mwilkesclientstudies-blog

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Blog Post Twelve

Work experience

It was only once I sat down and calculated all of my hours together that I realised I had completed just slightly over my 70 hours. I think it was just in time too because it is just before the end of the Christmas period, and Lily has already informed me that the few months following Christmas are the quietest period in the year for the company, and that it would be unlikely that I would be needed there much. I am definitely going to stay in contact with everyone I have gotten to know during my time in the shop, as everyone was so welcoming and the atmosphere there was so inspiring. I have already planned on replacing my notebooks and sketchbooks with ones from the company once I have completed my current ones! I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Illustrate, and I think that the experience has definitely been one of learning. The lessons and knowledge I have learnt from this opportunity are not what I expected to be learning at all from when I first approached them. My aim was to discover the business aspect of illustration and the difficulties connected with running your own business, and whilst that is definitely what I have learned; it wasn’t the taxes and paperwork that I had predicted. I think that what I have learned is much more valuable than what that would have been; since what I have learnt has been the practical and realistic aspect of it. I could google questions online on the formal and paperwork-orientated aspect of a business, but I doubt I would be able to learn all of the small, individual, economic aspects of a company as I have here without the physical experience of it. I now have a new respect for the constant awareness that owners must have of their own companies, I now realise that a successful company has to be constantly maintained and nurtured in order for it to maintain being successful. I always assumed that once a company had become a success, it would be plain-sailing from there onwards because they wouldn’t have to worry about the financial aspects of it. However, I now know that to be wrong and I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn that in a practical way that ensures that I’m not going to just take the information with a pinch of salt, as I may have done if I had just read it in a book or online or in a lecture. Whilst I still am not sure exactly how I want to approach the illustrative business in my future, there is no way that my time at Illustrate will not help me in whatever direction I decide to take. I have realised however, that creating a business or shop such as Illustrate is not what I want to do with my future, which was something I wasn’t too sure on before. I have definitely enjoyed working in the shop but I know that if it was a permanent job for me I would grow bored of it. On the other hand, working for a business such as Illustrate, as one of their contributing illustrators is definitely something that appeals to me. Personally, I don’t see my individual illustrative style fitting in with those at Illustrate itself, but that is not to say that I can’t discover or approach a similar company with a different aesthetic that my work would suit. This wasn’t a direction I had even considered going in beforehand, but I’m glad that there are so many possible avenues I can discover, that aren’t as constraining as running a shop.

Exhibition

The morning after the afterparty I finished at work a couple of hours before we were expected at The Atrium so I decided to take initiative and make the most use out of my time; to start the clean-up of the gallery. Since I was unable to attend the afterparty I feel like I made up for my absence this way. I didn’t want anyone to think that I wasn’t doing my fair share of work. I got to the Castle Emporium sometime between 9am and 10am and immediately got to work carefully taking each piece of artwork down off the walls and hangings. I then wrapped each in protective paper before storing them in the large cardboard file so I could transport them back to Uni’ with me once I was finished. Unfortunately, the blu-tac and tape we used to secure a lot of the pieces to the wall ended up damaging the surface of the walls somewhat when they were removed, which was something we were nervous about previously. Thankfully since I was in earlier than everyone else (I believe their plan was to arrive after we had finished at Uni’) it meant I was able to inform people that they would need to bring in paint and such to touch the walls back up to their previous state. I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry everything from the gallery with me so I packed everything up into bags and piles to make it easier for the other students to carry back with them later on in the day. I also left behind the three original artworks, although they would have fit in my file with the other pieces I didn’t want to even risk dropping or damaging them; so I thought it would be best if the artists themselves retrieved their work. My feelings at the end of this experience are totally the opposite of what I expected when I was first informed of the task. I fully expected to despise every moment of this project. I have never been a  fan of group work; always preferring to work on my own so that I know all mistakes and achievements are down to me, that there can be no confusion of blame. I am also not fond of any situation that leaves me either having to give orders/take charge or anything that even hints at me being a point of attention. It was one of the reasons I loved the idea of being an artist of sorts, my name would be known but it would be my work on display, not me; leaving me free to stay in the background. This exhibition promised to challenge what I was comfortable with and so I was really not looking forward to it. However, now that it has happened and I can look back on it I can honestly say that I both am proud of what we all managed to come up with, and most surprisingly of all is that I actually enjoyed the majority of this experience. During these three weeks I have managed to give out instructions, make final decisions, take initiative in tasks, and even trust other people to perform tasks with the confidence that it would be done very well. I found all of these things challenging but it was this opportunity that forced me to do them and I can now admit that none of them are anywhere near as scary as I was expecting. I hope this means that I will be less timid to approach similar tasks in the future. Perhaps the most shocking to me is that I am now actually really looking forward to the organisational aspect to the End of Year show. I can’t imagine just how much work would have to go into organising an exhibition solitarily, it has given me a new respect for people who go into events management; as I know I would forget something vital. This has also resulted in me appreciating the benefits of group work, and has made me realise that it can be a great improvement on working alone; it just depends on who you work with. Everyone in my group was willing to pull their weight and put in time and effort into our tasks, so it evened out the workload. I hope that this is what will be to expect in the case of our final year show also, as I know it will be a lot more work than this instance. However, we will have more time to fund-raise and plan. I am eager for the opportunity and nervous about it at the same time. Looking back there isn’t actually all that much I would want to improve about the night, as to me it was more about the learning experience than creating a super-professional final product. I would say we needed more advertising, but I think that that was down to the short amount of time we had to promote the event, rather than the promotional material itself. I also think that the afterparty would have benefitted from more thought and is definitely something I would want to put more effort into at the next opportunity. I think it would be better if it was made to be more connected to the gallery showing. With more time this would have been easily achieved, and the extra time would have been useful in making sure that everybody in the course would be able to be present at the show and after-party. I think that the role of curator was definitely the right one for me, both because it challenged me and because I think it was simply the role I feel I am most suited for. It’s a role I would want to continue in if we got another chance as something similar, however I would not be opposed to trying something else. Location definitely intrigues me whereas I don’t believe that I would be particularly useful to an advertising/promotional team. Branding and Private Viewing are teams that I am the most unsure of; branding doesn’t really interest me but that may be because I merely don’t know enough about it or don’t have enough experience of it whereas private view is the one that intimidates me the most. I have trouble approaching people, whether it be through email, a phone call or in person; however it is because of this reason that I think it might be the role that I would learn and gain the most from, even if I don’t particularly want to. If there is one thing that I have learned from this experience it’s that communication is absolutely key in situations such as these. Without the easy methods of communication we all had with eachother it would have been near impossible to achieve even half of what we did, and whilst I am not a huge fan of technology, I do accept the necessity of it in situations such as this. The facebook groups were definitely invaluable for uploading pictures for other to use, to keeping people updated on their progress, to reminding people of important times/dates and to giving out instructions and information to those who need it. It allowed everyone to work separately as individuals but as a team. It was not always possible to sit down as a group to work together, so staying in contact and up-to-date was definitely the key to our success; and is most definitely something we need to continue throughout the year whilst we work on our final projects.

