Talk to Illustrators Australia, Sydney

Christopher Nielsen, President of Illustrators Australia, asked me talk at their monthly meeting. It was a lovely evening and I met some great illustrators and some emerging ones. Here is the speech if you are interested.

My name is Sam Wright and I am currently the Art director for Wish Magazine. For those of you who are unfamiliar with, ‘wish’ it is a free monthly insert in the Australian newspaper. I have brought a few copies along so come and have a browse later.

I started working as a junior designer in London after doing a Diploma of Graphic Design at Luton polytechnic. My first job when I returned to Sydney was as deputy art director on Belle magazine. Then I became Art Director of a now defunct mag called Belle Entertaining. It was at BE that I started commissioning illustration. I then worked on ‘the design series’, ‘Cosmopolitan’, ‘live this ’, ‘AFRBoss’ and now ‘wish’ In terms of commissioning illustrations, Boss was definitely the highlight of my career. I was able to commission between two and five illustrations a month for seven years. Brilliant.

I have often been asked how I manage to find so many great illustrators and I guess the answer is I am always looking. I read lots of mags and if I like any of the illustrators that they have used I find them by either Googling them or contacting the Art director of the mag. I also have a number of rep sites that I visit if I need inspiration. My three favourites are Jacky Winter group in Australia, Frank Sturgess in the states and skinny dip in the UK

One of the most common ways of finding an illustrator is of course letting them find you. For me the simplest and most effective way for an illustrator to do this is to send me an email with a web address. That way I can have a browse and bookmark it for later. In these hard economic times, I am very restricted as to how much illustration I can commission. Basically I have been told I can only use the in-house guys, unless they are all too busy, which is why I don’t like to waste peoples time getting them in to see me. I do enjoy getting cards and inexpensively produced mail outs.

Chris asked me to talk about how I select the right illustrator for the job. I usually find that as I read the story I begin to have a feel for who might do the best job. With Boss, some of the stories where quite dry and would need the illustrator to really dig the idea out of them. I have to say that I often thought that some of them couldn’t be illustrated at all. That’s when I’d give them the Nigel Buchanan, he is brilliant at getting blood from a stone. Sorry Nigel.

Most of the time I like to be able to brief the illustrator and let them come up with the ideas. I have always thought that with a good illustrator you are actually paying about 80% of the fee for the idea and 20% for the execution. That’s not to say that the execution doesn’t have to be perfect. Having said that I am always happy to thrash out an idea and suggest ways it might work best. I have found that the only times I’ve been disappointed with the result has been when the editor has become involved.

Chris also asked me to talk about the current state of the industry and how you might go about generating more work and how to keep your existing clients coming back. I’d like to say that I am only able to speak with any sort of authority about the magazine and newspaper industry. Of the twenty odd years I have been in the business, this year has been the worse. About eleven of my colleges working in the Australian magazines divisions were retrenched or retired early. Our budgets have been slashed to the bone. We are no longer allowed to employ freelance photographers, designers, stylists, subs or illustrators. So I am guessing things are pretty tough for you guys.

My advice is this

1. It is very important to make sure you are looking further a field. Get those websites up. Get an American or European rep. There is still a lot of work in the bigger pond and you need to make sure that you are out there in the larger community.

2. Set up a system that sends monthly electronic reminders to all past and potential clients, ask Chris how, he does it very well.

3. Find other ways of making money out of your work. Prints, cards, t-shirts. All online.

And finally, keep your overheads as low as possible. If you can’t work from home find as many like minded people as you can fit in the space to share with. If you want to do a mailout, keep in mind the average result of reply from any mailout is about 2%, which out of 100 is about two possible jobs. So it is important to keep the cost below the amount of money you would expect to earn from one job and then at least you will make sone money out of it.

Why did you choose that typeface?

A friend ( Oli Vickery, creative director, six black pens, www.sixblackpens.com ) recently asked me what my favourite type element was and in what typeface it was found, which got me thinking about what it is that makes you love or hate a font.

