OUIL 502 STUDIO BRIEF 2
CREATIVE REPORT BEN FARR
CREATIVE REPORT
The work that I have enjoyed creating and researching the most on the course so far has been work based around a subject matter that I’m passionate about. In my career I’d love to get commissions from the world of sport and especially football. Because of this interest a lot of the practitioners, who’s work I admire and follow on social media, have a practice that is very much based around sport. One of these illustrators is Dave Flanagan. Dave’s work is often very digital, using vectors to create clean and stylish illustrations. He has received commissions from a number of high profile sport organisations and it’s for this reason that decided to contact him for this creative report. I wanted to ask him some questions to find out about his experiences working with big clients and to get some insight into his working process.
CREATIVE REPORT Dave Flanagan’s impressive client list includes a number of illustrious Sports teams and leading brands and organisations within sport. From Arsenal, Manchester City, Juventus and England Rugby to ESPN, BT sport and the Bundesliga. One of Dave’s first jobs as a freelance illustrator was to produce illustrations for a small monthly music magazine. One month he was asked to illustrate the footballer Thierry Henry, which inspired him to produce more illustrations of football players. He uploaded these illustrations to Flickr and was subsequently contacted by a design agency who work with Manchester City. From whom he got his first football commission. Dave said that he has never had to contact a club or agency directly, which I was surprised about. He explained that all of his commissions have come from people seeing his work on social media or his website.
CREATIVE REPORT
CREATIVE REPORT
On producing work for big sports organisations Dave said that each club he has worked with has been a different experience. He has had received the most regular work and contact from Manchester City. He has been to their stadium a few times for meetings about producing work for them. Dave has also produced a series of illustrations for Arsenal fc and said that they spoke once at the start of their working relationship and since then for over a year they have just exchanged emails. Dave has a few different aesthetics in his practice, I wondered how he decided which approach is best for the brief, he said that ‘most briefs arrive with an approach in mind but because I have a few options of style the client sometimes rings to chat about what could work.’
CREATIVE REPORT ‘All clubs in every sport need to keep up with the demand for content. Illustrators and animators are in a brilliant position to be the suppliers of this content. It can only get better in the future with the increasing demand for Social media content.’ - Dave Flanagan I feel like I’m seeing sports teams using illustrations in their promotional material and social media more and more . This is a good trend for me and potential future work prospects.
CREATIVE REPORT Dave’s advice to me was to concentrate on keeping making work. He believes that if you make good work and get it out there on social media platforms then people will see it and you will get commissions. He also suggested trying to do personal projects as these are a great way of getting noticed. Examples Dave mentioned were posting an ‘illustration a day’ project or illustrating every member of a famous football team for example the Man United 1999 team.
OUIL 502 STUDIO BRIEF 2
CREATIVE REPORT BEN FARR