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Blog Post Eleven

Work experience

I am very pleased to say that I managed to finish all of the wooden blocks in time for all of the Christmas markets. We discovered that once I had finished all the ones that needed to be written that we were left with about 4 palettes that were left bare, so to extend the festive vibe a tad I decided to write some festive messages on them to display in the stalls. A day after the they were integrated in the stalls Lily told me that someone had even tried to buy one, which made me less nervous about the quality of them not being good enough for the company! Since Illustrate is a business that trades the majority of its stock online I wasn’t surprised to hear that Lily had been inundated with online orders over the Christmas period so I offered my time to help her order in, fold, pack and post all of the purchases. I was quite surprised by the sheer number of pieces that needed to be sent when I came in the next day, but I found it quite an enjoyable activity if I’m honest! The financial aspect was again not forgotten at all during this time and I was told that each package had to be packed as small and as flat as possible to ensure that the postage prices would be as low as possible. Of course, the quality of the protection for the items wasn’t skimped on, since it would reflect badly on the company. It was just an extra reminder to me that economy is a feature that cannot be ever forgotten about or overlooked. I was a witness to the store’s check, stock count and ordering processes and I saw how thorough they need to be in order to keep a tight hold and understanding of how the company is faring. With the extra sales from the winter period there was much more to be counted, ordered and restocked than usual so I was able to make myself useful counting and double checking their figures. Once the orders came in I spent quite a few hours adding tags, steaming and hanging all of the necessary products out in the store. The new employees aren’t as familiar with how the stockroom behind the shop is organised and set out as the original staff and myself are and so it had become quite disorganised over their first week or two of them working there so I offered to spend an afternoon deconstructing and organising it back to how it was originally, which Lily was very grateful for. Illustrate is always a very organised shop and we discovered that when the quality of the organisation slips even just slightly, it causes unnecessary stress and complications, and finding stock quickly and efficiently when it is needed takes a lot more effort and time to do. I was glad that I was able to make myself useful with small tasks like these, because even though I know they are relatively small and seemingly insignificant, I know that it is a culmination of all of these small tasks that enable a company to work efficiently.

Exhibition

It is finally the night of the exhibition itself. I say ‘finally’ but it feels like it has come about very quickly. 

I didn’t really know what to expect if I’m completely honest but I decided that it would be best to expect the worst and hope for the best, so I would not be disappointed by whatever outcome it turned out to be. I spoke to a few friends on the course beforehand and we decided to dress slightly formal so as to make a good impression to anyone who happened to turn up. To help keep the atmosphere light and welcoming it was suggested that people bring some refreshments and such, so I made sure to bring  bottle of a white wine that I knew was pleasant to drink, I wouldn’t want to take a chance on an unknown drink and finding out it wasn’t very nice. Quite a few bottles of wine and prosecco were brought along, as well as some plastic cups so there was more than enough for everyone to have a glass or two whilst they were there. Whilst there wasn’t a massive number of people there, there was more than enough to make it feel like it was a success. Also, since the available floor space in the gallery location is quite limited I think it would have felt somewhat overcrowded if many more people were present. The illustration lecturers all made an appearance and seemed very pleased with what we had been able to come up with, which I was thankful of. It would have been disappointing if they didn’t like what we had managed to present. I heard that quite a few people managed to sell some of the merchandise they had brought to be displayed at the gallery, I even bought a couple of pieces myself; both to show support and because I thought they were awesome. Overall, the opening night was a really enjoyable experience, the drinks, number of people there and the music meant that there was no awkwardness or lapse in conversation throughout. The afterparty for the opening night was at Little Man Coffee Shop. Unfortunately I was not able to make it since I had work at 4am the next morning and needed at least some sleep beforehand. However, I made sure that all of my friends kept me up-to-date with what happened there and it sounded as if it was also a success. I think having the afterparty at a laid-back café/bar is a very good idea because it means that it is able to suit those who do not want to drink and those that want to without any pressure. The inclusion of some live music was also a really good idea, and I applaud whoever it was that thought of and organised it because something like that would definitely stand out in an attendee’s mind and make it a memorable occasion. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as many people there as there was at the gallery showing, but with the short amount of time we were given to promote the afterparty I do not find it surprising at all, and if anything I think a fewer number of people would create a more intimate and friendly atmosphere, if anything. An afterparty is definitely a good idea for occasions such as these, in my opinion. They allow the people who have worked so hard for the night to relax a bit and celebrate as well as allow for more chances of networking. People with anxiety would most likely feel more comfortable approaching prospective clients at a venue such as this since there is less pressure to be formal or exceedingly professional, and as well as business contacts, I think that a party such as this is more suited to meeting people and making friends in the industry, which if anything, at our age and our positions is going to be more valuable in the long-term.

