Editorial by Kraggy Krag

“THINK A LOT. THINK HARD BEFORE YOU START TO DO SOMETHING. I SPEND MORE TIME THINKING THAN ILLUSTRATING. I NEED TO SURPRISE MYSELF WITH GOOD IDEAS AND NOT JUST ILLUSTRATE BEAUTIFUL PICTURES.” - NOMA BAR

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GUARDIAN EDITORIAL

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The new rules of recruiting How social networks can help you find a job

I had chosen the Guardian editorial project for a few reasons; in the second year of the FdA we did some trial editorials and I really enjoyed doing them but didn’t have enough practice. I also liked the idea of being in contact with a Guardian art director and I wanted to hear professional feedback from the kind of people that could one day employ me for a commission. The brief had a relatively simple format; we had to create two drafts for each of the three editorials. There were two articles; the first had a cover feature and an inside image, the second had a smaller image to be placed above it. We were supplied with the basic layout templates used for these pages, the copy text and the dimensions of each box we needed to fill. At our first briefing Sarah Habershon talked us through the standard process that the newspaper uses when commissioning illustrations. We were shown images of the artist’s roughs compared to their final piece. I was surprised to see just how ‘rough’ some of them were, but she explained that many of the artists had a good reputation with the paper and so they knew to trust the initial sketches.

The new rules of recruiting How social networks can help you find a job

12a

As part of a University project we were given the choice to work on a brief set by a number of external companies. The choices included working with a fashion shop called Hobbs, DK publishing and the Guardian newspaper. I chose the Guardian project, which was an Editorial based brief set by the Saturday section Art Director Sarah Habershon.

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4 Money Saturday Guardian 17.09.11

Use Ryanair’s own prepaid card or you will have to pay a fee

Personal effects We want your expert opinion

Travel Passengers without the new ‘Cash Passport’ will be charged more. Lisa Bachelor reports

assengers flying with Ryanair will have to use the airline’s own Mastercard to avoid paying booking fees from early October. The airline currently charges anyone paying with a debit, credit or Visa Electron card an “admin fee” of £6 per one-way flight that can only be avoided by using a prepaid card. But the airline has announced it is launching its own prepaid Mastercard, the Ryanair Cash Passport, on 4 October and only passengers using that card will avoid the £6 fee. From 1 November, anyone using another brand of prepaid Mastercard will also be charged the £6. Unlike a debit card, a prepaid card has to be loaded with money in advance before being used to pay for things and is estimated to be held by only 5% of the population. In the past, Ryanair passengers were able to get around the charge by using Visa Elec-

tron. However, in January last year the airline introduced a £5-a-leg fee (since increased) to Electron users. Responding to the launch of the Ryanair Cash Passport, Martin Lewis, of website MoneySavingExpert.com, said: “This is anti-competitive, it’s an insult to loyal passengers who first got Electron cards so they could pay for free, then were forced to switch to prepaid Mastercards and are now being asked to dance again this time by getting Ryanair’s own prepaid card.” The move by the airline is a bold one. A week ago the Office of Fair Trading launched a formal investigation into “a number of airlines” over their surcharges for using debit and credit cards. And in June the OFT proposed that charges for paying by debit card should be banned, and pointed out that a simple amendment to existing payment services regulations by the Treasury would achieve this. This followed a super complaint from Which?, lodged with the OFT in

March, against the practice. Which? claimed that the actual cost to the retailer for processing card transactions was no more than 20p for debit cards and no more than 2% on credit cards. Last week, Which? released research showing that consumers are still paying an estimated £265,000 a day in debit card surcharges for booking plane tickets, despite the OFT’s recommendations. “Quite simply, Ryanair must be forced to include the booking fee in its headline price – this is not a voluntary fee – it’s part of core pricing,” said Lewis. A spokesman for Ryanair denied that the launch of the card was a snub to the OFT and said it had “been in the pipeline for some time”. He said: “We have suffered from criticism for some time that customers do not know where to get prepaid Mastercards. So we decided that to make We have suffered from criticism for some time that customers do not know where to get prepaid Mastercards. So we decided that to makit easier for customers they could start getting them from our website.” He denied the airline charged debit or credit card fees but instead said Ryanair charged an “admin fee” that went towards the upkeep of the company’s websites. The OFT does not comment on individual airlines’ pricing structures, but did say that its investigation is looking at “any additional charge that fluctuates depending on how you [an airline customer] choose to make the payment”.

