Creative Presence: Personal Presence

What should your identity convey about you?

After giving some thought I've decided that my identity should be both personal yet keep an sense of professionalism to it. The reason being that I want people to see my work and understand that I am a professional - yet I don't want people to feel that I am unapproachable. People such as Kristyna Baczynski or Dan Berry are good examples of this.

Is it actually important to have an identity as an Illustrator?

I believe in this day and age it is integral to have an identity to have an identity as an illustrator, being just a name can make networking and whatnot problematic in my opinion.

What could be included in your pack and why?

I believe the basics of a pack should include a business card, a CV of experience and possible an example of some sort of my work. These would be included to allow the client to contact you, gauge the work you have done for people, and receive a separate example of your work for themselves.

What are you wanting to achieve by producing promotional items?

Its basically a method of networking and creating a starting point with a client, a somewhat way of breaking the ice with someone I've either never met or have had little contact with.

Different ways to contact other Creatives, Studios or Agents.

Email - Allows time to contemplate questions, prose etc without an immediate response necessary.

Telephone - Not face to face, however some people don't like talking on the phone and a list of topics may be needed.

Event - Things such as Thought Bubble can serve as an introduction etc. Not really the sort of place to have long winded conversations though.

Social Media - Again, good for small introductions, but not good for long winded conversations. However - it can be used as a good way for continued interactions.

Studio Visit - A good way of introducing yourself but the client may be unprepared for your visit.

Creative Strategy: Digital Colours to Print 3 - Notes

Think of channel's in photoshop as ink.
Click channels, drop down menu, new spot channel.

With a channel you can think of it as a layer and do whatever you would do in a layer. Channels act like all layers are in Multiply. By double clicking on the channel you can change the entire colour in the channel very quickly. This is how you can work with over printing! Hazzahh!! You can make a colour deeper by changing the solidity in spot channel options to 100% or varying degrees of it.

Save as PSD of TIFF. Make sure Spot check box is checked. If not, figure out what is wrong.

Layers
Use lock button on layers menu, selects everything but transparent items. Use separate layers for colours to alter all in one go.

To save a JPEG version you must merge all channels otherwise the image will be black and white!

Press D on keyboard to reset foreground and background colours to black and white.

Colour Separations in Illustrator
Open file in Illustrator, place file, window, separations preview, overprint preview. Can then select which ink colour prints.

Printing CMYK in Illustrator - if you have one tinted colour select 15, two select 105, and so on.
15, 75, 105, 155

For screen printing, this only works if you print to a laser printer!

Creative Strategy: Off The Page Event

Last night was the launch event of Off The Page, an exhibition of the Level 5 students work at Colours May Vary. Along with Adam I was heading up the Hanging Team, whose role consisted of collecting together everyones prints from the OUIL504 module and hanging them in Colours May Vary.

Whilst we didn't have much to do leading up to the event before the final few days, the time in which we did have things to do was stressful indeed. Firstly we had to collects the prints off everyone which in itself was an arduous task due to people not having prints ready or leaving them in random places for us to find. Once we got to Colours May Vary on Thursday the real fun began. Neither Adam or I (who were in charge of the hanging team) have ever put together an exhibition before, so deciding where prints would go and work best was very stressful and frustrating indeed. However after a long Thursday we pretty much had the layout sorted, so all that remained on our part was the actual hanging on the Friday. While this was an easier task it was much more time consuming and tiring. However we finished with a bit of time to spare and the other Teams were left to sort out their side of things well enough that the event went much better than I was expecting.

Here are a few photos of me hanging, stressing out and of the event:



There were several things that we failed to think about until last minute such as a window display, artist/event information for visitors and too few tools. These are all things that would be on my mind a lot sooner if I were to take part in making an event again.

Creative Presence: Business Cards

With the Colours May Vary Exhibition coming up, I thought it would be a good idea to produce some business cards for the event.

However some issues arose from this. Firstly, I feel that the work I put on the front of the card is to digital heavy - yet I feel that I have no hand drawn work that I am particularly proud of at this point to put on the front. Secondly - whilst the colour scheme on the front works well, replicating that onto the back didn't work as well as I'd have hoped. I am now debating whether to print some business cards for the exhibition at all if I can't produce one in time that displays the work I want to be known for.

Creative Strategy: Digital Colours to Print 1 - Notes

Industry Spec how to prepare appropriately.

RGB for screen.

CMYK for printing. When saving Photoshop for InDesign, save in CMYK.

RGB different range of colours to CMYK. RGB files generally smaller than CMYK.

Gamut Warning – gives an idea of colours that are outside of printing range by turning those colours grey.

One-way to change printable colours in Gamut Warning is to lower the Saturation. Another is by using colour range or magic wand tool. After using these tools the hue and sat can be limited to only selected ranges. Or in Colour Range out of Gamut Warning can be selected in the samples bar.

Creating of adjustment layers in the layer window (circle half black, half clear).

Image adjustments – replace colour – another method.

Proof colour – shows what the image will look like in CMYK BUT it is still in RGB.

COLOUR PICKER window - small triangle warning suggests colours that aren't printable. Click on triangle to be sent to nearest printable colour (or web-safe colour).

Printing -
1. 300ppi (or dpi)
2. CMYK
3. Actual Size
4. .jpeg (.tif or .psd)

Commercial Print -
Offset Lithography - printing that uses CMYK. CMYK sometimes referred to as Process Colour

Life's a Pitch: Presentation Evaluation

I have to say, our presentation went surprisingly well! In no way was our presentation the best, but we certainly got through it well. It ran relatively smoothly from a presentation point of view, each person clearly understood what they were talking about and there were no major hiccups. I was particularly impressed with Rowena whose understanding of the finance aspect was fantastic!

However, we failed to discuss SWOT and PEST related issues which was a huge area for us not to pick up on. Looking back, this is something that was vital to the presentation and would definitely be included in a real pitch. Additionally, one or two members of our group aren't really outspoken when it comes to talking in front of large groups of people. Ideally, these people wouldn't have been presenting (which I think they'd be happy about) but that was part of the presentation criteria, so there you go.

Here is the PDF of our presentation.