Studio Brief 3 - CREATIVE PRESENCE

1.What should your identity convey about you?

It should convey who you are creatively, professionally and personally. 

Without divulging too deep into your personal life, you should be able to give potential clients an idea of what kind of work you make in a non-visual way - what you are interested in, how your experiences have shaped what you do and what you may have the potential for.

Creatively, you should be able to show clients what makes your work special - whether that's through your aesthetic, tone of voice, or process. They should understand where your work exists in the world - am I a poster artist? Am I a book illustrator? Am I a screen printer? These are things that I am interested in and should ideally communicate to potential clients.

2. Is it actually important to have an identity as an illustrator?

For the freelance illustrator, I think identity is very important. Not only is it a great way to make clients remember you (for personality/pseudonym/aesthetic), I feel like it makes you a lot more marketable. If you can identify your niche in the market, then building an identity around it will mean people will be a lot more likely to go to you for jobs you like to do.

If you have greatly varying areas of illustration that you enjoy working in, making identities (blogs/websites/names) for each genre can be beneficial as it means you will be able to present relevant work to clients without them getting lost in the work you do that they're not interested in hiring you for.

3. What could be included in your pack and why?

Fun stuff which I noted down that could be included in a promo pack:

-Cards

-Coasters

-Place mats

-Mouse pads

-T-shirts

-Postcards

-Stationary

-Calendar

I think there is a lot of potential for functional ephemera - things like coasters and stationary which people keep as they are useful, even if they don't look at them that much. Putting more luxurious items such as a bottle of wine with a label you have designed yourself is also something I noted down. This would also be a reflection of myself as I happen to really like red wine.

4.What are you wanting to achieve by producing promotional items?

I think that by making a promo pack I will not only help other people understand who I am, but will begin to get an understanding of that myself. Creating a unified set of products will show me what my identity looks like - choosing what pieces of work I place on the products (existing or specially designed) will show me what my work is about. Picking a few pieces of work to represent who I am as an illustrator will be incredibly difficult however.