Cynthia Kingsley-Smith
Illustration
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Specialism Research - Reflective Practice
This week:
Over my time at university, I have maintained a flexible approach to my practice in regards to comitting to a specialism. I spent time honing in on a process and practice that I personally really identify with and one which allows me to provide my personal design language as a product for clients. For me, this involves a deeply research focused approach that allows for effective and simplistic visual communication. I then combine this with an experimental, deeply textural approach with layered printmaking and digital cleanup which hopefully allows for an end product that clearly communicates the ideas it is trying to covey and is underpinned by an authentic, personal, hand-crafted feeling piece of design.
This approch does not fit neatly into one category. I think elements of my work could fit into editoral, publishing or advertising demands depending on the brief, which is definitely a benefit to my approach. However, if I had to nail down one that I think I could progress into well and that I think would benefit my own progression as a profession, it would be:
- Explorative Work / Alternative Publishing
I believe these specialisms demand an introspective and caring approach to the subject matter, whilst also requiring and analytics approach to finding the best way to communicate your ideas. These specialisms generally give the illustration space to experiment and allow errors and happy mistakes to organically impact on the artistic process to allow for a better result.
Hold Me Please by Molly Mendoza is a signature piece of personal self-exploration work that uses intelligent composition, formal elements and colour decisions to tell a tender and emotional story. From a commerical perspective, this could be reproduced digitally with high quality inks on an appropriate paper stock as a very good print or poster that the purchaser could get framed.
In terms of experiences, skills and additions to my portfolio I would need to be successful in this industry specialism - it’s very challanging! Commerically, these artists will likely be selling their work through prints at art fairs or online. While it is possible to tackle editorial briefs as this specialism, I believe that it will be absolutely vital to my success in industry to work on growing my social media presence and personal brand in order to find alternative sources of revenue (likely while working another job to support myself). This will be done through social media posts, having a strong, personalised online presence that is unified across all different platforms. Additional content such as process documentation and videos will be vital in achieving this - a massive benefit of my tactile, experimental approach is that I will have lots of opportunities to show this side of my practice. I will work predominantly with linocut as this is the easiest relief printmaking solution I will have access to after I lose access to university resources, but I will look at joining print studios to regain access to things such as screenprinting tools, etc.
For my action plan:
- Finish uni!
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Create a personal brand complete with logo, leverage my experience in digital media industry to achieve this to a high standard.
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Unify my online presence into one complete brand
- Clean up my portfolio, leaving only extremely high-standard results
- Split my experimental and organic textures and works into a seperate “portfolio” as this will likely be part of my brand
- Add more linocut work, perhaps responding to global news and popular media from gaming and TV to capture some algorithmic attention
- Use this work to find a method of recording my process and editing it for online content effectively
- Start attending artist fairs and confrences, join the AOI and similar organisations to network effectively
- Onwards and upwards!
Reading:
https://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/indie-zines-4132490
https://www.mollymendoza.com/
https://theaoi.com/inside-illustration/