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Blog Post Ten

Work experience

Every time I have tried to capture a picture of the market stall it has had customer in or around it and I didn’t know if it would be proper to take a photo with them, so I have stolen one that Lily has taken in order to show! The excitement of having the market stall has soon left me as I have realised how much extra work has to go into having two stores in Cardiff. The stall itself is absolutely freezing, so I feel very sorry for the employees that have to spend a full day there. There is also the problem of constant restocking; since the stall is so small, it can’t really hold any surplus stock so once something has sold the replacement has to be sent over from the store as soon as possible, so that the number of possible sales aren’t reduced at all. The costs of having the stall were also something Lily was kind enough to reveal to me, as it is the business side I am hoping to learn the most about in my time here. I never really thought about the financial drawbacks of the stall. The cost of renting a placement in the Cardiff market is substantially more than I ever thought it would be, I suppose they are priced so high in order to make sure that all of the stores are professional, responsible, and confident in their products being successful, but I was still shocked by how much the stalls charge. However, it’s not just the stall itself that is costing the company extra; a large factor I hadn’t even considered was that they now have to hire more staff over the Christmas period in order to staff both the shop and the stall permanently over the season. I have been lucky enough to meet all three extra employees, and they’re all lovely and are passionate about the company. Of course, the process of interviews, training and all of the necessary paperwork is just more work that Lily and the company have to task themselves with; needless to say I have been tasked with a lot of printing and scanning errands since it’s difficult for Lily to leave the store for a long period of time, since it means she has to lock the store up and potentially lose sales. All of my time at the store has culminated in Lily now being confident enough in my shopkeeping abilities to leave me alone in the store unattended for a number of hours whilst she runs errands around town. Thankfully, I have worked in retail for the past six years in several different stores so I’m very familiar with protocol and such so I didn’t need all of the training that her other new employees needed. I felt proud that Lily felt that she was able to trust me after such a relatively short amount of time and I quite enjoyed my first proper ‘shift’ in the store. I managed to score a few sales for when Lily returned despite it being a relatively quiet day. The company surprised me even further by extending me an invite to their first ever staff Christmas party, which I was very flattered with.

Exhibition

Setting up proved to not take as long as we thought it might, which was definitely a silver lining because of the amount of problems we had with keeping the pieces up on the walls for any amount of time. Once we had all finished uni at 1pm, we decided to break for lunch and meet at the Emporium at 2pm. When I arrived the majority of people were already there sticking fishing wire to the back of each of the pieces with gaffa tape. This was decided as the best option at first because there were a number of nails in the walls as well as hanging hooks to string our pieces from. See-through fishing wire was decided as the best since it would be harder to spot and so less distracting. Once the stringing had been completed we moved onto how everything would be placed; which proved to be a lot more stressful than any of us had considered. It was decided pretty quickly that the three original pieces would have to be displayed together, but after that was decided the rest proved much more challenging. There is a wall that visitors would see of the gallery before any others and at first we decided that we should hang the three most impressive and striking pieces there to entice people to explore further. However, decided what were the best pieces is a matter of personal opinion so we decided on three impressive pieces, that all matched somewhat in their colouring but all represented the uses of a range of mediums, styles and subject matter. We decided on Abi Bailey’s jungle piece, Reiss Flament’s warrior women and Katie Alcock’s skateboarder. Eventually, this decision was unwarranted because we ended up using that space for the individual sales and the promotional material; which we all agreed was much more appropriate. The rest of the placements all came together after much arranging and rearranging and I do think that we came up with the best arrangement we could have done. We focussed on creating a streamlined flow between each of the pieces, with an even distribution of A3 and A4 prints and a balance of bright, neutral, dark, and light pieces. It soon turned out that the fishing wire was just not an appropriate method of hanging the prints, as the tape had trouble gripping to it and it was very easy to knock each piece off-centre; resulting in it looking unprofessional. This forced us to do some last-minute changes with a packet of bluetack and some cushioned double-sided tape. If I’m honest, I think that this was a much better decision, as it left the exhibition looking much more pristine, put together and minimalist without the wires hanging down above the pieces. The only problem is that this left us unsure of if there was going to be any damage to the walls after we remove the pieces. It was decided that it was worth the risk.

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Blog Post Nine

Work experience

I am slowly making progress with the wooden blocks and I am now pretty confident that I will be able to finish them all in time. I prefer to do them in the shop rather than take them home because I think that being in the presence of the company keeps me focussed on my task; and I am fairly sure that if I was home I would find myself easily distracted or side-tracked and so my count of the hours I have spent on this project would be difficult to calculate. I would prefer to know that every hour I count has been spent actively helping Illustrate, since they have been so friendly and welcoming to me. I wouldn’t want them to think that I was taking advantage of their friendliness since I am so grateful of the opportunity they have given me. Lily has been making orders for the Christmas décor for the shop and market stall and asked me to provide suggestions and my opinion on what she has been brainstorming for it. I have come to expect a lot of thought going into the overall image of Illustrate now but the amount of time and effort the employees put into even the smallest details surprised me yet again. To make sure the décor would coincide with the image already portrayed by the company (such as the copper colour scheme, the piping, the eco-friendly aspect and handmade feel) so that it would be recognisable but also different enough so that people would notice the change into a more festive atmosphere it has taken a lot of effort. The products that have been acquired or ordered are all wonderful, in my opinion. I noticed that the company was also actively trying to keep all financial costs as low as possible. I know that before I had started volunteering here I wouldn’t expect that of such a successful company; I would have thought they would use it as an excuse to splash out a bit as a celebration of sorts. However, I have now come to realise that it is thinking economically like this is what has led to the company becoming and continuing to be as successful as it is. As well as this, the décor that has been chosen looks amazing and if they are able to acquire such good decorations on a low budget then there is no reason to spend unnecessary money at all, in my opinion. The new Christmas stock has started to come in, as I have mentioned before they are not stocking Christmas-themed items but I had looked over the fact that this time of year is a gift-giving season and so they are going to be exceeding their normal sale numbers. They are also going to have to have extra stock to have in the market stall. I find myself impressed that they are all able to remember all of these necessary aspects, as I know I would not have even thought about doing half of them, especially with timing as organised as they have managed. Needless to say, I have discovered the importance of list-making and the use of a calendar in my time here. The shop finally got the keys to the market stall! We received them pretty late in the day and were told that we had to finish our preparations by 6pm that day, giving us only about 3 hours to prepare, pack, transport, set up and display everything we could. Here is a photo of the market stall before we added in the majority of furniture and decorations and stock. It got dark pretty quickly whilst we were working so by the time we finished it was time to lock up, so I was not able to get a photo of the finished product, unfortunately. Both Lily and I were very tired after doing it all, but we were both pleased that we had managed to actually finish the take and the end product was one we were both pretty pleased with!