As a designer you spend a lot of thinking about which typeface will fit the brief best when you first begin any design project, whether it is a logo, a magazine or a website. You ask yourself whether it will look good in 9pt and in 84pt. Will it make your design still look fresh in two years time or will it date quickly? Are there lots of other designers already using it? 

 

Every designer has a favourite font family. I will happily confess that mine is Helvetica, especially Helvetica Neue. I am not alone in this as it is probably the most used typeface in the world. I also have typefaces that I absolutely hate like Blur and Charlemagne. As a designer one of the great challenges you can face is making a typeface you despise work for you. One particular magazine I art directed used a display font that I hated, Gill Sans (it has the worst numbers). I worked with it for about five years until I finally managed to talk the editor into a redesign.

In 2000 I had the opportunity to be involved in the launch of a totally new magazine. It was wonderful. I spent months choosing typefaces, designing mastheads and art directing shoots. We wanted it to be really different;  like nothing else in Australia at the time. I choose a typeface that I had seen in a Habitat catalogue from the UK, Din. I loved it. I used it for the display face and would have used it for the body text if I’d been able to (management decreeing that body text had to be a serif, I used Rockwell, which has great numbers by-the-way). Within two years my magazine had sadly ceased to exist (it turned out to be too cutting edge for the market at the time) but nearly every other magazine in Australia seemed to be using Din. I’m not saying that I started the trend but surely not all of those other art directors had seen the same Habitat catalogue…

Then there are old favourites that you keep coming back to. One of mine is Clarendon. I love it. It is a beautifully crafted font that looks great in upper and lower case, works as all caps, has lovely numbers and is just as good small as gigantic. I especially like it in outline, which I have used in my redesign for ‘wish’.

 

I think the essence of good design is good type choice, or when you can’t choose it the ability to make a pig’s ear into a silk purse. It is the difference between people who have studied design and those that have done desktop publishing courses, and it is definitely the difference between layout subs and graphic designers.

Award winners

Just a quick post. Three of my favourite illustrators have been winning awards! Nigel Buchanan, http://www.nigelbuchanan.com/  has taken out the silver medal in the institutional section of The Society of Illustrators New York awards. The illustration was done for the exhibition I curated at the beginning of the year, spaceAid 2008.  It was a beautiful piece and raised the most money in the live auction.

Christopher Nielsen, http://www.christophernielsenillustration.com/,  has had an illustration he did for me when I was on AFR Boss, about the new breed of bureaucrat, included in ‘The Australian Creative Annual’. As has Ben Saunders, www.themilkagency.com.au for an illustration that appeared in the October issue of ‘wish’. This was an illustration about a small Indian motoring company taking over Jaguar.

Congratulations guys!

It’s been a long time.

Sorry I have been offline for so long. My new job at Wish has been keeping me very busy. Over the last four months I have spent most of my time obsessing about typefaces, illustrators and photographers, and redesigning the magazine. It has been a fantastic and rather daunting process and I feel totally revitalised by the journey.

 

Since starting at Wish I‘ve had the opportunity to work with some great illustrators. Some are old favourites, such as Edwina White, www.edwinawhite.com/;  Marco Cibola, www.novestudio.com/marco2006/main.swf-;  Christopher Nielsen, www.christophernielsenillustration.com,  and Mark Gerada, www.markgerada.net/ and some new ones such as Kat Macleod, www.ortolan.com.au;  Andrea Innocent, http://www.otoshimono.org/,  and Ben Saunders, www.themilkagency.com.au/.  They are all represented by Jeremy Wortsman of the Jacky Winter Group,  www.jackywinter.com. I also received a flyer in the post from a lovely illustrator called Hennie Haworth, www.henniehaworth.co.uk and she has helped to make my December issue look fantastic.

 

There are lots of exciting things happening at the moment. The United Nations of Cupco exhibition, http://www.cupco.net/cupcounitednations.html, which will be my daughter’s first group show, opens in early december at The Damien Minton Gallery, www.damienmintongallery.com.au My partner John also has a piece in the exhibition, along with about 60 other artists including Euan Macleod, J.Otto Siebold, Nerissa Lea, Reg Lynch, Leo Robba and Jon Burgerman.

