Promotional Materials

Work and presence

Ideas - to promote my editorial illustration

promo for now

Bookmarks
Postcards
Business Cards
Mini Rome Zine
Badges
Mini newspaper

promo for later/online shop

Greetings Cards
A4 Prints:

• Woodcuts
• Risoprints
• Digital Prints

Bags
T-Shirts
Aprons
T-Towels
Mugs
Keyrings

Events

True Believers
Pop up shop/exhibition

True Believers

I would have liked to have had some A4 digital prints, woodcuts and risoprints ready for this event, but ran out of time. However, I will be building up a stock of these items to sell elsewhere in the near future. There is a feature on my website where I can build in a shop. I will calculate the postage and packing and add this on over the summer.

But to start with here are my bits and bobs, wrapped and priced and ready for Dan's True Believers Comicon stall. He very kindly offered me a space on his table for a minimal 10% sales fee, very reasonable. It felt good to see my illustrations in production. I am really looking forward to adding more items.

Blank greetings cards and business cards all ready to go.

Realistically I have to consider originality, simplicity, class and, ultimately, cost when considering items to give away for free to promote myself. Lovely objects such as T-towels and mugs are simply not cost effective at this early stage in my career, although I may produce some to sell from my online shop via my website. That said, I have just rearranged the list above into "promo for now" and "promo for later/online shop"

Children's book promotion

Hanging mobile with characters from my books - glow in the dark. I am also considering adding this as a page in the back of the published book to, "make at home".
Character badges
Mini bunting (with map pins ready to stick on the notice board in a prospective art directors office)
Bookmarks - with new words/glossary

Mini Newspaper

I am about to assemble a little newspaper using InDesign. I have done a little research online into layout and found some good tips. It could also be an interesting alternative way to present a children's dummy book. I think I will print one from the PDF I made for the MacMillan competition last year.

The layout below is an extravagant layout because the cost of print space is so high these days. But it is practical because the reader has somewhere to hold on to the publication with our obscuring the text/images. The white space serves several purposes, a rest for the eyes, and to stop the text and images "falling off the page" (1).

Update

Ran out of time for this module. However I am going to do this, as I have seen a couple produced by agencies and love the look, feel and smell of them.

From Magazine Designing

Setting up an Online shop

Wix.com has a template that I will be able to add to my existing website (already with them), to sell items adorned with my illustrations. I intend to set this up after I have handed in my final BA module in May 2016.

Wix.com online shop instructions 

Business Cards

I like the idea of producing these myself, so I had a go. Mainly because when I made enquiries about the cost of having several different designs it started to get really pricey. But hey, think I may opt for this after all. The self production of business cards was a bit of a nightmare. Double sided printing not lining up. Couldn't figure out how to print the guidelines, ticked the crop marks box, but they didn't print. Then when I cut them out they were all different sizes, aaaargh! I took them along to my presentation and, of course, the tutor was a bit surprised...not my usual standard of work...?! 

So I did them again, and fiddled around until I got them right. In the end I did get some guidelines to print but there were too many, so I popped it on the light-box with the non-guideline print outs and marked out with pencil before cutting. It worked, but I think I will pay the professionals to do this job, off to the Moo printing website now! 

Making my own business cards

Pop-up Shop & Exhibition

I popped a post on Facebook yesterday:

Facebook post

There was a fantastic response and the pop-up shop & exhibition will be certain to go ahead. I'm very excited about the prospect of this event, and of future possibilities, like taking it on a little tour, maybe Bristol, London, who knows, maybe even New York...We'll see how the Cheltenham event goes and then I'll get in touch with my contacts elsewhere to see what I can arrange...so excited (said that already, but I am!).

Ordered Mug and sent off for tea towel quote 23rd Feb 2016

Mug shot (with my daughter)

Mug shot

Mug order confirmation/invoice

Tea towels

Sat 5th March

Here is my quote from Clever Baggers. Too expensive for low numbers, but I would like to consider making these. Perhaps I will screen print some myself. I use a lot of tea towels regularly myself, so it is an object that is particularly useful and of interest to me, and it is something that you will find in almost every home.

Tea towel quote

Badges and bookmarks

These were fun to make. My little girl has a badge maker, so I borrowed this and bribed her with the purchase of further blank badge refills if I could use it.

Bookmarks are always useful. In our house there are generally at least 20 books in the midst of being read, and so we are always in need of bookmarks, and very pleased when free ones appear with a delivery of a new book or as a give-away somewhere else. We also buy them from time to time as souvenirs. That said, it was essential that I have some as promotional material. I made them slightly longer than usual, because they felt good to handle and because we have a lot of large books and I'm thinking that other people do too.

Promotional goodies made by me

Prints and greetings cards

Useful items greetings cards. I have a stock of them at home (not mine, other ones I buy when I see ones I like), so that if I have to write a note to my daughters teacher or send a last minute birthday card, there is a selection in the cupboard. I prefer beautiful and unusual ones.

Lots of friends have been asking me if I will be selling prints of my work. And yes I will. I will also be giving some away to promote myself. There are risoprints, which I love due to their ecologically derived soya inks. Woodcut prints of a shrine lion, soon to be followed by a sarcophagus lion from a Ancient Roman History museum in Rome. 

Footnotes

1. Nikola. Magazine Designing (2013)