Colophon: I miss Luxembourg!

Well Luxembourg has come and gone, and now its time to get back to business. However, it doesn't mean I cant be nostalgic...and look back at the good times including strutting my work next to Alex One!

Colophon: The experience

As you can see, this was the schedule and it was packed, no holiday included, this was a business trip. I managed to ween my way into the illustration portfolio market where I was given a table to strut my stuff for one hour on the Friday. This made all of the promotion worthwhile as you can see in the hastily taken photographs I managed to take up most of the table, and people lapped it up. The best thing about the whole weekend, and my presentation was to see the lack of pretence amongst the curators and editors at the top of their game. Everyone was just passionate and genuinely interested in their business and that of others. 

Having the table was a big boost as it allowed me to talk face to face with people and get them interested in my work. I haven't yet had the chance to contact most of the people back as yet, but there was genuine interest in my Actionscript work - from KM Studios based in Mexico - which was a bonus seeing as I spent a lot of the past year training myself to this discipline. There has already been interest with a mention on the french blog Culture-Buzz to whom I spoke to and a professional photographer snapping up my guerilla advertising!

One main thing about the trip was to enlighten me to the ability to collaborate with other individuals outside of the main companies and agencies, namely freelance photographers who were very interested in working with illustrators such as myself. As all of the magazines were freelance it was interesting to see how the business side of things are changing, with a lot of the conferences held at Colophon focusing on the changes from print to digital and the use of advertising. Although it is seen as the devil, advertising is crucial to the survival and funding - and therefore distribution of art and artistic magazines. 

The trip left me with much to ponder in terms of career choice, and the use of media. It seems that there is a stereotype for illustrators at the moment to be character based, and I feel the new generations of illustrators are much more balanced with the ability to mix media with photography and print techniques included. If I can try to mix photography into my work the outcomes can become more professional when mixed with my existing digital styles. then I can strive to be slightly different than the crowd and produce truly original imagery. 

Colophon: Promotion part.2

These images show the final stages of my Colophon preparation. After the 50 prints of the 6 postcards I had 50 posters printed, 25 of each design, and 200 business cards. 

The posters show an A4 snap shot of my Actionscript work from the previous project, this is my most technically advanced work to date and the images I wanted to show off the most, as they are quite rare and an unseen style.

As for the business card I went for a design that complemented the style of my website with the black framing and hand-made typeface on the front.

I opted for a double sided appearance with the front saved for my image and my screen name Mongeloui. The image itself is pulled from my portfolio and is from the last project; judging peoples reaction to it when they look at my website it's an image they all stop on and study so I thought it would be appropriate for a business card. It fits well in the portrait nature of the card.

On the back I went for a minimal design with bold Helvetica font and basic info. It's actually made from recycled paper and has a matte finish applied to it, this means that the finalised card is slightly thicker than the average and ensures that the design should stand out from the crowd.

Colophon: Promotion

These are the promotion designs that I got printed for a set of 6 postcard designs to used in a promotional pack for Colophon. They present a cross-section of my styles and include work created for this project. The reverse isn't so interesting with a short description of myself and contact details. I printed 50 for each design, arming me a little more ammunition to speak to people. They turned out real nice, and I'm loving the way that they look scanned in!

Colophon: Preparation

Colophon 2009!!

Coming perhaps at the wrong time of the year I decided that I would travel to Luxembourg for Colophon; an International Independent Magazine Symposium. Exciting times! The reasons amongst many are to network with international creatives my age and up, to see independent magazines, talk to high profile curators and see how the general magazine industry works.  

In preparation for Colophon, I spent a long, long time designing my website - Mongeloui. (mon-gol-wee) -Don't ask! It was worth it in the end, but the choice to go with a Flash design was interesting to say the least - the online tutorials and the unwavering support from our technician Paul was immense.  

The idea was to create a gallery with a twist, and the animations on the thumbnails were fun, but there isn't much ability to expand the galleries from what's there already. However, it does the trick for the moment and I'm proud of it. 

The only real problem with it is that it took about 3 weeks out of this project due to the planning, design and uploading, but it should hopefully pay dividends at the end of the year. It feels good to have a professional website behind me with which to sell myself to potential clients, and it's also nice to be online and showing off your work to the public on a mass scale!