 

Another exciting piece of news is my friends at Queen Street Studio (remember spaceAid?) have been asked to manage The Fraser Studios Project. Based in the Old Kent Brewery site in Chippendale, the project aims to initiate the creative use of the three vacant warehouses that have been temporarily transformed into a multi-disciplined art space. In September they launched stage one, a visual arts residency programme, and 10 local artists have been selected to participate in the first three month residency.  In November they are launching the Fraser Studios Multipurpose Performing Arts Space which will provide independent performing artists with a subsidised rehearsal studio. For more information, visit http://www.queenstreetstudio.com/fraserstudios.html.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you….

Bill Henson

I have been trying to come to grips with the whole Bill Henson exhibition catastrophe. We know what happened, but why did it happen? The whole thing seems to me to have been orchestrated. But by whom? The press? From the morning of the exhibition opening the papers were asking whether it was art or pornography and radio stations were inviting listeners (most of whom I bet didn’t even know who Bill Henson was) to ring in and give their opinion of an exhibition that had yet to open. The ‘Christian Right’ and all the other ill informed do-gooders were whipped into a frenzy and Bam! the police had closed the exhibition before it opened, seizing photographs and talking about laying charges. By the next morning the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was calling the images ‘disgusting’. Within a couple of days a witch-hunt was in progress, searching out other art galleries who had Henson photographs in their collections.

But why now? Bill Henson has been exhibiting in Australia and overseas since the ‘70s. His work is owned by and shown in Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna. He is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists. Why wasn’t there an uproar when he exhibited his untitled series in 1995-1996? This was a much more disturbing a series of images. Why wasn’t his retrospective at the Art gallery of NSW in 2005 shut down?

 Someone I was talking to about it, expressed an opinion that it was good timing for the labour party. Milton Orkopoulos  had just been found guilty of child sex offences and the supply of drugs – were they trying to deflect attention from that? Or was there she asked something else that they have successfully swept under the carpet?

As a mother I personally wouldn’t want to see my daughter or son photographed in this way, to be viewed by strangers. But isn’t that the whole crux of the matter? Surely the parents of those children would have had to sign some sort of release form. Surely those children would have agreed to do it, because believe me there is no way you can get a 13-year-old to do something they don’t want to do. No one has come forward and said that they were coerced into it.

My partner has a 13-year-old daughter who is just starting to go through puberty. She is experiencing a whole lot of firsts in her journey to adulthood. First period, first hickie, first crush on a boy and I often see the look that Bill Henson’s models have, on her face. It’s a mixture of bewilderment, fear and excitement. I have always (maybe naively) interpreted Henson’s work as the search for the moment when childhood innocence goes and the young adult emerges. I have always thought that the nudity and the sexuality in the images strengthen that concept.

Another thing that fascinated me about the whole uproar was that if you don’t want to look at pictures of naked adolescents then there is a very easy answer – don’t go to the exhibition. If the police hadn’t acted, about 600 people at most would have seen those images at the gallery. Most would have been sold to private collectors and a couple to various art galleries. One of the key issues for the anti-paedophilia mob was online access. Perhaps this was a mistake on the part of the art gallery but wouldn’t you have to know that the images were there before you could access them.

In the ‘60s many Australian artists and writers felt they needed to go to Europe to achieve success and recognition. I thought those days were gone. We should be celebrating our artists for their beautiful work and encouraging them to stay in Australia and share it with us.

I think the thing that horrified me the most about the whole chain of events was how quickly it went from a whisper into an almost-lynching. I could just about smell the books burning.

I am glad that charges against Bill Henson and the owners of the Roselyn Oxley Gallery were never laid, however I think that the damage done to the reputation of the Australian art community both here and overseas will take a very long time to be repaired.

 

 

 

 

Closing a chapter

After seven years as Art Director of AFR Boss I am moving on. I want to take a moment to reflect on my journey in that role.

When I started in 2001, AFR Boss was only about a year old. At the time it was a nicely designed, if slightly worthy, business journal but founding Editor Helen Trinca and the then Advertising manager Nancy Veart wanted to take it to the next level. The goal was to turn it into a more commercial magazine that would have a greater reach and start making real money for Fairfax P/L, without compromising the integrity of the editorial.