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My tight-wad/pseudo-green husband won’t let me put on the heating until the end of October. Even then, he insists the thermostat stays at 18C. Am I condemned to a life in thermal underwear or do I have to boot him out to warm up? • Where on earth are you?! Here in Cardiff I still have to sleep with the window open and just a sheet over me. Perhaps you should get checked out for poor circulation because, I promise you, it’s not cold enough for heating yet. elmsyrup at guardian.co.uk • Has your writer got an open fire to burn wood in? It is a wonderfully cosy option. Does she wrap up well? Too many people wander around in light clothes and wonder why they are cold. And, finally, is she some sort of Victorian, submissive woman who cannot say: “Sorry darling, I am cold, I contribute to the household finances, so I am switching on the heating”. Sharman Finlay, Ballyclare, Co Antrim • I could have asked this question until recently. My husband doesn’t feel the cold much and is afraid of heating bills. I suffered at 18 degrees in a house that never felt warm. Last year, I finally got him to realise that turning up the heat to 21 for two hours in the morning, and three in the evening, made for comfort. It worked, and the bills have stayed reasonable. I rarely have to put on the sitting room fire, as I sneakily did previously. When needed, as on these September evenings, candles and tea-lights on the hearth give a glow and warmth. Tina Lukey, Mold, Flintshire • Maybe installing thermostatic radiator valves could save your marriage! Setting each room’s temperature should save money, as well as making each space suitably comfortable. Fiona Cobb, London

Money on the web Tenants: do you have a problem? Not sure of your rights? Our experts will be online between 12.30 and 1.30 on Tuesday to offer help and advice guardian. co.uk/ money

• You don’t mention why the heating is your husband’s domain. Does he dispense loo roll by the square and make you turn away while he fiddles with the lock on the fridge? Having said that, I completely agree with him about the heating and can’t stand hot, stuffy rooms – September (often a warm, sunny month) seems very early to be thinking of heating. Have a bath, do some exercise, have some friends round and light a bonfire. Becky Davidson at guardian.co.uk • Buy yourself a top-of-the-range electric blanket (your side of the bed only) and kick him out into the spare room if he can’t stand the heat. We have a similar argument (our kids once asked if it was normal to see your own breath in the kitchen) but, as our heating is oil-fuelled and very expensive,

I’ve had grudgingly to agree – and invest in thermal underwear. Name and address supplied • Several years ago we discovered we’d paid £1,000 over the course of a year to heat a two-bed flat. We decided this was ridiculous and made a concerted effort to bring our bills down. Now we never spend more than £35 a month, not even during the coldest months of last winter. We do this by wearing thermal underwear and double or triple layers of socks, putting hot water bottles in bed and under our feet if we’re watching TV, wearing huge fleeces over our clothes and, if necessary, turning the heat up for just five minutes. Five minutes of exercise helps warm you up too. If you don’t build up some tolerance to the cold it will end up costing you lots of money in the long run. LondonPenguin at guardian.co.uk • Central heating on: 29 October. First night when a winter coat is necessary: 5 November. Winter coat off: 14 March. Central heating off: 31 March. These are the immutable laws by which life must be lived. The actual weather on the dates specified is essentially irrelevant. Hope that’s cleared things up. ecranto at guardian.co.uk winner of this week’s £25 National Book Token • More worrying than your thermal underwear dilemma is the phrase: “My husband won’t let me”. Are you sure the Guardian is the paper for you? Kate Dickens, Spalding, Lincolnshire • Tried and tested for warmth: A brisk walk; on return, don tights, thermals, fleecy bottoms, polo top, woolly jumper and finish the look with dressing gown, slippers, hat and fingerless gloves! Come the spring, when the layers come off, everyone thinks you’ve lost a stone. Trust me, I’m an expert! Karen McMullan, Ballyclare, Co Antrim • Pay the gas bill yourself and tell him to stuff it ... Mish Varney, via email For more ideas go to www.guardian. co.uk/money then click on Blogs and Personal Effects

Any answers? We are a retired couple, aged 75 and 80, living in a three-bed semi on the state pension and small life savings. We are thinking of selling up and buying a residential park home to make life easier and so we have enough money to really enjoy our life. Should we do it?

