Spatterings

Tune in tomorrow

OK, here's the lamest blog post in history: Today, I've got nothing. Tomorrow, a ton. I plan to run a post of some of my latest rejected ideas. But before I do, I need to find out which ideas are rejected (I've got a lot of projects outstanding.) But here's one thing I'm confident of: there will be a lot of rejections. 

So, um, yay.

Anyway, cool stuff coming soon...

The Hardest Part

Right now, I'm waiting for feedback on 1) A new electronic magazine that's due to go to press soon; 2) A series of web banner ads; and 3) An extensive ad campaign. Also, right now I'm posting on my blog BECAUSE I HAVEN"T HEARD BACK ON ANYTHING YET. 

It is at this point that I have to remind myself that my clients do not show up to work every day to provide work for me, but instead to do their own work, work that sometimes -- even often -- has nothing to do with me at all. Incredible, yes, but true.

So I'm going to clean up the studio for a bit and head off to the gym. That way, when work comes in, I can be sure to be sweaty and exhausted. I mean, alert. Ever alert.

Find me at Creative Shake

Another site you can find me listed: http://www.creativeshake.com/SeltzerStudio

Add that to this site, Seltzerstudio.com and TheIspot.com, and I've suddenly become easy to find. 

(Just joined Facebook too...)

A tale of three thumbnails

One of the problems I occasionally run into as an illustrator is art directing myself. Although it goes without saying that my eye is infallible, my taste unassailable, my body sweet smelling, etc., illustration is a collaboration between Art Director and Illustrator, and without an AD, illustrators can miss the mark.

So when I had to illustrate a new electronic newsletter I'm designing and art directing (DealView, from KPMG and The Deal -- I'll come up with a URL when there is one), I asked my editors to art direct my illustration. The story was about growth equity, which is  essentially when PC firms invest in a rapidly growing company instead of buying it outright, in the hopes of realizing fast capital gains. (Which sounds a lot like what we used to call "investing" back on the ranch, but I digress...)

Anyway, I submitted three thumbnails for this piece. The first was about these big investors trying to breed their own baby bull market, the second was about big businesses raising up smaller businesses by investing capital, and the third was just an image of rapid growth. You can see the sketches below.

Now, to be honest, I really thought the second image was the best of the three, a point I shared with my editors. And to be totally honest with you, they disregarded my opinion and went with the third idea. And here is the odd thing: I think they were right. 

I was thinking like an illustrator. My feeling was that the second thumbnail was the more original idea and was more closely related to the story. But my editors wanted were thinking like art directors. From an editorial point of view, they felt it was more important to emphasize that in this depressed market, growth equity was one of the few growth stories around. 

So totally unbegrudgingly (a word my spell checker does not believe exists, and an attitude that my wife might find hard to believe exists in me either), I agreed and drew this piece, which you can see below. I think it came out nicely. You can see it here and form your own opinion. As a minor note, you'll see that the aspect of the final is different from the thumbnails. Originally, it was going to be the cover story and needed to be landscape instead of horizontal. 

First Trip to Africa

I got an "emergency" request yesterday. A client needed an ad to go to press the next day in a magazine published in Africa, promoting a webinar whose topic was, not coincidentally, foreign investment in Africa. The client had copy and specs but nothing else. Could I please, you know, come up with something?

Truth be told, I love a job with a tight deadline, because it means that there's no chance of it being revised to death. And the pressure seems to give a job momentum.

I immediately opened up a computer file I had of a map of Africa, and tried to see if the shape suggested something to me. And it did. It looked like a profile of a rhino, facing east, without the horn. And so the stress of the job had worked: it had taken me only moments to come up with a completely stupid, unusable idea. Often that takes me hours.

Still, I decided to stick with the map of Africa, because that's pretty much the way that Africa is shaped. Also, I believed, iif a rhino was a lousy idea, I was pretty sure that lions or zebras or ladies with baskets on their heads would be lousy too. So I did something I rarely do: I doodled. 

I'm not kidding, by the way. Most of my best work comes from closing my eyes and picturing the job before I put pencil to paper. Sometimes I'll halfway imagine something and scrawl it out in a series of worked-over sketches. But I almost never just start scrawling away without purpose or aim.

