Monday 24 September 2012

Peter Higgs Editorial


This is a piece I created recently for an editorial brief for the Edinburgh University staff magazine based around the Higgs Boson particle. Physics in general confuses and stirs my inner curiosity, but I liked the idea of having Peter Higgs celebrating over his discovery and the idea of the universe relating to his personal journey.

New York Cares

Yet another post which has been long overdue! But it is cold and wet outside, a typical Monday morning in lovely Edinburgh. I'm stepping out today and going to put some more focus onto my personal journal. Summer has come and gone so fast. I've been given a new brief today which is to do twelve drawings over the next few months and write up something (vaguely) interesting about it.



I was in New York City in August on my internship at the joint illustration agency - Gerald and Cullen Rapp and Mendola Artists. It is a very small hard working team who were all very lovely to meet and taught me quite a lot about the illustration industry itself. They have been established for over twenty five years covering a very wide range of illustration in all aspects from editorial to commercial. Gerald and Cullen Rapp are primarily editorial based and Mendola Artists are mainly commercial illustration ranging from projects in advertising to packaging and more. It was extraordinary to see the vast amount of artists and how broad the styles were and it gave me an insight to see that there is a market for most types of illustration but also keeping up with trends and style were important too. 

My role was helping Lydia with social media and administration by maintaining a variety of artists portfolios to increase potential business for the company. In some ways my job was looking at illustration all day which was great, but also daunting at how far I need to come along before my portfolio is anywhere near the same professionalism.


It was interesting to see which artists are doing quite successfully in terms of publications and the entire process from brief to the printed illustration in context. For example, Michael Crampton's poster which was shown for the U.S. Open 2012 which I then saw on the 'Museum Mile'. They also have a sister company based in the UK and became aware of a lot of illustrators names who have done work for major companies such as McDonalds, Santander, etc which made me realise there is definitely work out there for illustrators. I think I'd been feeling pretty dismal about the future but I think my internship has made me feel a lot more positive about the future.

Overall, my entire trip was a great experience in itself and got to visit and stay with my friend Cindy (who has Cuban/Colombian descent) and try interesting South American/Spanish style food and also visited some of the best art galleries/museums I've ever been to - the MOMA, the Guggenheim, the American Folk Art Museum, Natural History Museum, the New Museum, the Met, the Whitney, Neue Galerie (one of my favourites) whilst also walking the high line, Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, Grand Central Library, Grand Central Library, and Central Park Zoo. It was really inspiring and hopefully I'll have the chance to go again in the future.