Exhibition

Today’s day at Uni’ started slow but was eventually very productive, as we managed to trim, mount, and cut all of the prints ready for the exhibition. Unfortunately there were a lot of unprecedented problems that we had to tackle. For example, we were originally told that the university had a massive supply of mount board and spray mount that we would be able to make use of, rather than have to buy out of our budge. However it later turned out that only three pieces of mount board could be found so the rest had to be bought out of our budget which we hadn’t previously anticipated and accounted for. Thankfully there was enough cash to cover enough extra mount board for all of the prints and the labels. Trimming the prints themselves was also something I did not think that we would need to do, but the way the printing shop had printed out the prints (or it could have been down to the image formats themselves) made it necessary. I was one of the people given the task of trimming people’s pieces; which I found a bit daunting since I didn’t want to accidentally make a mistake or cut through a piece. I was grateful that that didn’t happen and that the cutting all went smoothly. The meet-up today consisted of a lot of planning in preparation for the next couple of days that are running up to the exhibition; namely moving the work to the venue and how we’re planning on setting it out. It was decided that just moving the pieces manually in a cardboard box with pieces of protective paper in between the prints would be the most convenient; so we are going to do that as early as is possible for us to do when the weather permits. We don’t want to transport them in the rain or heavy wind, in the name of damage limitation. We also have to consider the three original prints that are going to be exhibited. They’re obviously going to have to be cased protectively, so no one can touch and perhaps damage them. Since we now know the dates of the exhibit (and thankfully it’s now on the 12th) we have now arranged to set up the exhibit on Wednesday after our lecture. The Castle Emporium shuts at 6pm I believe, so we will have to make sure that we work efficiently to ensure that everything is set up in time for the next day. We did attempt to figure out an order for how to display the prints, but after about half an hour of discussion and a lot of rearranging we realised that we couldn’t recall the exact layout of the gallery, so any planning we tried to do was probably going to end up redundant.

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Blog Post Eight

Work experience The next time I walked into the Illustrate shop it was to find a large pile of raw, natural wooden blocks that Lily had acquired from a family member. After Lily showed me a Pinterest post explaining the idea she had had for them I realised that these would not be as simple as the palettes were to complete. In order to make them suitable signs I am going to have to sand them down so that they will be both smooth enough to write on and with no sharp edges or splinters for customers to injure themselves on; especially children. Once the sanding is done I’m going to paint one side of each block with black paint for a background, and once this dries I will be able to write the signs on with the white pen. Once I started on this task it was soon obvious that it was going to take a lot longer than I had previously thought. The sanding was a lot tougher than I had imagined, the wood was very firm and I ended up having to trim some of the more tough splinters. The black painting was by far the most simple component of it, the real problem came when I came to writing the signs themselves. I soon found out that the white paint pen only works well on completely flat surfaces, so the ribbed texture of the wood didn’t suit the pen well at all. I decided that the only way for me to succeed in this task would be to paint the writing on with a fine paintbrush. Luckily, Lily had a tub of white emulsion in the staffroom so I was still able to make a start on them. Unfortunately, this paint was extremely thick and even when watered down it took me over an hour to create even the first one. The next time I came to the shop to work on the blocks I brought my own white gouache paint to try instead and thankfully, it worked a lot better than the emulsion. They still took  lot longer to do than the pen would have but at least I knew there was a better chance of me finishing them all in time for the Christmas markets. It was decided that I would do one of each sign first so they could be sent off to the market in Bristol, since it starts a lot sooner than the Cardiff and other markets.

Exhibition

Today was the day I got to see the final promotional material, before it was given out to the public. I think that Amber, Seren, and Danielle have done an absolutely fantastic job; I really think that the variety of the three styles showcases us as a class very well. The feedback they got about incorporating the ‘Wild’ logo into Amber’s posters is completely understandable, as consistent branding is very important, but if I’m honest I definitely agree with their decision to keep the title in its original state. I don’t think that the style of the logo correlates with that of Amber’s illustrations at all. The date of the venue has now been discussed, although I don’t think it has been completely decided upon; since that has got to be down to when the venue is available to us. Tuesday the 10th has been mentioned and has me slightly worried as I have previous plans and am going to be away on that day. I know if that is the date that is chosen I will have to cancel my plans, but I am going to try and push for the exhibit to be shown on a different day, so I am able to do both. I also hope my work hours don’t interfere with me being available at the exhibit at all. If anything, these issues just outline the need for great preparation and planning for events such as these. Obviously, we’re not able to do that quite as well as I would have liked since we’ve only been given three weeks to prepare this showcase, but we will have to be much better prepared for our end of year exhibition. The curation team have been working on creating labels for the prints at the exhibit. Trying to work out the size that would be best and what information should be included on them. We eventually decided on just having the essentials, so as not to overload the viewer with unnecessary information. The labels will include the illustrator’s name or chosen pseudonym, the title of the work and a brief description as well as their social media accounts. We toyed with the idea of including people’s logos, but decided against it in the end as some of the more vibrant logos might detract from the work itself. To collect the necessary information for these labels we created a public google document form for everyone who has had work chosen to fill in. this is a simple and effective method that was unknown to me beforehand and is definitely something I want to keep in mind to use in the future; if I ever have a need.

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Blog Post Seven

Work experience

I didn’t waste any time once I got home in starting and finishing off the four designs for the palettes. I had to make sure that all of the words would fit on large enough to be legible as well as attractive to see. Lily and I also thought the title should be somewhat larger than the rest of the text. So this just meant that I had to lightly write out what needed to be drawn on in pencil first so I knew what size and placement each word should take. Luckily, the white pen isn’t affected when I erase the pencil underneath. The pen ended up running out halfway through the last palette so I had to go to Lily for a replacement. I finished the last one in the shop and when I showed Lily the four final pieces she was happy with them and so I went home with a massive bag full of the remaining palettes. Lily also got around to posting some of the advertising material she created using the piece I made in my last post. It was posted on the ‘Illustrate Mini’ official Instagram page. I enjoyed seeing my work being used, I was scared I may have done it for nothing. More information regarding the Cardiff Christmas Market was given to me today, mainly the dates and what they did for it the previous year. It sounds like a really exciting opportunity and I have agreed to lend my time to help set it up and decorate it! the company wants some customised, individual price labels for the items to be used along with the palettes I have already created and I have also volunteered to create those as well; so they will be co-ordinated with the signs I have already made.