We changed the size of the magazine, the quality of the paper was improved and the design of the magazine was made more contempory. Within the five year mark AFR Boss was turning a (small) profit. Ad sales were up to about 30% and readership had increased by about 400%. I believe this was due to great ad sales and editorial teams and a more glamorous, accessible design.

The average reader of AFR Boss is a slightly older, time poor, design literate corporate-type. With the design I tried to make it modern and interesting whilst maintaining its readability and authoritative tone. I was criticised other designers for being somewhat boring and safe but whenever I tried to “funk” it up I got negative feedback from the readers. At the end of the day my commitment had to be to the readers, not my design peers.

The way I was really able to put my stamp on the magazine was through the photographs and illustrations used.

To get the “Boss” look in the photographs used I briefed my house photographers (I have had a very limited art and photography budget the whole time I have been with the magazine) to shoot simple, clean, well lit, colour portraits that make the subjects look like leaders you would respect and who you would aspire to be. The entire team on the AFR photographic desk embraced this concept and has been very supportive to me over the last seven years. Thank you.

I’d like to take a moment to thank a few of them individually. In Sydney: Andrew Quilty; Louie Douvis, who has made all the really hard shoots seem easy; Rob Homer; Louise Kennerley; Jessica Hromas, who “got” Boss from the very start, and Anthea Russo, whose organization on the desk made the whole thing run smoothly. I’d also like to thank Jessica Shapiro and James Davies in Melbourne, Glen Hunt in Brisbane and Erin Jonasson in Perth.

The second way I was able to give AFR Boss its unique identity was through the illustrations.

I have probably commissioned about 350 illustrations over the last seven years – not including cartoons in the regular pages – and I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed every single one. Sometimes we have wrestled an idea out of the driest of stories and made it look like an attractive read.

Through AFR Boss I have met (mostly via the internet) many great illustrators, working all over the world. I would like to thank you all for agreeing to work for a free little business insert  in Australia for a fee that for many of you would have been fraction of those you usually command.

I would also like to thank a few of you individually: Reg Lynch who as our resident cartoonist has produced many a laugh over the last few years. Greg Roberts, the man behind all those weird and wonderful caricatures. Christopher Nielsen, who can always be trusted to come up with a beautiful solution to a boring business story. The Rinzen collective, who have done some amazing work for me. All of the Frank sturgess guys for their wonderful art and Frank himself for convincing them to do the jobs in the first place. Dane Flighty whose work I admire greatly. Edwina White and Nigel Buchannan, who I believe are two of Australia’s finest illustrators, and last but not least John Yates, who has also contributed many lovely illustrations to AFR Boss.

You are all probably thinking, ‘she does go on’, but it’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to!

Bare with me just a couple of paragraphs more.

I want to thank Rose, the hair and make-up artist who has dulled many a shiny balding head over the years, all the guys in production and the advertising sales team.

I want to say a huge thanks to Shireen Nolan, my assistant for the past three and a half years, who never ever seems to be without a smile, and of course all my other colleagues on Boss – Catherine Fox, Deirdre Livolsi, Rose-Anne Manns, Brad Hatch, Hannah Tattersall and Narelle Hooper.

And finally Tony Rice, my friend and art director on AFR magazine , who I have used as a bouncing board for some of my crazier ideas (he was the one that suggested this blog in the first place).

Anyway that’s all from me. Watch this space for the next exciting adventure from me!

P.S. Most of the weblinks for the Boss illustrators are on ths Blog

spaceAid ’08: the journey ends

After three and a half months of planning, at least 10 meetings, hundreds of phone calls and one fantastic night where all the hard work came together, spaceAid is over for another year.

Working on spaceAid’08 was an interesting and enlightening journey. It awakened a whole gamut of emotions that I didn’t expect.

For one thing I became fiercely protective of the visual artists and the work that they submitted. If anyone dared to express an opinion on a piece I immediately jumped to the artists defence. I took it as a criticism of my ability as a fledgling curator.