Reply Email your suggestions to personal.effects@guardian.co.uk or write to us at Personal Effects, Money, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. There’s a £25 National Book Token for the best answer. And do you have a problem readers could solve? Let us know.

2 Work Saturday Guardian XX.XX.XX

How to master social recruitment More and more employers are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to spot new talent. Joe Smith explains the tactics, and how jobseekers can use them to their advantage This is appropriate dummy text that is being exmployed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 100 This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 200 This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 300 This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 400 This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 500 This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 600 This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the

CAMBERWELL Guardian editorial copy 2012 Page 1 of 3 2 images required: Cover and interior Work: The new rules of recruiting: How social networks can help you find a job More and more employers are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to spot new talent. Joe Smith explains the tactics, and how jobseekers can use them to their advantage

Chances are you are already familiar with social networks as tools for keeping in touch with friends, or to broadcast your thoughts. But if their value as a way of connecting with potential employers has passed you by, it’s time to wise up fast. A recent US survey showed that nearly 90% of employers either use, or plan to use, social media for recruiting. In the rapidly changing world of social recruitment, barely a week goes by without the appearance of some new website or gizmo purporting to change the face of job-hunting forever. Last month, for example, saw the launch of the “Apply with LinkedIn” button, enabling jobseekers to send their public profile data from the business professional network directly to an employer. Reports of the death of the traditional paper CV may be premature, but clearly it is becoming an increasingly less influential part of the jobseeker ‘s armoury. LinkedIn, with 100 million members, is still the site of choice for companies hiring directly, but Facebook (750 million) and Twitter (200 million) are catching up, with many believing a tipping point has been reached in the ways employers seek to hire staff. But what does it all mean for jobseekers ? Understanding the rules of social recruitment is key. At first glance, employers may seem to hold all the cards, but understanding their tactics can

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“It’s about the whole degree of proactivity now,” says Matthew Jeffery, head of talent acquisition at software house Autodesk. “It’s not enough to simply push your CV up on the web and hope a company is going to come to you the onus is on you to get out there and persuade.” 1 You don’t have to be ‘looking’ to be looking If you are one of the 10% of LinkedIn members actively seeking work, the bad news is that the site’s Corporate Recruiter tool, which it sells to employers, allows them access to the “passive” 90% of members in jobs. “From the corporate perspective, the talent pool is shrinking,” says Jeffery, co-author of an essay entitled Recruitment 3.0: A Vision for the Future of Recruitment. “Competitors are getting better at recruiting people from rivals, and graduate talent is becoming of a more mixed quality. We have to be much more aggressive at getting out into the passive pool.” However, Jared Goralnick, founder of email management service AwayFind, believes social media

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considerably improve your odds of getting noticed.

