EGRD3013 STUDIO PRACTICE EXTERNAL POSITIONING
Student Name: James Fraser Student Number: 0801309
Fairs, Exhibitions and the Future
A growing interest of mine has been in the various fairs for small publishers and art books and such things. While it’s not something I would want to focus on so closely it was fun to get involved in and experience as both a spectator and a seller. During the course of this unit I have only gone to two events that really lend themselves to what I’m currently looking at. The first was “The Small Publishers Fair 2010” that took place at Conway Hall, the atmosphere was defiantly a more mature one then the following exhibition/ show but seeing what was on offer defiantly opened your eyes to what other book artists were producing. The second was “Handmade and Bound” which was held at a Social Club in Euston. The atmosphere here was manic, with “art school types” running around all over the place. Several Universities and Colleges had their work for sale as well as some other book artists and print makers. I was
even fortunate to have some of my zines for sale. I made a small edition of ten of my zines and managed to sell six of them, with one person actually buying two of them. While these events were fun it was quite clear that selling goods at them at times wasn’t so fun. I’d love to be involved in these from time to time, as a personal thing but doing them for a living would not be for me. What is has inspired me to do though, is look into producing goods such as screen prints or giclee art prints that I could sell from a website.
D&AD
As part of my external positioning I have taken it upon myself to enter a series of competitions that I see most beneficial to my practise. Currently I’m working on two D&AD briefs that link closely to illustration. The first being the Disney brief. In which you have to develop a character and produce an animation that lasts 30-60 seconds. Currently I’m in the early stages of working out a character, in terms of appearance and personality. My rational for doing this brief is that I have not done character design before and animation is fairly new to me. While I know that this requires skill and time, I want to do it as I feel that it will test my illustration skill in a different way.
The other brief I am looking at is the Diesel brief as it’s quite open and again is an illustrative based brief. While it doesn’t directly link to me practising/acquiring new skills I do feel comfortable in entering this one and think whatever I produce will reflect a good level of illustration.
Collaboration
Recently after coming to realise that a few of us wanted to do some collaborative works a few students and myself banded together and have formed a collective. At present we have coined ourselves “Ransack” to make it easy to reference our collaborative work and truly independent efforts. Ransack currently consists of six members: Ben Ewing, Ben Gardiner, Aaron Kitney, Chris Vickers, Robert Wilson and myself. Our collaborative efforts take the form of a zine, which we produce on a weekly basis. The theme of the zine changes weekly and is centered around a word. The word can be interpreted however you wish the only restriction at present has been that any work produced for the zine must work in B&W for reproduction purposes and a combination of four single pages or one double page and two single pages should be used at present. Past zines have been Repetition, Anti, Wet and Discovery.
With the project continuing on we have discussed the use of colour, several hour zines, a change in size and other slightly different possibly alterations for the future. As well as a likely conclusion which will be a “best bits” edition., featuring work from all of us taken from previous issues by Ransack, possibly featuring new “unseen” work. At present the aim of the zine is quite selfish and hasn’t been made with the intention of being seen by the public. This should change with “best bits”, which we have talked about putting in the public eye, either by ramming it down the publics throat or by housing it in a book, which could be sold. The collaboration has taught me about myself and working with others but also how we can all perceive something as simple as a single word very differently and come to rather different conclusions. This while not directly linked to external positioning definitely will influence how I work with others in the future on collaborative works.
Web Presence
I have began to look into creating a web presence for myself, while I have yet to put money into this venture I have thought a great deal about it and looked at various good and bad examples of online portfolios. I have looked into both the portfolio side and the networking through things such as the behance network, deviantart, flickr, twitter and other such networks like Forrst. Another important aspect of web presence is keeping people on your website for as long as possible. Lots of people do this by means of running and maintaining an active and interesting blog. For a while I ran an graphic inspiration tumblr. With over 780 unique followers who continue to follow my posts through subscription, with
many more visits from one off visitors and occasional repeat visitors that happen to stumble across it. As of this post, I’m looking into purchasing adequate hosting and a domain name to allow me to begin this venture.
Nkon International Competition 2010-2011
A side from D&AD I have entered the “Nikon Photo contest International 2010-2011� I’m doing this as I feel my photography is a strong element that I use or can use in my design work but also can stand and hold its own. I entered two images produced and processed by me into one of the given categories available.
Evaluation
So reflecting back on the unit there has been some ups and downs and lots of confusion and hidden panic on my part. But after a rocky start I feel I have grabbed control of the reins again and steering myself back on course. I have found that my work is liked enough by others enough to purchase, and to that extent encouraged me to look into producing work to distribute and sell. As well as potentially turning this work into contents for a promotional pack that I could send out. I have started creating work for several competitions and while if I don’t see results from entering them, I will have created work that will be familiar to designers through the respect competitions such as D&AD have attained over the years it has run. I also entered a highly respected photography competition, and although it’s most unlikely that I’ll place, it felt good to start including my photography as part of my practise and less of a “hobby”. Overall I believe I’m heading the right way in my design work and should look into creating an online presence for to use in getting my work known and to link potential employers to. I have made a good start at externally positioning myself or at least beginning to find my footing. but really need to reach other further and make contacts. This however will be much easier once I take the time and effort to create a website to link people to.