7. Popping my cherry with The Guardian Art Director feedback 🍒

Meeting the human behind the publication

Oct 03, 2024

Hi, I’m Libby. I’m trying to find my feet in the world of illustration. I’ve done a load of research and I’m sharing it here, along with my progress on how my illustration journey is going. I’m so glad you could join me on this bumpy ride!

Hello there!

Today I’m in Ladywell, South London looking after my new cat-sit pal Pudding while her parents are sunning themselves in Mexico.

I’m a little late getting this September review out and it has been another busy month…

First Art Director feedback

In September I finished two editorial briefs initiated on Make Your Mark Bootcamp, the course I’m currently taking.

I can’t talk about the first brief because it was live and the magazine cover will be published later this month…

Spoiler alert, I didn’t get the cover.

The second brief was set by Sarah Habershon, Art Director of G2 magazine to accompany a feature on ‘the power of shared grief, from covid to the queen.’

Preamble

I was a bit intimidated by this brief.

I hadn’t illustrated anything on a sensitive topic before and generally started the project feeling ‘I don’t know if newspaper editorial is for me’

This meant I didn’t spend a huge amount of time on the project and looking back, I feel I could have gone further in my initial idea development.

This was a mock brief (not to be published) but I knew having live interaction with an Art Director would be immense learning.

The process had 3 stages and followed Sarah’s usual process.

Stage 1 - Inital sketches

I thought as it was the Guardian, they’d be looking for something quite abstract but I soon learned this wasn’t the case.

These were my cover proposals…

And these were my feature proposals…

While reviewing the sketches she’d chosen (not mine), Sarah shared that she’d be looking for something quite figurative for a topic so personal so I realised then that I’d gone in the wrong direction.

I learned a lot from Sarah’s review of her favourite sketches. This session was about an hour and a half of Sarah talking through all her thoughts.

I learned that an Art Director is simply an individual who has an opinion and a preference for their publication.

I’m not sure I saw the Art Director as a real human until I heard Sarah talk and the process started to feel much more relatable.

I learned that it’s more about the relationship between the Art Director and Illustrator than I’d previously realised and this somehow made me feel better about potential rejections in future.

Sometimes you and your work just won’t be a match.

I learned about things to avoid:

speech bubbles, jigsaw pieces or cliche symbolism
technology, because we see it on such a regular basis

But these again, were Sarah’s opinions and may differ from publication to publication.

Stage 2 - Colour roughs

I received positive feedback from my peers about the flag pulling sketch so I went with this for the cover. I added human figures under umbrellas as the article mentioned queuing in the rain.

Sarah seemed to prefer the submissions featuring mourners under umbrellas so this was a good steer. I added a soldier too to reference the Queen.

My colour roughs were reviewed by course director Lisa Hassell.

I didn’t have the opportunity for Sarah to review them because I had a technical issue at the time of uploading and missed the deadline… oops.

Lesson learned.

I probably should have tried out more colour palettes here but for some reason I felt I needed to stick with red, blue and cream.

I think I just wanted to get the pieces handed in as doing this kind of project for the first time was somewhat overwhelming.

Lisa and I both agreed the cream theme, option 2 was the most hopeful colour.

Lisa’s feedback was that the cover needed to be more zoomed in or the background needed more interest.

She also noted that one of the hearts on the feature could be bigger to create more contrast.

Stage 3 - Final submission

I made the suggested changes before submitting.

Although I felt I could have spent more time on this project, it felt good to complete my first every editorial brief.

Sarah then reviewed all final submissions live, including my work.

In summary her thoughts were:

Cover - initially made her smile due to the soldier but would probably get rid of him and put more focus on the people.
There’s maybe too much focus on the Union Jack flag, maybe if it was blowing in the wind so it wasn’t so prominent.
Feature - The two illustrations don’t go together cohesively enough - I could include figures in the feature illustration to match the cover.

The feedback all made sense.

What I learned

The time in front of Sarah was invaluable. Hearing the feedback of everyone else’s pieces was just as valuable, if not more valuable than my own.
I could see why things were working and things that didn’t.
I begun to understand the difference between a finished piece ready for publication and something that needed more work, in Sarah’s opinion.
I got more of a feel for what G2 is looking for and what might be better suited for The Guardian newspaper (long-read) itself.
I’d probbaly try to get more connected with the topic next time I do a brief like this. I was too focused on what I thought they wanted than developing an authentic solution and I think that shows in my final illustrations.

Some more illustrations I created this month!

I finished a jigsaw design for my portfolio:

I created some fun mock branding for my portfolio:

I started trying out some ideas for greetings card designs for my Autumn brief:

This month’s resources

Materials I’ve used

Mostly digital apps - the brief was completed on Procreate but I’ve been mostly focusing on using Affinity Designer for my other work. I find it much better because I can scale things so easily.

Clubs, Workshops & Tutorials I’ve attended

As part of Make Your Mark Bootcamp:
- 30-days of sketch review - I won a community prize for my work last month!
- Behance for Creatives
- Working session on a packaging brief with illustrator Luke McConkey
- Masterclass with Marc David Spengler - this was amazing!
Non-Fiction Picture Book Planning with Owen Davey - a new 10-week short course I’ve joined! Another course, I know, but I just couldn’t resist this one as a Winter focus.
Digital co-working with Jenni Macklin and I. Look out for our next session…
Draw Brighton - Life drawing
Pencils 4 Tea portrait club
An IRL Inky Goodness London pub meetup
AOI talks:
- Showcasing your work and building community
- Drawing Diversely with Justyna Green
- Illustrators in Motion with Danielle Rhoda