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2 Build your own work brand, but be judicious with it To make yourself more visible, think about how you present and express skills and experience on a LinkedIn profile just as carefully as you would with a paper CV. Keep your summary and experience concise and to the point, incorporating key search terms. And widen your appeal by linking out to blogposts or articles of professional relevance - even to your other social media profiles if you are confident they portray you in a good light (see point five). LinkedIn has more tips at careerservices.linkedin.com/profile. But making too much noise without substance can be risky. Employers can be suspicious of people who seem to be trying too hard to get noticed, so think carefully about paid-for services that claim to flag up your visibility, such as LinkedIn’s Job Seeker Premium. “Who are you a ‘featured’ candidate for? All this tells me is that you opted to pay so you can get moved to the top of the search list. It does NOTHING to prove you are a top-notch candidate,” writes entrepreneur and employer Adrienne Graham on her Forbes blog, Work in Progress. “If you didn’t get attention before, what makes you think paying a few extra dollars will make you all of a sudden desirable?” 3 Strike up conversations with potential employers Many firms now put significant resources into Facebook pages with the end goal of identifying future employees. “Companies are building their own communities of people interested in their products or services, or what they’ve got to say,” Jeffery says. “They then start mapping out competitors and talent within other areas, then try to attract them in - be it through employment branding, social media, whatever they can use.” Participating in these professional communities - or “talent networks”, as HR professionals call them - is key, says Lucian Tarnowski, chief executive of social recruitment consultancy Brave New Talent. “Everybody is now in the jobs market for their career, and people should keep themselves open,” he says. “Talent networks are a way to do that. They’re saying, one day you might be interested in working for IBM or whoever. Or if, for example, you work for Google, you might one day be interested in working for Facebook, so you can follow Facebook.” Employers also take a keen interest in broader professional networks, perhaps based around chartered institutes or other industry-specific websites. Joining these not only lets you connect with others in your trade but also puts you in sight of many smaller employers who cannot afford to recruit through LinkedIn or maintain a serious Facebook presence. “Most jobs are in smaller businesses - and they’re not using that level of recruiting,” Goralnick points out.

can empower jobseekers . “If employers are filtering for people who have jobs when they’re recruiting, maybe you can’t get into that pool. But it’s still only one of the pools,” he says. How people present themselves online, he says, is “a huge opportunity to put yourself in a position of authority”. Goralnick says LinkedIn “has predictive algorithms that can tell when someone is looking to move on, when someone starts updating their profile in a certain way” - one reason why it pays to keep your profile up to date.

CAMBERWELL Guardian editorial copy 2012 Page 3 of 3

Twitter is not yet widely incorporated into many companies’ recruitment strategies, but is extremely popular within certain industries, especially media, technology, advertising and PR. Like texting, messages are limited to 140 characters or less, but Twitter gives you the ultimate flexibility to bypass official channels and communicate directly to employees in a company you want to work for. It’s easy and effective to link out to your other online profiles. And, crucially, the brevity of the medium encourages creativity, like the jobseekers who opened several separate accounts so the letters “HIRE US” appeared on the Twitter pages of the people they wanted to work for (watch the video at bit.ly/kYmxpx to get a better idea of how it worked). 5 On the web, if it can be known, it will be known A recent article in the New York Times told the story of Social Intelligence, a company used by some US firms to scour the web for information about potential recruits. Much of Social Intelligence’s data reportedly comes from non-social internet use - an individual’s comments on blogs or eBay activity records, for example. For many, it is a disturbing vision, and Robert Hohman, chief executive of Glassdoor.com, a website that lets employees anonymously review their employers (see panel), foresees a backlash against such data mining that will lead to government regulation. “When we get down to personal information, there’s two types,” he says. “There’s that which you have willingly shared with the world on social networks, and I think that’s completely fair game. Then there’s information which you had no intention of sharing which, by some mechanism, is being made available ... morally it runs foul of what we think of as privacy.” Tarnowski points out that the Facebook data of real interest to employers may lie beyond drunken holiday snaps and in your primary and secondary connections which, collectively, paint a far more accurate picture. “The list of people I choose to be friends with says a lot about the kind of person I am,” Tarnowski says. “Past job titles say a lot about what I’m likely to do in the future. The courses I’ve done say a lot about what might be suitable jobs. All these snippets, if you amass them, could be incredibly valuable.” For now, there remains an understandable risk for Facebook users regarding the kind of information employers might be party to. The network’s data privacy rules remain notoriously slack, and it is hard to delete permanently a Facebook profile. Google+, a new attempt to rival Facebook, attempts to bridge these problems by allowing users to group their contacts into “circles” - of family, friends and work - and share different updates with each, as well as deploying much stronger data privacy rules. Perhaps, thankfully for jobseekers , there is a silver lining in that transparency can work both ways. Jeffrey likens the situation for those checking out employers to that of researching a hotel on

4 Understand the pros and cons of different networks

Tripadvisor: “I don’t trust the spin in the brochures, I see what other people have written and trust them to help me make my holiday decisions. You can see the same in recruitment.”

