POP UP EXHIBITION DESIGN FOR OLLIE QUINN
CONTACT The manager of the Ollie Quinn store in Leeds phoned me to offer the opportunity to display my work in a ‘pop up’ exhibition through the month of March to coincide with Intenational Women’s Day. On the phone she said their budget was limited but could I possibly do some OQ + IWD pieces too. I agreed and asked her to email over the information and I would get back to her with my ideas.
NEGOTIATION:
In this phone call I asked for their budget for the work I would be producing, however they said there wasn’t one. We negotiated on the phone for some time and I explained (without detailing specific ideas) what I wanted to do for the pop up and how it extended the limits of a collaboration. I separated the two projects: 1) An exhibition of my work in the store, and 2) The creation of new work that combined OQ with International Women’s day. I don’t believe the latter should be done for free, especially after multiple talks from the AOI and interacting with the design community on Twitter. At our Hanbury event, Big Active described how when deciding whether or not to work for free, three factors must be considered. Fee (is it enough?), Creativity (will it be fun/ creatively fulfilling?) and Exposure (will you gain recognition/more work?).
I went through these factors in the blog post ‘OQ Pop Up Negotiation’ which also contains my email response. I explained I was happy to create work to promote the pop up
Hey Polly! It was lovely speaking to you today. I think it would be a great collaboration for international women’s day, on Thursday 8th of March as we know about your work and we love you here at OQ! We want to celebrate local inspirational women artists for and what better way to do it than with someone we know and who’s work we love... especially your cute plant drawings!! (We’re a sucker for plants). The brief is simple, we’d like to support a local female independent artist, and we think your work fits nicely with our aesthetic as a brand. We would love for you to make use of our space in whatever way appeals most to you and your illustrations, whether they be in the form of a gallery showcase or a pop-up store. It can run for the whole month of march, and we hope that you can create a great buzz and talking point for your work by using our high street location. I’ve included a picture of the space we have available for you, and you’re free to move things around and get rid of things as you please, e.g. the vases and the large chair.
After this I got to speak to their PR representative who said they weren’t asking for extra design work and that it was miscommunication with the store manager - they just wanted to exhibit my work. This experience showed me that when multiple people in a company are involved in an initiative communication gets confused, and also at least served as practice of responding to a request and trying to negotiate pay. From this point on I decided to do a portion of the planned work regardless, as it displayed my practice in the best light and would show possible comissioners that I knew how to design appropriately for a space.
IDEAS Deciding how to format the pop up exhibition: what to include, how to lay it out, what new work to create and how to display that.
EXHIBITION:
The first issue I found was that my work doesn’t immediately fit into a traditional exhibition. I don’t have prints to hang on walls, my work is more product based. So, I decided to display the products more akin to a craft fair or shop display. I took elements from my Christmas craft fair display, such as the greetings card rack and decorative pink and mustard pompoms. I decided to lay a selection of my products along the window ledge and utilise the window with personal branding and attention grabbing IWD inspired decor using vinyl.
IWD CONTENT: For the IWD inspired work I explored key themes and how I could approach the topic authentitcally from my own point of view as a female illustrator. This is displayed in more detail in my Extended Practice module hand in.
Pink - femininity Glasses - a reference to the OQ logo A description of myself and what I do My logo for branding Decorative stars to further branding and my personal style
Greetings card stand taken from craft fair setup, without the deals sign.
IDEAS Development of IWD inspired content.
Vinyl ideas for mirrors
POSTCARDS:
I decided to create lettered postcards to exclusively give away in the Ollie Quinn store. This was to encourage people to visit the display, as there was something new to see and some benefit to go in person. This is to both advertise myself (as they have contact details on the back) and also go the extra mile for Ollie Quinn to do my part in the collaboration, advertising them in turn. The postcards are responses to my personal approach to feminism: encouraging self worth, confidence and working hard to prove yourself. I go into this in more detail for Extended Practice. They were a relevant product to design as I often create postcards for my shop. They are also an easy takeaway and likely to be kept for a long time on someone’s bedroom wall, which makes them more useful for promotion than standard business cards, although business cards were displayed too to cover all bases.
