When visiting London, we met with some of the guys from Day Job Collective. It was really good to meet them as they are also recently (ish) graduated so it was nice to see what they've been up to and what they did after uni (which was obviously, create this collective!) They collaborate on big group projects and they're work is just wonderful.
http://day-job.org

They were all so lovely and I really liked the space they worked in! I think its a really great idea to get together with other people after uni and work as a team, have a studio space etc. This is something they said was definitely a positive thing, getting a studio together. Its good because you can have people with different skills and all come together as one and also help motivate each other.
A few of the girls had a look at our portfolios and their comments/advice on mine were to carry on this "greeting card/party favours" thing I'm doing at the moment, but maybe include different occasions as all the work in there is mostly birthday stuff, they suggested throwing some other things in there so it shows I do other things! I agree with this and shall be exploring things such as wedding invites next! They also said it looks slightly graphicy because of the typography. One question asked was how they stayed motivated after graduating? They mentioned about entering competitions which of course, gives you something to work towards and also possibly gets your work noticed and out there! And again, getting a studio together with a few of you motivates you as well.

We got a chance to go to London for 2 days to meet with clients and it was a fun/busy 2 days! We hopped on the (6 HOUR) coach to Victoria Station and made our way to London to firstly visit Daniel Moorey, head of print at Adam and Eve DDB.
He talked us through websites and what he prefers to see. He had the biggest list of Illustrators I'd ever seen! And a folder for each different style, was amazing! He mentioned to keep it simple, not have too many things to look through to actually get to your work, agents/clients are not interested in anything else but that and they want to be able to access it quickly and simply, as no one has the time to click through 3 title pages before actually getting to your home screen. And of course making sure your contact details are clear.

On the second day, a few of us got to meet with the daughter of Abram Games, Naomi Games. With him being one of the most influential graphic designers of the twentieth century, I felt rather special to be in the presence of all his original work. The vast amount of it was literally insane! It was so amazing to see it actually right in front of you, see his work process, how he was thinking/what he was thinking. And the skill of it, wow, I can't even begin to go into it. So incredibly talented. As I said, I felt rather lucky to be able to look through all his original work, if it were to be in a gallery it would have been such a different experience, so a super big thank you to Naomi Games for letting us come and see everything and for also being the best host, we even got to have a coffee in the cona coffee maker, it was very cool (see below).

From my sketchbook I've been scanning in images and making things like patterns that I imagine could be used as wrapping paper patterns. I'm really enjoying doing that! I'm soon going to be thinking about what I could put on greetings cards but I want to try different ways of creating type first. I also bought some large roles of paper that I'm going to be trying hand paint on, though we'll see how well that turns out!

We had a workshop on fees and invoices, what to expect about being paid as an illustrator and how prices vary depending on what you do. So there are to ways fees are agreed at, one being the client tells you what the budget is or the client asks you want you will charge. There are a few questions that you should ask if you are faced with the second option. The length of time it will take to complete, how will it be used, the clients profile and of course, whether or not you want to do the job.

We then talked about the going industry rates:

Editorial;

Publishing

Design

Children's Books (usually based on pay/image rate)

Advertising

We also talked about invoices and what to include on them (logo to make it personalised, invoice number, customer ref number, bill to name and address, your account details to be paid into, address/tel number etc). You should make sure to keep a copy of all your invoices and a record of all payments or outstanding balances. This was a helpful workshop and I now feel better about what to expect and how to handle money when doing a job.

Since getting on with my work, I started to draw a lot of birthday things, mainly birthday cake. I really liked doing this and started to do some other type, "birthday quotes" if you will. I feel like this is something I could do a lot with and make actual things like party favours and its something I'm really interested in. So, I think from now on thats where my project will be headed! Im looking forward to it.