At first glance, Facebook, with all its potential for indiscretion, might seem like a terrible place from

For many larger employers, such openness has taken a bit of getting used to. “Companies building

which to tout yourself to potential employers. But, says Tarnowski, it illustrates another truth of the

social media communities are no longer in charge of the message, which is a bit scary,” says Jeffery.

new social recruitment landscape: different networks have markedly different limitations.

“In the old days, you could put a message out there in print or broadcast, and there was no way to

“If an employer is looking to fill a specific role, they can find someone suitable [onLinkedIn],” he says. “But it’s not so good for an employer who will need a certain number of, say, marketing professionals next year. That’s where the power of the community can come in.”

respond to it. In the social media age, everyone is talking out there. So whatever companies say about themselves has to be realistic, or else we’re going to get shot down.” --ends--

Since joining an illustration course I have admired the effort and intelligent thinking that goes into creating a successful editorial. I often save some of the ones I spot that I think are particularly good, such as the image above, which I’ve had on my wall for two years. Unfortunately the illustrator’s name is not on the clipping I have, but it really stood out to me. This isn’t because of the visual language he used, as that is not really to my taste, but the idea behind the image. Although it may seem obvious at first, people looking for a job, in the bottom right you see a man being let onto the ship, to me that says “welcome aboard” just as you would say in the context of a job or a ship. The ideas versus aesthetic issue has always been important for me. In the first year of FdA I made an industrial report around how important ideas were against technical competence in illustration. One of the several illustrators I interviewed for this was Mitch Blunt. His recent work has developed immensely and is still very visually strong. I remembered that in 2010 he told me that “the clearer an image, the better. It’s all about ideas. If your idea is good then you don’t need anything complicated going on, it carries itself”. Two years on and I still totally agree.

The timing for this project had come at a very busy period. Our unit 10 and dissertation hand-ins were just before we went to present our drafts to Sarah at the Guardian building in Kings Cross. Because of this I had put creating rough sketches for it on hold until the hand-in was complete, but was constantly thinking of ideas as I worked on other projects. After the writing projects were over I tried to quickly get ideas down onto paper, these were very rough, but I felt like I had to get rid of any bad ideas first before getting to the good ones or realising that the initial ideas are sometimes the best. As a starting point I read the articles over a few times and highlighted the key points. I then tried to summarise the articles and create a list breaking down what needed portraying and noting if there were any visual word-plays I could pick up on. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have time to start experimenting with visual styles but could see how each image might look in my head. These ideas were very rough and were only meant to be visual notes in my sketch book for me to refer back to when choosing a idea to work up.

The first article which included a cover image was about using social media to find jobs. It covered this from both the job seeker’s perspective and the employer’s. Visual plays that stuck out to me were the people being grouped into pools or camps, the employers using the technology as a tool for recruitment and people struggling to find their way into a job through the social media path they had chosen. Originally my only aim was to try and represent this article without using too much technology in the imagery, ie. laptops, circuit boards etc. However my roughs weren’t very strong for this, and I rejected some ideas that took away the computer element in favour of some more straight-forward editorials. This later changed anyway, but I don’t think they would have been roughs that I would enjoy showing to a real client. The second article was an opinions section, it was about a lady whose husband wouldn’t allow her to turn up the heating. I instantly got loads of imagery for this and the reader comments provided extra routes to take. The hard part was trying not to settle for a obvious image of a cold woman in the house.

As I didn’t have much time to prepare my ideas to present to Sarah, I had to just use the scribbled sketches I had made in my sketchbook. I scanned them in quickly and overlaid some colour to give a rough idea of how they might look, but really I was relying on my ability to explain my ideas.

