The do's and don'ts of contacting me!

I had a number of business consultations with a great guy at the end of 2015 who gave me much to think about in terms of running my business. One of his suggestions was to incorporate more of myself and my sense of humour in the promotion and presentation of my site as it was pretty sterile at the time. My contact page is still looking very plain so I designed this comic style illustration explaining the do's and don'ts of contacting me. What's nice about this in my humble opinion is that it will serve as my next promo piece I send out attached to emails. Two birds one shot gun. That's the saying right?

Regardless of how successful this is as a promo piece is was fun to do. I'm fairly please with the unity of the colours which at first caused me some head aches. All I need to do now is add it to my contact page! 

If you liked this visual nugget you can see more at my website, and if you want to keep up to date with what I'm up to you can subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter and/or link to me on Linkedin. 

Soreen squidgy fun

I have just finished the latest set of illustrations for Soreen's squidgy fun activity cards which I will be sending over to the relevant people very soon. I can't show any of that work here and now as these resources are not out until April 2016 and I don't want to end up on anyone's naughty list. I can however show a few bits and bobs from the previous resources which are available to download now.

The purpose of these activity cards is to promote an active lifestyle to families. The following examples are from different cards and not in sequence.

If you've got a young family then these resources are targeted at you. You can download all the current activities here, with two more sets of activities on their way! You can also see more of the work I did for them on the Soreen squidgy fun website!  

Now comes the shameless self promotion segment or the me me me portion of the post where I point you toward my website and hint very strongly that you should bookmark my site, link to me on Linkedin, follow me on Twitter and/or subscribe to this blog. If you are interested in working with me I should point out that I am booked up until late March so early April is the time to pencil me in. I don't think that hint was strong enough. CONTACT ME HERE. That's more like it! 

Focus!

There has been a sea of distractions these past couple of weeks what with it being Christmas and new year. Oh, and some movie came out which I may or may not have seen on multiple occasions. With all this going on I haven't actually got much done, but it is the Holidays. The only guy working this time of year is Santa, and the folk at my local supermarket which seems a little unfair.

In the last couple of days I have been thinking about the year gone by and what I would have liked to have done a little differently. The main thing was marketing, or to be precise the lack of marketing. Once work got under way everything else took a back seat. I don't want to come to the end of my current run of work and find that there's nothing on the horizon due to the fact that no one knows I exist. A mail out schedule has been written up starting this month with email samples. I wanted to start with postcard mailers but my past self sabotaged that plan by creating pieces of work which don't quite fit right on a postcard. That past me is such a ****. By next week I should have some samples ready to send off to a small number of potential clients. Gone are the days where I took a free style jazz approach to marketing. I'm not kidding. I used to throw stuff out there and hope it stuck.

Time management

I would love to talk about how productive I've been this week but it's Christmas and like everyone else I've been sitting on my backside consuming my own body weight in food, and drinking my fair share of alcoholic beverages. I did however find the time in my not so busy holiday schedule to sit down and do a timetable. "Why" I hear you ask. "Surely it's a pointless exercise in procrastination." Well... yes, I guess it is so why the hell would I waste my time like this? There is some solid reasoning beyond not wanting to do any work at Christmas. For me it acts as a visual kick up the bum. January is really busy for me and I can't afford to switch off, not even for a day otherwise I'll be facing one of those 24 hour marathons to meet the deadline. Insert Danny Glover Lethal Weapon quote here.

If you're wondering about the cartoon I thought I'd be fun to add a illustrated element to the post. An illustration blog which is just type would be like a burger restaurant without burgers. Madness!

Click on the image for a closer look!

Hello

Hello. It's been a bloody age since I was last on here and I know you've all been waiting with baited breath for my next post. Well, rest at ease as after a year and half I am back. Where have I been? Glad you asked! Over the last year I've been really busy working on commissions and as is my way social media tends to take a back seat. I'm trying to get better at this as from a marketing point of view going quiet for over a year isn't great. The plan is to update this blog once a week (every Tuesday) with a new post. I've already got another blog but I felt it made sence having two. One for more business related posts. I.e. What type of marketing I'm having a crack at and how it's panning out. Stuff like that. The other as a check out my work type blog which Tumblr is great for. So that'll be all the work I'm really pleased with mainly personal projects and fun illustrations. Why not follow both! See you next week and have a awesome Christmas!

The Rubber Bandy 3

The last of the Rubber Bandy commissions for now. They should be back later on in the year. I hope so! They were fun.

Cue and a

I was asked by the lovely people at Left Lion to illustration two snooker players fighting with lightsaber cues. The piece accompanies two local players who's likenesses I've tried to capture. Lightsabers and cues are not two words I thought I'd utter in the same sentence.