Then there was “Solo”, my contribution to spaceAid’08. I swear giving birth to my two children was less painful. From the beginning I knew what I wanted the artwork to say and what materials I wanted to use, but actually creating the piece was fraught with woe. I brought the wrong spray paint; I asked too many people’s opinion and confused myself; I agonised for days about whether I was worthy to be included with the other artists.

Then there was the worry of whether anyone would make a bid on it or if at the end of the night I would be the only artist whose artwork didn’t sell. Surprisingly it did, and for three times the reserve! Thank you, kind lady.

Despite all the angst I am glad I did create “solo” and submit it to the exhibition.  It helped me to understand not only the process of being an artist but the emotional energy you need to create art.

But back to the exhibition and auction. I believe spaceAid’08 was a great success for the following reasons.

The artists really enjoyed the process of collaborating with the performers and the artworks reflected that joy.

People wanted to buy the artwork and we raised a substantial amount for Queen Street studio.

We all enjoyed ourselves on the night, raising awareness of Queen Street studio and its members at the same time.

I successfully curated my first exhibition and created and sold my first piece of art.

Thanks again to all the visual and performing artists that were involved in spaceAid’08 and also to my amazing friends Sammi and James at the studio for giving me the opportunity to take this amazing journey.

I Love Bill Viola. Part 2

You can imagine how excited I was when I got the press release from the NSW Art Gallery that Bill Viola was coming to town. Not only was he going to exhibit at the gallery but he was also going to show two of his most famous works – Fire Woman and Tristan’s Ascension – at my favorite Sydney church St Saviour’s in Redfern.

I rang my friend Helen, who I knew was also a big fan, and we arranged to try to get invitations to the opening at the church. A couple of weeks’ later three tickets to the press call were secured. Even more exciting was the revelation that Bill was going to be there – I might get to meet him!

On the big night (April 8^th), John (my partner) and I arrived early (I’m always early for things I am looking forward to). Waiting for Helen, we met John Kaldor and I thanked him for his kind gift to Australia of $35 million worth of art – how embarrassing…

Once Helen had arrived, we took our seats towards the back of the church, and there he was, the man I had been looking forward to seeing for weeks. Small and ordinary-looking, he started to speak quietly and humbly. He mused about death and the moment when the soul actually left the body. He reminisced about spending that time with both his parents as they died and how profoundly it had affected him. And he spoke of his exploration of this moment through his video and sound installations.

The gaggle of journalists, photographers and assorted invited guests started to do those sideways looks that people do when they are not sure about what they are hearing. It was all starting to get a bit “hippy trippy”.

Then the lights dimmed and the show started with his video/sound installation Fire Woman.

Bill Viola writes of the piece: “Fire Woman is an image seen in the mind’s eye of a dying man. The darkened silhouette of a female figure stands before a wall of flame. After several minutes she moves forward, opens her arms, and falls into her own reflection. When the flames of passion and fever finally engulf the inner eye, and the realisation that desire’s body will never again be met blinds the seer, the reflecting surface is shattered and collapses into its essential form-undulating wave patterns of pure light.”

For me, watching the silhouette of the woman in front of the flames, while listening to the roar of the fire, was haunting. I had no idea what to expect, everything happened slowly, and when the woman plunged into the water I experienced a sense of loss. As the screen slowly darkened and the sound diminished I felt empty.

The second offering shown that night, Tristan’s Ascension, was in a similar vein.

Bill Viola writes: “Tristan’s Ascension describes the ascent of the soul in the space after death as it is awakened and drawn up in a backwards flowing waterfall. The body of a man is seen lying on a stone slab in an empty concrete room. Small drips of water become visible as they leave the ground and fall upward into space. What starts as a light rain soon becomes a roaring deluge, and the cascading water jostles the man’s limp body and soon brings him to life. His arms move of their own accord and his torso arches upward amidst the churning water. Finally, his entire body rises off the slab and is drawn up with the rushing water, disappearing above. The torrent of water gradually subsides and the drips decrease until only the empty slab remains, glistening on the wet ground. “

The fact that the water is rising instead of falling is hard to come to grips with at first. I knew it is wrong but found it hard to pinpoint why. The crescendo of the dripping water as the body of the man ascends is deafening and disturbing. The body’s progression through the air wasn’t smooth which made me feel apprehensive.

