Last week I began to feel creatively stuck. I developed my plan for the type of work I’m looking for and asked for help in finding it, created artwork, and felt aligned with the direction I’m headed. Then I found myself struggling for what to do next. Should I start a new collage series? Watercolor? Line drawing? I felt like I needed to produce another series of artwork around a narrative theme, but I was completely blocked on what I wanted my work to say.
After speaking with my Mood Board Monday creative partner, I knew exactly what I needed to do next. You see, even though I look at my artwork or graphic design layouts and see how they can be applied to the creative client projects I want to do most, my future clients/employers don’t see this. As Nancy (and Cassandra) both told me recently, you have to spell it out.
You have to specifically show the type of work you want to do in order to move forward in that creative arena.
That means no more creating graphic design layouts for random blog posts in hopes that someone I want to work with will see it and understand how my work could benefit them. That means being MUCH more focused and direct in terms of what I’m sharing on my website and on social media. That means pulling back (for now, at least) on how much time I spend on social media sites in general and on artwork that I create without a purpose.
Note: No. I DON’T think that all artwork should be created with a purpose.
There’s a time and a place for experimenting and exploring and figuring out what you want. That time comes and goes all throughout life. Right now it’s time for me to stop experimenting and playing for play’s sake and apply all of the things I’ve learned over the past few years to specific projects that show what I can do and what I want to do.
While my portfolio contains work that I’m proud of, much of it doesn’t accurately project the type of creative projects that I want to do most. On Sunday I began a series of concept work where, in a sense, I’ll give myself a creative brief and go through the project step-by-step. Obviously, there are limitations to what I can do on my own. Marc Jacobs isn’t going to have a photo shoot based on my concept then send me the images to use in the advertising campaign I’m creating and I’m not going to be able to spend money to license additional images that might be necessary to develop it. But I’m going to make do with what’s available and move forward to show examples of the type of work that I want to be paid for.
Image via Marc Jacobs
Concept 1: Marc Jacobs Fall/Winter 2014-15 Retro-Future Travel West Coast Campaign
Based on studying the Marc Jacobs Fall/Winter 2014-15 line I came up with the concept “Retro-Future Travel.” I decided that I wanted to design a campaign that would specifically be used to target West Coast consumers. I’m creating a set of images that theoretically could be used in magazines, online, or in outdoor advertisements. The first step after developing the concept was to collect images and create a mood board. I saved a lot of digital images, some that will be used in the final designs, but I also created an initial physical mood board to explore color, shape, and the travel theme.
Yesterday I got a lot of work done on the final images. I’m looking forward to sharing the next step.