
• These involved making sketches of different sceneries, objects and people from different cultures which was really successful
• Went on to draw prison inmates, travelled to Iran and is currently working on projects to do with Syrian Refugees, which are beautiful!

Reflection

I haven't really looked into reportage illustration much myself, but I was really warmed by the emotional expressions through images and words that Kulger portrayed through interviewing people from different cultures, especially the people suffering from the civil war in Syria. I get the impression that experiencing culture first hand and expressing the sounds, smells, images, feelings within a sketchbook is something that is truly special and possesses a really heartfelt quality and authenticity.

I have never considered putting travel and illustration together, but this has really inspired me to take my sketchbook to new places and record my experiences visually to gain a more qualitative understanding of the world around me.

http://www.olivierkugler.com

Visual Identity Continued

Since feeling really deflated about my visual identity, I came back to it today with a positive mindset, reminding myself continuously that I won't be stuck with these designs for the rest of my life and they WILL develop in time!

Business Cards
I decided to continue with the handmade type and pastel colour scheme that I used within 505 within my business cards and letterheads, as I feel that it is one of my stronger pieces from this year and has the strongest representation of the way I work.
I have designed three different varieties of business card, each with a different pattern on the reverse side, which I hope will create some interest amongst the audience. I kept them relatively simple for now, as I aim on working on more creative methods of presentation further down the line in my practice.

Letter Head/Banner
It's safe to say I had well and truly grown out of he dismal grey and black banner on my blog, so I decided to give it a makeover by using the 'Ellie Chappell Illustration' ~logo~ that I had made and adding some of the sun patterns I had used for 505. It looks SO MUCH BETTER. 
I also used these as headers for my professional documents including the acceptance of commission form and creative CV. As they are both my first mockups, I expect that they will need a lot of development in the future, particularly my CV. I feel as if it looks like one that you make when you're in a careers lesson at school, but I will do some further research into layout and design to make it look more professional.

Icon
I decided to get rid of the posey picture of myself as it isn't really that professional. I spent hours yesterday trying to draw an accurate self-portrait but I just kept going round and around in circles and feeling really deflated. I am determined to create an 'Ellie' icon in the next few weeks, but for now I have taken on the form of a short and stumpy cactus just to tide me over.