SUMMARY:
Encouraging footfall, self promotion, more likely to be kept than business cards, authentic tie to IWD, on brand concept. Bonus: getting pieces of positivity out to new people.
Postcard concept idea generating
Idea for displaying postcards with vinyl hearts
Larger developments to be scanned and digitised
IN PRACTICE:
How I’m making the most out of this body of work.
INSTAGRAM:
The AOI and multiple professionals at our Hanbury Hall event impressed how important Instagram is as a portfolio tool. So, I put up these four images in the run up to IWD and the OQ pop up. They’re all watermarked with my Instagram handle so if they’re reposted people can find me.
OTHER:
I’m also using the postcards as freebies in my shop orders over March while they’re exlusive to the Ollie Quinn pop up, and sharing one as a screen saver that’s downloadable from a blog post on my personal blog. This should all maintain interest in the collection and are ways of making a body of work work for me as efficiently as possible. Just as Jon’s guest at Hanbury said, creating work for a cause that already has momentum is a good way of making personal work even more beneficial and sharable.
Screensaver adaption with logo
The set was shared on Twitter over 100 times on IWD
DEVELOPEMENT: Developing existing branding into usable elements.
LOGO etc:
I have a logo ‘PollyV’ which I re worked just slightly and converted into vector in order to vinyl cut it for the window. The same was done for the shop, portfolio, Twitter and Instagram icons. I sourced my own bright pink and gold vinyl and cut everything at uni. The hearts and stars were decorative elements for fun and femininity to brighten the area and also act as practical stickers to fasten things down. The ‘Looking good feeling good’ element is the one subtle link between OQ (a glasses brand) and the fun, encouraging/empowering theme.
DISPLAY: How I exhibited my work within the store.
MAIN DISPLAY:
For the main display I set up a selection of my favourite shop products in as minimalistic way as I could so it wasn’t as cluttered as the craft fair stall. Each item needed its own space. For levels, an interest tactic I learned in my craft fair planning, the forward facing greetings card unit was the central focus, and small wooden easels lifted a stickered covered notebook (prop) and A6 prints. Everything else laid flat to be visible when people approached. I didn’t end up applying the large pink vinyl spotlight and glasses as it was too heavy within the space. However, the pink and gold stars and hearts decorated the area which was a more subtle approach. The postcards were laid on surfaces around the shop, with the back details visible. The ‘looking good feeling good’ vinyl was applied to a mirror in the store, again intergrating the pop up into the space and in a relevant manner. Small signage indicated which items could be taken and which were for display to help people navigate the pop up.
BRANDING The elements considered to support my brand as a practitioner. As I begin to make the distinction between Polly Vadasz and Sighh, my shop which as been the forefront of my professional practice thus far, I branded the pop up in my name. The postcards were the oly element with the Sighh logo at the bottom because they were primarily to link to my shop, as a product. The description I wrote about myself aims to tell the story of how I started and where I am now as a practitioner. My online following remain ‘loyal’ as they have seen me develop my practice over many years, so this aimed to serve the same purpose and humanise my work. The writing is informal and friendly, which is the tone of voice I go for in all my branded content.
Through the process of negotiating, designing and setting up, promoting and removing an exhibition I’ve learned some base skills and lessons that will carry over to all future shows. Miscommunication will often happen, so it’s important to really solidify what’s needed before starting work so that time and resources aren’t wasted. In this instance I used information from our Habury and AOI talks and was able to communicate my stance on unpaid work professionally over the phone and email to OQ management. This is something that can be very daunting, especially for a young designer, so I’m happy to have had that experience. I also had the opportunity to evaluate the work I would be happy to exhibit to strangers and realise that I don’t
have a go-to collection of prints that would be expected of most illustrators. I realised that most of what I do is product based and so the exhibition would have to be styled differently to accommodate that. I ended up displaying my work similarly to a craft fair setup, with levels, props and stands. However, this has encouraged me to create a collection of print artwork that I could exhibit, as that is clearly missing from my illustrator portfolio. Practically, I now have experience in creating vinyl pieces from creation to removal - importantly, without leaving mess on the walls. This has lead me to offer to run the vinyl in our end of year degree show, and I’m glad to have this experience as it can be applied to murals, window art and any future exhibition I’m involved in.