Exhibition

Shortly after we solved the budget crisis we came across another unexpected issue: the printing services had been moved from the Cardiff campus to the Treforest campus. This gave the Curators numerous problems, namely dropping off and picking up the prints and finding out the prices and options in the first place. We had originally planned on going down to the print-shop all together to get details on pricing and see what the best printing option would be in regard to both price and quality. However, this problem meant that quite a number of us, including myself wouldn’t be able to travel to and access the printing shop on such short notice; due to work commitments and such. This meant that the printing was left down to Llion and Lorna, who both live nearby. Thankfully they were both willing to do this for the class, I was just disappointed that I wasn’t able to go with them. The social media accounts for the exhibition have managed to stay active, and have been featuring posts from the members of our class that have tagged the pages in their update posts. The promotion and events team have also been very busy; they have managed to get sponsors for the exhibit, which was definitely something I didn’t expect, especially from brands such as The Body Shop and Tiger. I’m very pleased that trustworthy and ‘big’ brands such as these actually take the time and effort to support their local community/artists; it certainly gives me more hope for any other events I may have to plan in the future. I have also just been informed that Little Man Coffee has agreed to host an after-party for after our open evening. I feel this adds a definite feeling of professionalism to our exhibit; and I’m glad that our budget was able to cover it. In regard to the budget, it is lasting longer than I expected; although I think that that may be at least partly down to the funding given to us by the University being expanded since it was given to us in the form of printing credit. This means that the majority of the prints, flyers, posters, invites and any other promotional material hasn’t had to be paid for in the cash we managed to raise.

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Blog Post Six

Work experience

I had soon sketched out and finished the palette that Lily had given me to try and when I returned it I was met with a very positive response and was given permission to complete all of the other market signs in the same style, with only a slight change of the scale (the titles larger so they stand out more). So I have now been given another four palettes to plan out and bring back before I do the rest. I have also now been given the very exciting task of designing some new promotional material for Illustrate’s ‘Mini’ sale. The ‘Mini’ range is the name they have given to their range of genderless children’s clothing. Lily had been having some trouble coming up with a style and concept for the sale sign she wanted to post onto the Illustrate Mini social media accounts and so asked me if I would be up to the task; which I immediately accepted; as it’s a good opportunity to work under such a short deadline, since I only had 3 days to email the completed version to Lily. Thankfully, for it to coincide with the style of Illustrate it didn’t necessarily have to be detailed or colourful. This is the final piece I came up with, which Lily was happy with, she then asked me to come up with three prices in the same font, so it would all match. I feel like I’m being given more practical tasks with the company now that they’ve become more familiar with me and I feel like they have begun to trust me slightly more as an artistic source; which I definitely think is a good sign. I received a very surprising but definitely welcome email from Lily this week informing me that she had passed on my email address to someone who is interested in commissioning an illustrator for a new book they’re planning on publishing soon. She had recommended me and was checking to see if I minded. I am extremely flattered by this. To me, this means that she trusts me enough to recommend me in a professional perspective. I have yet to hear from whoever has been put in contact with me but if they choose to hire me I hope I will be able to please them with whatever I come up with. I am planning on staying in Cardiff once I have graduated, so earning a good reputation through any commissions and contacts I make is vital to me right now.

Exhibition

The venue that the location team managed to come up with is the Castle Emporium on Womamby Street. At first, I wasn’t quite sure where this was but after a quick search on google I saw that it was in an area I was pretty familiar with, thankfully. I’m planning on going up to visit it in the next day or two to scope out the possibilities of the area. I’m glad that the location is now decided, because it means that promotional material and invitations can now be written and sent out in plenty of time. Budgeting has proved to be a slight issue, we have been granted £50 from the course itself, and while I first thought that that sounded like a pretty good number I soon realised that when I consider the costs of printing, hiring out the venue, décor for the venue, and any refreshments or last-minute purchases that we might need; £50 just doesn’t seem like a lot of money. However, curation and location soon worked out that if everyone in the class donated just a pound or two each, we should have enough funding for what we would need. Once we had announced this to the class and received a positive response I posted a link onto the Facebook group to a PayPal account for people to donate to, whilst a cup went around the class for those of us who carry cash (not me). The class was more than generous and it will hopefully enable us to create a great exhibit. We decided that the two most important spends of the budget are to pay for the venue (£50) and to pay for the printing, so it was decided to spend what was needed on those, and whatever is left over would be put up for discussion on what it needed to be spent on. Experiencing all of the small problems that I never expected to come across has made me realise just how much work, planning and thought has to go into creating an event such as this and I now see the benefit of having to do this as part of our module. It gives me a better idea of what is expected of me for when it comes to our final year show and it also is going to help me prepare for any exhibits/events I may decide to host in my future. I’m feeling more pressure and stress than I thought I would during this, and I’m only doing part of curation; never mind considering the work behind all of the other roles.

[mwilkesclientstudies-blog]

Blog Post Five

Work experience

During the next occasion I was at Illustrate Lily wanted to hear a more student perspective on things. I had never considered how students make up a large part of the Cardiff customer base and how important it is to consider them, Illustrate already offers student discount in its stores but they wanted to hear if I had any ideas on how to attract students’ attention and particular places that I thought would be a good idea to advertise at or potentially work with. I offered a list of places I thought would be beneficial for them to investigate, and will try and keep them up to date with any student events that are coming up. Student lock-in was one we discussed, but unfortunately that had passed the day before this conversation. Venues such as Gwdihw, the Student’s Union and Porters and events such as the Vintage Clothing sales and Retrofest had not occurred to them; since they’re not originally from Cardiff. This made me realise how knowing the area your target market is based can be a massive aid in business, both for places and opportunities. 