CAMBERWELL Guardian editorial copy 2012 Page 1 of 2 GUARDIAN MONEY SECTION: Personal effects column 1 image required. 113mm wide by 99mm deep

My tight-wad/pseudo-green husband won’t let me put on the heating until the end of October. Even then, he insists the thermostat stays at 18C. Am I condemned to a life in thermal underwear or do I

CAMBERWELL Guardian editorial copy 2012 Page 2 of 2 GUARDIAN MONEY SECTION: Personal effects column

spend more than pounds 35 a month, not even during the coldest months of last

have to boot him out to warm up? * Where on earth are you?! Here in Cardiff I still have to sleep with the window open and just a sheet over me. Perhaps you should get checked out for poor circulation because, I promise you, it’s not cold enough for heating yet. elmsyrup at guardian.co.uk * Has your writer got an open fire to burn wood in? It is a wonderfully cosy option. Does she wrap up well? Too many people wander around in light clothes and wonder why they are cold. And, finally, is she some sort of Victorian, submissive woman who cannot say: “Sorry darling, I am cold, I contribute to the household finances, so I am switching on the heating”.

We do this by wearing thermal underwear and double or triple layers of socks, p

bottles in bed and under our feet if we’re watching TV, wearing huge fleeces ove

necessary, turning the heat up for just five minutes. Five minutes of exercise he

If you don’t build up some tolerance to the cold it will end up costing you lots of run. LondonPenguin at guardian.co.uk

Sharman Finlay, Ballyclare, Co Antrim * I could have asked this question until recently. My husband doesn’t feel the cold much and is afraid of heating bills. I suffered at 18 degrees in a house that never felt warm. Last year, I finally got him to realise that turning up the heat to 21 for two hours in the morning, and three in the evening, made for comfort. It worked, and the bills have stayed reasonable. I rarely have to put on the sitting room fire, as I sneakily did previously. When needed, as on these September evenings, candles and tea-lights on

* Central heating on: 29 October. First night when a winter coat is necessary: 5 N

off: 14 March. Central heating off: 31 March. These are the immutable laws by wh

The actual weather on the dates specified is essentially irrelevant. Hope that’s cl

ecranto at guardian.co.uk winner of this week’s pounds 25 National Book Token

the hearth give a glow and warmth. Tina Lukey, Mold, Flintshire * Maybe installing thermostatic radiator valves could save your marriage! Setting each room’s temperature should save money, as well as making each space suitably comfortable. Fiona Cobb, London

* More worrying than your thermal underwear dilemma is the phrase: “My husb Are you sure the Guardian is the paper for you? Kate Dickens, Spalding, Lincolnshire

* You don’t mention why the heating is your husband’s domain. Does he dispense loo roll by the square and make you turn away while he fiddles with the lock on the fridge? Having said that, I completely agree with him about the heating and can’t stand hot, stuffy rooms September (often a warm, sunny month) seems very early to be thinking of heating. Have a bath, do some exercise, have some friends round and light a bonfire. Becky Davidson at guardian.co.uk * Buy yourself a top-of-the-range electric blanket (your side of the bed only) and kick him out into the

* Tried and tested for warmth: A brisk walk on return, don tights, thermals, fleec

woolly jumper and finish the look with dressing gown, slippers, hat and fingerle

spring, when the layers come off, everyone thinks you’ve lost a stone. Trust me, Karen McMullan, Ballyclare, Co Antrim

spare room if he can’t stand the heat. We have a similar argument (our kids once asked if it was normal to see your own breath in the kitchen) but, as our heating is oil-fuelled and very expensive, I’ve had grudgingly to agree - and invest in thermal underwear. Name and address supplied * Several years ago we discovered we’d paid pounds 1,000 over the course of a year to heat a two-bed flat. We decided this was ridiculous and made a concerted effort to bring our bills down. Now we never

* Pay the gas bill yourself and tell him to stuff it ... Mish Varney, via email ----ends----

At the Guardian headquarters one of the points that Sarah made to the groups was that the colours used in the newspaper needed to be vibrant. She said that often pastel colours are lost because of the newsprint paper. I realised I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be able to use my regular pastel palette so went in search of some examples of colourful editorials. (l-r) Cover for Doctor Zhivago Ryan Gillett Dea Lellis Jon McNaught Jon Wong

From the feedback I got from the drafts for the first article, it was agreed that some of my earlier ideas worked better with the context and had more potential to have a linking theme between the two images. The idea of people using the icons of the social medias to climb up to reach the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; title was a popular one that I had previously wrote off. I started to explore this idea further and how it could be made. It became apparent to me that the characters would play a big roll for this illustration, so I toyed around with creating a particular character design just for this article.

