But Isn't that Your Job?

A couple of weeks ago we had a visitor come in form design company MUSIC to talk to us about the relationships between the designer and the illustrator. Craig Oldham talked us through how he got on with Illustrators when working on his own projects, and gave us lots of helpful tips. 

Before the day though, we were also set the brief to create a poster for the event, and the winning ones would be exhibited around the college. Here's my poster below. I noticed that there was a lot of information to go on the poster so had the idea to integrate the type into the stationary. I kept the designs simple again, as my style appears to be leaning in that direction, and i think it reads quite well. In hindsight though, a couple of things i would change are the colours; the blues are far too garish tot he eye, i'd tone that down a lot. I'd also work harder on the type, there are too many different styles on the poster and while some information should supersede other information, that doesn't really happen towards the bottom of this poster.

Anyway, moving on the the event itself, Craig himself seemed to be a very down to earth, interesting guy.  He brought something to the talk that other designers might miss out, and while we do get the same advice from many different practitioners, he did well to put a different spin on it, so it engaged me very well.

Apart from the main part of the talk where he went through working with illustrators, time constraints and budgets, i took a lot from this talk. He explained the breakdown of ideas, which i found helpful (although they were obvious points).

For example, when you hit a brick wall with idea generation, think about what MUST be in the project, then what idea's are good for the project, then what might be useful, and finally what isn't needed. Ten you can see what the better solutions are. Craig also came up with the idea of "The Mum Test." Tell her the idea, if she doesn't get it, the idea is too conceptual and therefore the idea wont relay to the audience well. Genius. Other words of advice were,  if you genuinely care for the idea, go for it, and bizarrely, but probably helpful, never eat yellow snow!

Overall, i learned a lot in this talk about what it is to be an illustrator outside the classroom, how better to manage our relationships with other practitioners, the best ways to pitch and perhaps  most of all, what colour snow to avoid!