The Christmas Market Planning is also underway now and Lily wanted my opinions and suggestions on how to make their stall attract the most people possible. She showed me pictures of what their stall was like the previous year and I noticed how the clothing they had brought to the stall was quite limited because of the space available, so I suggested that perhaps having an order form for customers if their size isn’t available or even just having two people manning the stall so that one can be restocking any sizes that have run out from the store. I also noticed that they were slightly lacking in Christmas decorations, and whilst this wouldn’t normally matter; in a Christmas Market it’s important to stand out and appear festive as much as the next stall, so we spoke about possible decorations that would coincide with both the season and the branding of the store. Holly, pine cones, copper fairy lights and festive logs for displays have now all been considered. The previous year they didn’t particularly have any seasonal offers on and Lily asked if I had any suggestions on what they could do this year. I noticed that there aren’t that many illustrations the company have that could be seen as Christmas-themed, but there is a wonderful drawing of a Robin that I saw featured on some of their greeting cards. I came up with the suggestion that perhaps they could offer a free Robin card or sticker for every purchase over a certain amount, and perhaps even making gift tags from the Robin illustration would be a good idea. Lily considered all of my suggestions and wrote them down, both making me feel like my opinions actually mattered and making me realise that it’s important to get as many outside views as possible; to help you consider aspects that may not ever appear to you. When we were on the subject of Christmas I enquired if Illustrate were going to bring out a Christmas range and was really surprised when I was informed that they don’t bring out any Christmas products. However, this made complete sense when Lily explained to me how financially, having a Christmas range isn’t a good decision in a small business like theirs. Each illustration they have in their company is either bought outright from the illustrator or they take a percentage out of every sale made featuring their work. For a Christmas range they would need to commission quite a bit more work and for them to make a profit on those they would need to sell quite a lot of the pieces. However, since they would only be seasonal pieces the time they would have to sell these products is very limited; meaning anything not sold in time would either have to be heavily discounted, thrown out or given way, or put in storage until the following year; where the designs would not be new or exciting at all. This was an area I had never thought about and has made me realise just how much I have to learn about business. The financial aspect of a company is something that has to be constantly thought about. This has made it clear to me that whilst it’s nice to have a job you enjoy and find fun, you do have to think of it as a business; otherwise it’s less likely to be successful and may just end up staying as a hobby rather than a profession.

Exhibition

The fact that the curators have to wait on information and submissions from everyone else before we can really start on our tasks turned out to be somewhat of a blessing in disguise for me; as it gave me the time I needed to finish painting and editing my piece for the exhibit. I decided to paint the two figures separately in the end because I figured that it would make the placement and proportions easier to get right later on when I edit; just in case I messed it up if I painted them on the same sheet. It also lets me use them both as separate pieces if I ever have a need or want to do so. Once I had finished both paintings (and uploaded updates to social media; tagging the official Wild account set up by the promotion team) I scanned them in, edited them, and put them together on photoshop; where I added a background and more shadowing to make it seem more ominous. I’m actually pretty pleased with how it turned out, I very rarely create something that hasn’t got either a positive or neutral vibe; so I think that I was quite successful in making this piece seem eerie and ‘wild’. I managed to get some outside opinions on it before it was time to submit, and they all agreed that it was a striking piece. It was definitely a busy time in this week’s session. Having had the majority of people’s work emailed to the curators on time we had the task of deciding which ones would go forward to be exhibited. We actually had quite a number of pieces submitted to us, which made the job of picking which ones suited the exhibition more that much more difficult. There was also the fact that I knew that we couldn’t just accept every piece, since our budget would definitely not cover the printing costs. I found the thought of having to decline people’s pieces quite frightening; but thankfully the curators worked very well together so I never actually felt alone in the task. We first decided that each artist that had submitted work would either have one A3 or two A4 pieces printed; since some class members had submitted quite a number of pieces. We thought that giving everyone a place or two at the exhibition was fair. However, once we started going through the images given to us it was soon obvious that it was not going to be that easy; whilst the majority of the work submitted to us was of a great quality and suited the theme fine, there were a number that were simply not suitable for the exhibit. For example, we asked for the submissions to be presented in either A3 or A4, and some were just images pasted onto an A3 background. Other people had just taken a photo of a sketchbook page or had just scanned in their sketchbook and hadn’t edited out the book bindings. As a group, the curators decided that we simply couldn’t accept these submissions and we couldn’t be expected to edit another students’ work for them, so we announced that if people wanted to re-submit their work it would have to be done by the end of the day. This made me realise how important professionalism is in this industry, and that a simple misunderstanding about formats could be what comes between my work being chosen or being left behind. When it came to our team’s turn to give a presentation we decided to tackle what we had already accomplished, what we were currently in the process of doing, and what we have planned to do in the future. I think it went pretty successfully; we gave away all of the information we needed to and managed to get any questions we had answered; such as the final location, the budget that we had been allocated, and information about any late submissions. Watching the powerpoints of the other teams I was very impressed with what we had all managed to achieve in the space of only a week. We now have a logo, several active social media platforms, a location for the exhibit, and numerous good ideas for what we could do to make our exhibit extra special and memorable.

[mwilkesclientstudies-blog]

Blog Post Four

Work experience

I headed to Illustrate straight after the Client Studies introductory lecture to start my work placement hours. We discussed how it had been advised that the hours are performed in one of the three-week periods that the University had outlined but since Illustrate is such a small shop, there would be very little for me to do in 70 hours over just three weeks. I suggested that since I live in such a close proximity to Illustrate, it might be best if they contact me as and when my aid would be the most appropriate/useful to them. Personally, I would prefer to spend lots of days helping for just 1 or 2 hours doing something useful and educational over a longer period of time rather than wasting a full working day with not much to do. Lily agreed that my idea had more merit and so this is the approach we are going to take. During the lecture I had found out that there were health and safety forms that had to be filled in; so again, we decided to wait until all of the legalities were out of the way before starting the proper placement. We spoke about what types of tasks I would be given during my time with the company. I explained how I’m very eager to learn about the more professional aspect of illustration, as it’s a very large hole in my knowledge. Since I do aim to become an illustrator one day any tasks that they have to further this I would be very interested in. Lily mentioned that she and her brother were interested in getting me involved in the advertising aspect of running a business and that they were more than willing to answer any questions or queries that I had; no matter how seemingly obvious or intrusive they were.