Eventually, whilst deciding on a character design to use, I started experimenting with some cut-outs from a 1955 issue of Picture Post I had. In a strange way a lot of the images inside the magazine were quite relevant because it was a special issue on Russia at the time, and had scenes of people queuing for food or aid. I have used collage of this style before in my work, but not for a while so I thought a fresh try at it might create a nice aesthetic. During the development process I started thinking about various compositions the cover image could take. My original idea was that characters would be reaching for the words â&#x20AC;&#x153;WORKâ&#x20AC;? at the top using the twitter birds to fly there, pulling themselves up on chains for LinkedIn or climbing up books with the facebook logo to get closer to it. However as the image progressed this idea was simplified, partly due to the fact that the cut out characters I was using didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look like they were reaching to the sky. So instead the image acquired a new meaning, as well as getting close to the work title, the characters were also using the social media birds and books to help search the landscape for any jobs. I wanted the image to feel like a giant busy search party.

In constructing this image I also went out of my comfort zone a bit and leant how to work from photos in Adobe Illustrator. Before this had always seemed like a lengthy process, but I decided to set up a reference scene, photograph it, and then create a vector version. In hindsight I have realised that this was the first lengthy practice I had in Illustrator, which definitely affected my later projects. I then combined these vector images with textures from my image bank that I have built up for layering over images. With a bit of shadow it gave the image some depth that I normally struggle with achieving.

Once the basic composition was taking shape I started to drop it into the template that we had been provided with. It was obvious that to make it stand out it would need a more vibrant colour palette than I was used to using. For this I looked at the colours that the Guardian were already using on the page. For instance the yellow was influenced by the highlighted block of text at the bottom of the page layout. For the rest of the colours I used the hex colour coding from the Facebook and Twitter logos. Throughout creating the design I kept on trying different scales to use for the characters, I thought it might be quite nice to have a giant amongst the regular sized people, but in the end I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the point that would be trying to make. Lots of small changes like this were dropped, like adding clouds for example. I had to keep reminding myself not to busy the image too much or it will be too confusing to read the context I was trying to illustrate.

After applying the Facebook logos to a few of the books and tweaking the background colour and texture it was time to populate the image. To do this I went through Picture Post magazine and cut out any people I thought might be useful using a scalpel. I did this by hand because when I had tried scanning whole pages and then cutting around people, the edges were harder to see. I then had to scan them all, select around them, and place the people into the image. To make sure that there was a level of consistency with the depth I scaled all the people down to the largest (foreground) size they could be.

Once the people were in the document it was then a case of deciding where they could fit. I had to be selective over where the people were positioned depending on their posture and how much of their body was actually in the photograph. For a lot of the characters I made small adjustments, this was normally using the stamp tool to get rid of objects blocking their face, though sometimes it was a larger job like repositioning their head to look up or giving the person the extra arm they were missing from being out of shot. When I was happy with how populated the image was, the next step was to place it into the template and arrange the cover text. Luckily I always keep my elements in separate layers and grouped so moving the flying ladies around to fit the cover text was not too hard. As I was doing this I remembered that Sarah had shown a previous example where the illustrator had gone outside of the given image box, in order to incorporate the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;WORKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; title. As a final step to give the design an extra element of movement, I placed a larger flying lady in the foreground with her twitter bird just flying out of the frame.