I was therefore shocked to discover that just throwing a curved shape behind the left side of the map suggested a hand holding up the continent. I matched it with another curve and the other side, and suddenly an image had almost taken shape. It looked like two hands were holding up something that was being weighed down in the middle. This immediately suggested to me a bag or a purse, and I then just drew a bunch of coins -- yens, euros, dollars and pounds -- falling into the middle to make the depression. A little refining of the shapes, a little texture and -- who'd a thunk it -- I had my image. I didn't even have to worry the color: obviously the Pan-African colors were the way to go.

The original image is here.

Below that, you can see how it looked in the ad

Check me out on TheIspot.com

Another afternoon spent posting pix to a website, this time to the delightful and essential theispot.com. Check out all my stuff at www.theispot.com/artist/tseltzer

Drive up my web traffic, please.

-Tom

New website up and running

Wondering what I've been up to? Check out my new site at the same great location, www.seltzerstudio.com. 

Yes, the new site will link back here to my same old blog, so, yes, I guess I'd better start adding some new stuff. However, you can see a ton of new stuff there now, if you need a fix.

-Tom

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

You know, nothing gets you out of the habit of posting to your blog more than overwhelming amounts of work. But I think it's worth mentioning that Seltzer Studio Graphics is officially my sole source of income these days. As of February, I am officially self-employed. My goal is within a year to start employing others, but at the moment I'm enjoying going solo (with occasional help from some talented freelancers).

Currently I am

1. Designing an electronic magazine for KPMG
2. Working on all the collateral material for a Private Capital conference, including print ads, web ads, brochures, posters, etc.
3. Creating some new promo illustrations for the upcoming ADC show
4. Finishing my taxes

Next week, I'll

1. Finish the magazine dummy, and proceed to actual layout
2. Start on a new M&A themed conference
3. Pay my taxes (alas)
4. Start on some new design promos as well
5. Begin a new poster project

So far, I've been so overwhelmed that I've gotten slack about self-promotion. I was planning on sending emails, writing letters, sending out brochures, etc., but I've postponed that in favor of sleep, which I'd postponed for the year previous.

But no more. I'm putting up a sign in the window today. I expect hosannas all around.

-Tom

Good heavens, how long has it been?

Well, let's see. Where to begin?

I think the last entry on this blog was made right before I quit my last job. In addition to my freelancing, I was holding down a day job on the art staff of The Deal, a business weekly. The Deal was, in most ways, a nice place to work, with a great bunch of people, but the money was ... uninspiring, and I also had no possibility for advancement. I was trying to figure out my next move when I received an invitation to art direct at another company, which will for the time being rename nameless. In the meantime, I was asked by The Deal to do their conference marketing materials, an interim job that has lasted about six months now and will (he writes with fingers crossed (no mean feat)) go on indefinitely. I really enjoy that work, although it consumed my waking hours to the point where I actually did not have time to draw -- not illustrate, draw -- for several months. Things have gotten better lately, but not that much.

Just recently, while still essentially working two jobs, I took a week of (ha ha!) vacation to attend Milton Glaser's workshop at SVA. Milton Glaser, if you don't know, is a legend in the design industry, a phrase that for once can be used entirely without irony or hyperbole. I can't describe much about the experience -- suffice it to say that it's like no other design workshop on earth -- but it was inspiring, to use a word that I usually can't say without wincing. Milton is, among other things, a mensch, and it was amazing to work with a person who, while remaining remarkably down to earth, uncompromisingly strives for greatness. I learned two big things that week: First, that I am capable of extraordinary work, and second, that I will never do it at the job I am at now. The time has come to stop fooling around and to set up my own full-time studio.

The first step to doing this is to resume doing illustration, so expect to see a lot more frequent updates on this site, of what I think will be surer material. The next step is to find a partner. I want a collaborator. The final step will be to actually set up a business. I've seen forty-year old freelancers, and the picture isn't pretty. I don't want that. I want an office, a business plan, and an accountant who keeps lauding me for surpassing expectations. This won't happen tomorrow, but it's going to happen. And soon.

OK, more later. Now, to bed.

-T

Making up for Lost Time...

The website that The Studio had to finish is all done but the shouting, so I've been able to draw again. I've knocked out three more R&B greats, in sketch form, which I'll post over the next several days. Expect finishes soon.

First off, Aretha...