Exhibition

During the first week the promotion team have been busy creating social media accounts for the exhibition and have made me realise that I’m not nearly active enough professionally on social media. So far I only have an Instagram account for my illustration work, and whilst I do upload pictures of my finished work on there if I like them; I very rarely post anything else; such as updates or progress shots of what I’m working on. This is definitely something I want to work on, because keeping my account active will keep my work at the forefront of more people’s minds. I’m using this exhibition as a kick-start for me to become more noticeable on social media and have already posted updates on this topic. I have been in contact with the members of my group online, as a few of them had to leave early in the previous session. This immediately made it apparent that creating an online chat was definitely a good idea since it meant we could keep each other updated on the progress on one another’s groups or fill each other in on any information we may have missed individually. For example, this chat allowed me to know before it was officially announced where the location of the exhibition was likely to be at and it made it simple for them to ask me questions regarding the brief directly; rather than on the Wild group chat; where a conversation might have easily got lost.

[mwilkesclientstudies-blog]

Blog Post Three

Work Experience

Over summer I kept in brief contact with Lily (Regional Manager of Illustrate) to keep her up-to-date on when I was planning on returning to Cardiff and any information I had been given regarding the placement, such as the fact that it was 70 hours in total and that it could be performed up until early 2018. We decided to meet up shortly after I arrived back into Cardiff so that she could introduce me to the company and its background. One of the main reasons I approached Illustrate was to learn about how to set up and run a successful illustrative career; so I was extremely eager to learn about the inner workings of such an inspirational company. During our conversation, I found out that Illustrate is a family-run business. It’s a collective of illustrators from around the world. Lily’s brother, Tobias is the illustrator behind Tobias Illustrations; who coincidently is one of the artists that first sparked my interest in illustration when I was in school. When Tobias left University, he founded Illustrate with a friend who has a background in economics. Over the years they have expanded to include other illustrators whose styles all flow with one another whilst being different from each other at the same time. Lily joined the company once she had graduated also, and she heads the Cardiff base whilst Tobias takes care of the original base in Bristol. I also learned that Illustrate is as kind to the environment and sustainable as it possibly can be, they have a zero-paper policy so give no receipts and all of their bags/prints/cards/clothing/décor is from sustainable sources as much as possible. I found it fascinating to discover how the company has grown and evolved and although Tobias was lucky to have had the option and funding available to him to create a business straight out of University; I am in awe of just how much hard work and time has gone into sustaining and growing the business into what it is today. The fact that he went into a partnership with someone with an economic background is also an interesting point, and I think that the financial aspect of illustration is something I am going to have to learn about and consider a lot more during this final year. Lily and I decided that it would be best to start the placement hours once I had been given my introductory lecture on the module, so we would both have a better idea on the expectations of Client Studies.

Exhibition

The brief was written and uploaded to the ‘Wild’ exhibition Facebook group for everyone to see. It gave everyone a deadline of next week’s session for any work they wanted to put forward to exhibit. This way the curators would have enough time to decide on what would be exhibited and print out the necessary work before the exhibition. I had already decided that I definitely wanted to put work forward on the chance of it being in the exhibit and so I started to go through any work that I already had done that would match the ‘Wild’ theme. Luckily, some of the pieces I completed for the literature module in second year fit into the theme quite well, especially the collection of birds on a wire so I quickly converted those two pieces to PDF and saved them to a folder ready for submission. However, I also wanted to see if I could create something also, given that this promised to be the quietest week for the curation team I thought it would be best if I made the most out of it. I had quite a few different ideas for what I could do for it. My style of work lends itself more to the literal meaning of the word ‘Wild’ rather than the metaphorical, and considering I want to expand my natural history and botanical portfolio for when I’ve left University and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity. After some brainstorming I eventually decided to illustrate an Angler fish. It’s one of the first animals I think of when I think of wild animals; because you very rarely come across one and it’s very intimidating to look at. However, I didn’t just want to draw an angler fish and leave it at that so I decided to incorporate what I see as a contrasting species; a goldfish. As much as an angler fish is wild a goldfish is tame, everyone sees it as a pet. They’re related but they’re also startlingly different for one another, and I thought a goldfish would work to make the angler fish stand out as a ‘wild’ animal; especially if they were shown in a wild environment; which would be threatening to a goldfish.

[mwilkesclientstudies-blog]

Blog Post Two

Work Experience

I have been very fortunate to find a placement for work experience that I am extremely excited about both easily and quickly. I briefly mentioned the company Illustrate in my first blog post as it was one of the first companies I considered. I took a chance and sent the company an email briefly explaining my task for third year and asked them if there was any chance I could perform my placement there and they quickly replied with interest. The next day I visited their shop in Morgan Arcade and met with Lily Brunsdon, who is the Head of Product Design and the Regional Manager of the company to talk about the placement. I explained why I had chosen to approach Illustrate in particular and what I hoped to get out of this placement. Thankfully, she offered me a placement after summer when the details of the module are available to me. I am very excited about this opportunity, even more so since I barely even considered that they would reply to me. I have been a fan of this company for several years now and have eagerly followed them on social media. They very recently expanded their business from their base in Bristol to Cardiff. It was their advertisement of their new base that made me think of approaching them. It was also their recent opening that made me think that they would be too busy to even consider taking on a work placement. This has made me realise that I should always at least try for opportunities, no matter how unlikely I think they might be.

Before I received a reply from Illustrate however I had gotten around to making a call/email list of possible companies. I had also approached a couple of local garden centres to see if there were any opportunities for me. unfortunately, whilst they were more than happy to let me volunteer my time with them; they said it was unlikely that I would be supplied with much illustrative work whilst I was there; other than perhaps writing chalkboard signs. So, I decided that whilst I was grateful for their offer, I would gain more from spending my time elsewhere. I do realise that deciding on my placement so early could have the drawback of me finding somewhere better later on and regretting the missed opportunity. However, out of everywhere I considered it was the National Museum and Illustrate that I had the most interest in; so, I think it is unlikely that I will be able to come across a more promising placement for myself. I did approach the museum to get contact details and find out who would be best to approach, but whilst the receptionist was giving me the appropriate contact details she said it was very unlikely that they would offer me anything that I would be too interested in. There is also the chance that I may find myself with some spare time next year to fit in extra voluntary hours with another placement; if I find one that I think is too promising to miss out on.

