Nostalgia Art Work

The piece created for the exhibition had to follow the theme Nostalgia, which I initially struggled to come up with an idea for so I focused on the Branding and poster instead. I realise that this was a mistake now as I now think my piece looks a bit rushed, and I wasn't that pleased with the final illustration.

Because I didn't feel confident in my piece I felt reluctant to make any prints to sell at the exhibition, which I now regret but I think it was a lesson in time management and not rushing your work. 

Branding Team

After discussing with the whole group with what direction we wanted the branding to go, I created more mock ups for posters, trying to get the old 90s nostalgia to fit with it.

However I wanted to break away from digital art and thought doing it traditionally might help add the nostalgia theme. Using the criteria and information we decided on as a group, adding things like a title, tagline, location/date/time, after party, sponsors, social media and the uni logo.

After some helpful feedback from the rest of the group I made some changes and used Asia's logo and title:

And then some other variants:

Something we forgot to check on the posters was spelling mistakes, which didn't work out too well, as we had to run around a replace all the posters before anyone noticed the spelling. I am fairly pleased with how the poster turned out, however I wished I spent a bit more time on it and possible sketched a few more ideas to get more variety. However, with not too much time available, we just tried to get work out as fast as we could. 

Branding Team

After coming up with the theme Nostalgia, we could move forward creating work for it. There was three of us in the branding team, and we had meetings and our own group chat to try and organise ourselves. We came up with a list of all the possible things we could do realistically and a deadline so the Promotion group could start with their work.

We came up with:

• Title
• Tagline
• Logo
• Posters
• Flyers
• Invites
• Social Media
• Extras: Stickers, Pins, Goody Bags, a Zine.

The divided the tasks equally between the three of us. This worked out well as there was a piece of worked there that interested all of us, and we got to work. The others in my team, Charlie and Asia, mocked up some titles:

I had also mocked up a title with a sketch of a poster design, using the old Nintendo logo:

Organising the Exhibition

For the exhibition we all voted on the role we'd like to take, it was a choice between Location and Logistics, Branding and Design, Curation, Promotion, and Private View/Events. I choose to go with Branding as I thought it would be an interesting challenge. I was happy with how the management of our group went, as it felt organised and generally people were satisfied with the roles they had. 

To start coming up with ideas we held a meeting to gather all our ideas, thinking up themes we could go with and possible venues. Here is the initial list of things we came up with in the meetings. 

Reflecting my Time at Cardiff Creative

I think I have defiantly learnt a lot at Cardiff Creative, and I am proud of the work created for it. It was helped me prepare for a possible career as an independent illustrator, and also given me the knowledge to go forward and maybe expand to selling my work in other shops to.

I now know the importance of time and money management now, as most the drawbacks were to do with some poor decision making with money, and also rushing to get stock last minute but I hope now I have learnt to sort out finances and my time.

Working at Cardiff Creative

I think working with Cardiff Creative definitely helped me a lot, especially with communication, which I really struggled with before. While there I talked to many other creators, who were not as intimidating as I thought, and most were friendly and gave me advice with selling in the shop. I also can the chance to talk to customers, which was educational to see the kind of products a consumer wanted to see, also it was nice to talk to people that were interested in work I’ve created, and even lead to some commissions. Getting commissions wasn't something I had anticipated, and although it was a great opportunity for more work, I had no idea on pricing, and I'd done commissions in the past it was mainly for friends so I didn't charge much. But this lead me to understand the worth of my time when creating art as before I'd undercharge because I didn't believe the work I created was worth that much.This helped me realise that charging £20 for roughly 6 hours work wasn't a fair price and I'd earn more on minimum wage for those hours, so thank fully the people in the shop helped me find prices that were reasonable for the time and effort put in, but also a price that I was comfortable asking for.

When starting at the shop, I wasn’t the best salesperson for talking to customers, but I gradually learnt how the management maintain a friendly environment for people that come into the store, and we came up with conversation starters to say to someone browsing the shop.

Even though I’ve had jobs in retail in the past and knew how to use a till, I’d never really had too much responsibility with managing money, so learning how to cash up at the end of the day, and maintaining the float, sorting out card machines and sorting out spreadsheets was a learning curve, which I think will become very useful when bookkeeping possible in a future career.

Working at Cardiff Creative

To start with, I struggled to keep up with the stock needed in the shop, and I made some unwise decisions trying to get enough. At this point I didn’t know too much about making prints, and tried to make them all myself with a printer that was insufficient. In hindsight, there are much better ways of going about making the products as it was neither cost or time effective, and that set me back a bit. Although it did teach me lesson, and some illustrators in the shop that recommended me with reliable places to help with printing, either online or in Cardiff.

However, despite this I started learning more about running the shop, including putting up displays:



Also adding things to their social media:



I even had a little stall in the shopping centre, to sell some things for Christmas:

Preparing for the Placement

In preparation for the stall and placement, my goal was to come up with stock that I was happy represented my style and also fit in to the commercial market and also with the other work in the shop. The prints made were mainly women or drag queens, which I think is true to what I want to portray with my art. I could so use some work I had previously made for Uni briefs.

 To expand my stock I looked into making things like stickers, pins, buttons and T-shirts. Even using themes like Halloween to sell for special events and holidays.

In preparation for having the stall as well, I advertised it on social media, hoping to bring in more customers and raise awareness.

This worked out quite well as I gained followers and people seemed interested in the types of things I would be selling. As well as social media, I tried to find ways of presenting myself as a professional illustrator, and to do that I created business cards, website and updated my online shop. So that if people were interested in my work in the shop, I would have an online presence that would go along with it.

Deciding on Placements

When initially deciding on the kind of placement I'd like to get involved in, I considered specific things I wanted to learn more about in the Illustration Industry. To start with, I researched a variety of agencies to see how many of them were interested in taking on interns, quickly to find that they book up fast as they are high demand. Dutch Uncle and Big Fish Designs were two such agencies, because even though they advertise placements, they were closed due to too many applicants.

After looking into agencies seemed unsuccessful, I considered a variety of possibilities like a tattoo apprenticeship, organisations like the Welsh Museum and Art Gallery, and specific types of illustration like botanical or medical but none seemed appropriate. When lead to the realisation that I would like to gain experience becoming a self employed Illustrator, whether that involved creating the stock, packaging, working out budgets and pricing, and  interacting with not only people within the industry but also the customers and consumers. I already had some experience selling some work at the Cardiff Creative, which is craft shop made up of 45 independent artists who create a variety of things.

Reaching out to Cardiff Creative about working with them was easier then I'd anticipated and they were happy taking on placements. It's a great relief that it went well as I had previously been quite anxious about meeting with people in a professional setting like that, and can feel a bit intimating. So finding them nice and friendly helped me then talk to others in the future. Finding somewhere that offered the kind of experience I was after, like Cardiff Creative, didn't take too long thanks to the prior work I'd done with them in the past. I think this showed me how useful it is to find contacts with people where you can.