For me Tristan’s Ascension was the most moving of the two pieces, especially in light of a conversation I’d recently had with John (my partner) about his mother’s wishes when she died.

When it was finished and the lights came up there was complete and utter silence. The works had moved everyone in the room, and when someone made a joke about never having witnessed a room full of journalists speechless before, a nervous titter went out.

Afterwards, I embarrassed myself (again) by gushingly introducing myself to Bill, telling him about my experience in New York and thanking him for changing my whole perception of art…

If you only see one exhibition this year make it this one. It only takes about twenty minutes.

Bill Viola: The Tristan Project
Fire Woman, 2005
Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall, 2005
at St Saviour’s Church, Redfern
A Kaldor Art Project in conjunction with St Saviour’s Church 
9 April to 23 May 2008, 6.30pm – 10.30pm

Bill Viola: The Tristan Project
The Fall into Paradise, 2005
at Art Gallery of New South Wales
10 April to 27 July 2008

Reasons to be cheerful, Part 2

www.designiskinky.net
This site has been around for a very long time (1998), but remains fresh and vital and a great resource for designers, art directors and illustrators. The website is going through redesign at the moment, but the site is still features great profiles on designers and illustrators as well as posting news from members about up coming exhibitions and new illustrator websites. It also has job postings local and overseas.

www.giantrobot.com
Giant Robot magazine describes itself as ‘Asian, American pop culture and beyond’ it is full of news of great exhibitions, artists and has some great merchandise for sale.

www.lightstalkers.org
Lightstalkers is a non-profit organization whose members are committed to helping each other by pooling knowledge and experience. It gives news of what is happening around the world and gives freelance photographers the opportunity to post their whereabouts. For me it is a great for sourcing photographers in far-flung places around the world who are ready and willing to take that shot (for a price!)

Is curating 5D art?

When you are a magazine/print designer you think in 2D, and while you take time (a third dimension) and take up space (a fourth), designing is about creating a 2D experience for the reader.

When you create an art exhibition, as I am doing in May for the very first time, you realise that you are working across many more dimensions.

There are the 2 or 3D pieces of art that hang in a space and there are the people that you hope will fill that space and buy the art.

The space in this case is the very thing that the exhibition is about. In 2005 a couple of friends of mine opened Queen Street Studio (QSS), www.queenstreetstudio.com, a non-profit creative development and rehearsal space run by artists for artists. The studio was opened in response to the lack of affordable and appropriate space for artists in Sydney to practice their craft. It gets no grants from state or federal government and all of the money that is earnt from the hire of the studio is put back into the running of it.

Last year when my friend Sam Chester, one of the co-founders, was bemoaning the fact that they needed a new floor and didn’t know where the money was going to come from, we came up with the idea of spaceAid 2007, www.queenstreetstudio.com/spaceAID, a one night only exhibition by visual artists to help support performing artists. Curated by Reg Lynch the event was a fantastic success with enough money raised to replace the floor with some left over.

This year when I was asked to curate spaceAid 2008 we decided to add another dimension to the concept for the event – the performing artists who use QSS. Teaming them with leading Australian visual artists, we asked these actors, dancers and choreographers to let the painters, photographers and sculptors observe the work that they do at QSS and create a unique piece of art that would more closely relate to the reason for having the exhibition.

The final dimension to creating the exhibition will be filling the space with the right people on the night. You want to invite people who will not only buy a piece of art but who will also enjoy the experience of the exhibition. I have had unexpected help with this as many of the performing artists involved in the collaboration with the visual artists have expressed an interest in performing on the night, helping to create not just an art exhibition but an art event.

Luckily I do not have to do this on my own. I have a team of people who are supporting and advising me. At the end of the day however, whether or not the exhibition is a success comes down to whether I have chosen the right artists, come up with a concept that will work and filled the exhibition with people who will want to buy one of the fabulous pieces of art. Fingers crossed and keep an eye out some time after the 17th of May to see whether my many dimensional piece of art, spaceAid 2008, is well received.