My First Folio Review - AOI Portfolio Consultation with Alice Desmond
Yesterday I had the pleasure of virtually meeting the lovely Alice Desmond in a portfolio consultation session organised through the AOI. Having this consultation in the diary gave me a great focus point to finally create my website and portfolio.
My first draft of my website in the end had 6 of my favourite illustrations on it, some had in-situ mock ups and descriptions and others contained no extra info at all! So if you’re waiting for your work to be ‘perfect’ or to have enough pieces to create a 20 page folio before you finally make that illustration portfolio, I hope this encourages you to give it a whirl. No matter where you’re up to, you’ve probably got more to work with than you think!
Who is Alice and the AOI?
For anyone not in the know, the AOI (association of illustrators) is a U.K. non profit organisation helping illustrators with all aspects of the freelance illustration business, including their portfolio consultations which “offers frank, unbiased feedback, recommending practical ways to build on your strengths and existing body of work to make professional, effective presentations”.
Alice herself is an artist and freelance portfolio consultant with a career history working with both agencies and freelance individuals to improve their portfolio content and presentation.
Not as scary as I feared…
First of all for any fledgling artists and illustrators out there it’s worth saying the obvious out loud: my worst fears did not come true. Alice did not tell me my work was beyond her help or that my portfolio was hopelessly sparse as I feared. She gave me thoughtful and enthusiastic encouragement through out and helped me make a plan to expand my portfolio with the work I already had before discussing making any new pieces, which was a huge relief as it meant I could develop my portfolio immediately while working on new pieces in the longer term.
Here are my takeaways from my own notes:
You reap what you sew, work on spec illustrations of the kinds of projects you want to work on. 3 is a nice number to start with, for example if you want to pitch yourself for book covers have 3 book cover examples in your portfolio.
Brainstorm brands and areas of interest you’d like to work with, follow those brands on socials to see what they’re creating and commissioning and keep an eye on their style and how it pivots with the seasons.
If there are things you don’t enjoy drawing as much as others, develop shortcuts and suggestions to them to use in your work, for example impressions of people or the silhouette of a building can suggest these things while you focus the detail and visual interest on the areas you enjoy more.
Similarly use spot illustrations and icons to help resemble a thing. For example if you want to do a travel poster about Paris, but you don’t enjoy detailed architecture drawings, use a silhouette of the Eiffel tower and adorn the border of the poster with decorative elements and icons symbolising Parisian culture. Lean into what you enjoy which Alice notes for me is often the decorative side of illustration.
Following on from this point Alice noted that my work is very decorative which isn’t something I’d considered before. I’d always thought of my work as a little too ‘litteral’ and hoped I would develop a way to work more conceptually in the future, particulatrly as I’d love to work with editorial illustration. Alice pointed out that this decorative style lends itself to plenty of areas on it’s own and that I don’t necessarily need to change this about my work to work comercially. She gave some examples like holistic health, nature editorials and the beauty industry who all lean more into this decorative style of artwork.
Mix your portfolio up with spot illustrations and full bleed pieces as well as a few in-situ artworks, this shows diversity and an ability to work over a broader range as well as making the overall presentation look more dynamic and visually interesting.
Generally commissioners want to see the topic they want illustrating in your portfolio, they want to see you can draw a train or a pasta dish or a donkey
before they comission you to draw one, so including a broad range of spot illustrations covering things like food, flora and fauna, transport ect will help you appeal more commercially.
Generally commissioners want to see the topic they want illustrating in your portfolio, they want to see you can draw a train or a pasta dish or a donkey before they comission you to draw one, so including a broad range of spot illustrations covering things like food, flora and fauna, transport ect will help you appeal more commercially.
To help develop the above point a portfolio checklist is a handy thing to have, include categories like animals, food and transport and when you have the time to whip up a new drawing consult your checklist and see what your portfolio might be missing.
Show lots of content to connect with a variety of subject matter.
Show your versatility and commercial ability by showing a few spots and motifs adapted to different seasons (eg a decorative set of leaves with a seasonally tweaked colour palette, or a bird drawing adapted for sprint and winter by chanaging the hues and seasonal icons).
Similar to the portfolio checklist, create a seasonal and important dates in the year checklist and use your illustrations around these topical times to remind your target clients about your work (eg how can you tweak the aforementioned bird for an easter campaign and who can you then email this to reminding them of your availability for easter time work). [Note big holidays are often commissioned 6 months prior, so pitch for Christmas in the summer, pitch for summer in the new year ect]
Another tip on presentation, set my images up so when you click on them you’re able to view a larger version which you can zoom in to to appreciate the detail and textures.
Following all this, you should have a weekly check in with yourself to see where you’re up to with your illustration business. Are there any areas you need to push harder in or focus on more? Are there any areas that are feeling a bit neglected or stagnant? Use this weekly check in to keep yourself on track.
So what’s next?
Writing up my notes has been the first step in making an actionable plan from Alice’s advice. Over the next week or so I will be putting together a portfolio checklist for subject matter and another checklist of things to tweak to improve my site based on all the notes above. I’ll also be creating a business development file for myself with client research, goals and an actionable outreach plan I can stick to. Alice and I agreed this is something I can start doing right away really as it’s always good (and scary) to get the ball rolling!
I’d like to end this post by saying this consultation was both super helpful and very affirming, and I’d recommend something similar to anyone even if you don’t feel quite ready. This was the push I needed to finally make my website and sometimes you just need to jump before you feel ‘ready’. x
