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Two nights ago I was googling inspiration for my next drawing (a zebra) - I usually search under “zenart” as that’s my kind of style, while searching I happened to come across my own illustrations on the results page! They’re on there from my Etsy page where I also sell prints outside Depop, so this just goes to show that online presence and tagging on images etc really does work!
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Finally got my CV together ready for some job hunting soon! Colours match everything else and I’ve used the same fonts across all my branding to keep it consistent! I’ve pretty happy with the result!
For the past 2 and a half months also I have been selling my prints through an app called Depop, which has been very successful for me to say the least!
I’ve been featured a few times on their selling page which gets me a lot of notice and sales etc and since beginning this I’ve been able to finally leave my part time job at McDonald’s as I’ve made more income through this than I was in my actual job, so it’s been a real benefit for me both financially and in allowing me to actually focus on something I enjoy doing!
After speaking to a few others about it they pointed out it was very ‘entrepreneurial’ which I never really considered it being at first, but it has been advantageous in teaching me a little on business, negotiations with prices, purchasing of equipment/packaging goods at low prices and handling quality products and good customer service. At the end of each month I also total up how much I’ve sold and tally up how much I’ve made overall and keep on top of how much I’ve spent on materials and postage etc!Forgot to post these sooner! Last year when I went to the third year’s end of year show I picked up everyone’s business cards (some better than others) for future inspiration on designing my own business card etc!
The other week on Instagram I was approached by an art sharing page on there that has 21k followers asking me if I’d like my art to be featured on their page! There was a small fee to pay but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try and it did get me a lot more interest and followers on my account!
I wasn’t so keen on the system though, they had a goal of “650 likes or you get deleted off the page” but even if you got over that many likes you just “extended your amount of time featured” which I didn’t understand but as I said it wasn’t a lot of money so I give it a go! I ended up being featured 4 times on the page (the elephant was featured twice) which was quite nice, despite the bad system of featuring!
Another requested drawing complete - something a little different to my usual stuff, but still enjoyed it! Easy drawing!
So here’s the play around I had with the letters of my name for my logo (excuse the poor quality as I decided to work upon my 84 mm x 55mm size file) but I created some interesting stuff. I was most interested in the first 2 images at first, but they didn’t quite align right, I think I quite liked this but at the same time didn’t.
The last 3 images are when it really came together, I much prefer the logo in a circle, however, with the letters right in the centre it makes me N look more like a V and I didn’t want this getting confused when people looked at my logo, which is why I moved it to the edge, as the edge of the circle creates more of an N.
I wanted more than just 1 design on the back of my business cards, so I have made use of 5 of my drawings on a small scale. Simple, clean and tidy, nothing distracting from them either.
I may opt to have them in colour yet but I do often prefer a simple monochrome colour scheme often when I’m working and the reverse side of my business card is just 80% black and white, so everything is consistent this way! But I will have a think about it!
Also on the back, you see my final logo design that I created, I wasn’t happy with the last and I’ve always found I have awkward initials to work with, but I think I managed to create something nice here.
Tried to design myself a logo earlier to start putting onto my business cards and website, I simply took the first 2 letters of my name at the start of my signature as I thought that would be quite nice and simply - but as it always turns out with script type, it failed!
So we tested some other stuff out!
I was also inspired by Shepard Fairey’s spin off of his own Hope poster with extra type around it. So I wanted to add some copy to represent how David Cameron is f**cking the country the same way he did the pig (but obviously without using ay bad words!) - I struggled a little really, so I did a few versions just poking fun and trying different tones, trying to think about how I can engage my audience and make them think.
The top one is just a funny image that pokes fun at Cameron and the very last one was meant to be the most thought evoking but the copy definitely needs work, but I don’t think this is the style I will even take within my designs anyway, I was simply experimenting with a style which works very nicely but emulating another style and following a tutorial isn’t exactly a very creative outcome anyway.
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