Exhibition

Once all of the groups had presented their themes we had to decide which one to vote for. We weren’t allowed to vote for our own theme unfortunately, so ‘Up, Up, and Away’ was off the cards. The other I had to pick from were Monsters, Eras, Wild, Halloween, and a couple more. Whilst we were given time to decide out groups were all split up into specific roles. They were promotion, curation, location, branding, and private viewing. The role I was voted into/chosen was curation. I decided that I would like a bit of a challenge and curating the event seemed like the best way to do that. This is my last year in this course and I want to leave feeling confident in roles such as this. I’m not particularly good at organising or directing people at all, and I want to change that. Once I had joined all of the other curators it was time to vote on our theme of choice. Personally, I had a hard time picking between Wild and Halloween, because those were the two I had the most ideas for. I decided to vote for Wild because I want to work on my natural history and botanical portfolio as much as possible this year, and this theme suited that more. Luckily the majority of the class agreed with me and decided on ‘Wild’ as our theme. The curation group then tried to make a brief plan of action as to what to do and what is expected of us. We knew that we would be the ones displaying, choosing, and directing (for want of a better word) the exhibition. We would also be left with the printing of the work. I was shocked at just how much work goes into just one part of planning an exhibition, and it gives me a more realistic expectation of how hard I will have to work in the future if I want to create my own personal exhibition. We realised that much of the work in the first week would be down to individuals or other groups. We couldn’t really do much planning until we learnt the location and such and so we decided the best course of action would be to create an online group of the curators so that we would be able to stay in contact and make plans outside of the University. We also decided that it was down to our team to write a brief for everyone else to follow. Once people know what their task is it always seems to go smoother.

[mwilkesclientstudies-blog]

Blog Post One

Work Experience

The prospect of finding and volunteering at a work placement as part of my final year is both daunting and exciting. I’m slightly intimidated by the thought of it because I want whatever company I choose to be suitably targeted towards an aspect of Illustration that I’m interested in. I don’t want to be tethered volunteering in an environment I’m not learning something that is going to become useful in my future; because then it’s just a wasted opportunity. I’m also worried that wherever I find isn’t going to give me work that’s going to be practical; they might only expect me to shadow the company/worker and learn from them purely through that.

Furthermore, I find actually sourcing and approaching prospective companies, charities, or individuals is unnerving in itself. I think that physically approaching people will have a better impact, because it shows that I am a proactive person. This will hopefully enable me to get a better idea of what type of company they will be like to work with. However, an approachable but still respectful email will also be an option for those companies that won’t be accessible to me to visit. I considered what types of companies/organisations/people I would be interested in doing a placement for and came up with quite a few ideas; although not quite as many as I would have liked I admit. I started off with thinking of what area of illustration I would ideally like to become a part of in the future: botanical and natural history. This meant that my immediate idea was to approach museums, research centres, and perhaps even gardening centres that are local to me to see if I would be able to offer them my time. Working as a botanical or natural history illustrator in a museum is an absolute dream experience for me and I’m excited to see if it might be possible. However, whilst contemplating what I want to learn from this experience I realised it’s not just practical illustrative work that I’m interested in. I am very aware of my naïvety when it comes to the professional aspect of illustration; I have no idea how I would go about setting up a business at all; never-mind a profitable and successful one. So perhaps gaining experience of the more professional side of the industry would be more beneficial to me. This led me to think of successful companies that I know of locally: Seren Books, Illustrate, Firefly Press, the Printhaus. Even other successful businesses that incorporate more artistic themes in their places of work like Waterstones, Kin&Ilk, and Lush were considered. I decided that I wanted to make an early start on finding my placement and set myself a goal that I would have at least one option available to me before the start of summer.

Exhibition

When it was announced that the third year illustration students had to plan and actually host a pop-up exhibition all I felt was dread. I’m not a particularly outgoing individual and prefer to work in the background, so this task put me way out of my comfort zone, finding out we only had three weeks to perform this task is also a massive worry for me. From my past experiences with group work, I’ve always ended up having to do the majority of the work and I was terrified that it would be the same in this instance.

I have been to several exhibitions in the past and they have all been vastly different from one another. I tasked myself with trying to think of what made the exhibitions that I enjoyed so successful; other than the actual work that was being exhibited. I remembered preferring the ones which were in an environment that you could walk in and out of easily, along with those that had music or sound on in the background. These made them less awkward places to be in; I didn’t feel trapped or forced to make conversation in them. I also prefer it when there are quite a number of pieces to see, so you’ve always got something to look at and so you don’t feel rude for just leaving after the short amount of time it takes to look around the few sparse pieces being exhibited.

We were put into random groups and tasked with both creating a group name and with brainstorming potential themes and locations. I was placed in a group with Tom, Lenny, Kiki and Natalie and we quickly found that we got along really well and created a group chat so that we could all keep in contact with one another throughout this task. It took us quite a bit longer than it probably should have to come up with a group name, but we eventually settled on ‘Beans on Toast’ since it was the only thing we could all agree on liking. We then managed to come up with quite a few themes and locations that we thought had potential. These included nature, social issues, and idols. We eventually decided that the idea which had the most potential was ‘Up, Up and Away’. We chose this because we could all think of something we could create or use that was related to this theme. The possibilities that this theme has are incredibly vast. We quickly came up with several mood boards on PowerPoint to present our idea to the class. We all liked the idea of creating a type of dreamscape as our exhibition, with clouds and surreal aspects surrounding the exhibition. This led us onto the subject of possible locations. We realised that this theme could suit literally any location, but came to the conclusion that a place which had access to a lot of daylight would be the most ideal; especially if it was elevated slightly too. We did consider The Atrium, Urban Outfitters, and some of the empty shops that are scattered around Cardiff but we decided that the most ideal location would be Cardiff Central Library, since it’s high up and surrounded by windows. This would mean our exhibition would always have good light and a constant supply of people in the area to view it.