After completing the cover image I decided to skip to the second article. I had a pretty solid idea from my drafts as to what the image would be. Seeing as it was a much smaller space to fill, the image needed to be bolder and to the point. So I decided leave the idea I had about making an ice-cube house, and instead use large vector shapes to create a visual metaphor. I knew that these were sometimes risky as they might be obvious symbols to use, but after seeing the Guardian using Noma Barâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s illustrations on such a small scale for a leaflet, I knew it was the right direction to take. There were 3 main elements I wanted to get across in this illustration. The thermostat, the gender / relationship conflict and the restricting control of the temperature.

With the resulting image for the Personal Effects article, I applied texture again to keep a constant with the work i was submitting, but also give a sense that the thermostat was on the wall. Finding the right placement of each element took quite a while, but i did feel that once the idea was secured in my head, it would be possible to turn an editorial like this over in a short amount of time. I think it reads well and if it isn’t obvious at first that there is a lock, a thermostat and the gender symbols, I still think the initial impression gives off the cold restricted feeling the article describes. Throught this editorial project I was researching around the practice of fellow illustrators’ work. The book “How To Be An Illustrator” by Darrel Rees was a constant help in learning how to handle the buiness side of editorial work, aswell as having an interview with Mark Porter, Creative Director at the Guardian, giving advice about editorials. Before I moved onto the final image I was still being inspired by some images I had seen of collage work and wonderful uses of texture, such as Borja Bonaque’s commissioned pieces. (l-r) Borja Bonaque, Rima Neverland Daniel Lachenmeier, Valero Doval 33

With the inside image for article one I wanted to portray the second half of the text which addresses social media from an employerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view as a tool for recruitment. I used the remaining social media â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;LinkedInâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and carried over the same aesthetic that was used for the cover to tie the two illustrations together.

depth to the image. Overall the image was well received and the compositions were very much enjoyed.

OUTCOME & EVALUATION

When the final critique with Sarah Habershon arrived I was excited to see what everyone else had produced and to get some feedback. As I showed her my images for the first article she spoke very positively about them. She kept telling me that she really liked the image as an illustration on its own and that it was strong piece of work. She said that the colour choice and textures were well executed and suited the papers printing well. The characters that I used were also positively received, with her noting that the people looking in different directions gave a real sense of searching. One of the elements that Sarah particularly enjoyed was the flying twitter ladies, especially the one in the foreground that went over the border. She said normally if this were going to happen I would have to suggest it in the draft, but this would definitely be accepted as the placement didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cover up important elements and it added

The professional criticisms she would have made if it were a real commission was that maybe the books were a bit of a stretch. Perhaps there could have been a different object that would relate directly to the article. For the second image of the same article the same positives were made. The character choice was good and it was a clever idea to have the people disappearing off the page. The only criticism for this image was that the conveyor belt felt a little out of place, which was exactly my thought too. I had struggled to make it blend in with the rest of the image.

The ‘personal effects’ image was very well received. Sarah said it was a very suited image for the scale that it was going to be printed and looked natural on the page. I pointed out that I had tried to use similar colours to the ones they had used for highlighted text on the page, which is why it didn’t conflict with its surroundings. She also congratulated me on being able to use the gender symbols in a noncliché way, which is apparently hard to do. She explained that in the context of this image the symbols didn’t feel forced and instead it read well and reflected the tone of the article. I was very pleased with the feedback I received and definitely took on the advice she had to offer. I do think that editorials is a skill I would like to improve throughout my illustration career, and shall be practicing more. From past experience I knew that for this project we had a lot more time to work on the pieces than an artist would in a real editorial, so I think for my next practices a shorter time frame could be beneficial.

Here are a few rules I Picked up from the feedback people had: • Don’t make the image too dark, people don’t want to pick up and read if there is a gloomy image on the front • Try not to use pastel colours, they blend into the newsprint and don’t stand out • If going outside of the border or changing a title element of a page, consult the editor / art director at the draft stage. • Most editors like to have a human element to the image. • If a character is on the front page facing sideways, have them facing away form the spine. • If a character is inside the book think about if they should be heading off the page or into the publication. • Avoid arrows, signs and unnecessary type.