*Winner!* Communication Arts 4th Typography Competition

These days, there are quite a few competitions in the design world for us illustrators and hand letterers to enter and showcase our work and be judged by industry peers - some of them being serious industry heavyweights. A few of these competitions are the ones you *really* want to get somewhere in but often don't, as they are tough as old boots to make the grade in...Communication Arts is one of the big ones. Oh yes.

If I have a project I feel is strong enough, I enter it to either CommArts Illustration or Typography competitions and then usually hear nothing more about it!

Not this year though.

© Jill Calder 2013

I worked on two fantastic projects last year that really stretched my lettering skills and gave me the chance to play with different ways of lettering as well as combining and fusing lettering with my illustration too. 

©Jill Calder 2013

The first project was the much publicised Little Black Book of Seafood, commissioned by the Leith Agency in Edinburgh (written about here). The second project was a monthly editorial for Reader's Digest USA for their legendary Word Power quiz. 
This how I described my competition entries for Word Power:
“Each month, two words, paired either with their correct meaning or a (believably) false definition, are selected from the multiple-choice Word Power quiz in Reader’s Digest, and illustrated using a whimsical blend of hand lettering and imagery with a limited color palette. The final pieces were spot illustrations, so they also needed to pack a punch visually.”

 I absolutely loved working on both these projects as they really stretched me, allowed me to experiment and try new things out with my lettering. Needless to say, the creatives who commissioned me - Andy Archer and Bob Lovie at The Leith Agency and Marti Golon at Reader's Digest - encouraged me but also trusted me enough to give me the space to do my thing. A sign of a good art director!

© Jill Calder 2013

So I entered both projects to the coveted Communication Arts 4th Typography Competition ( right on the deadline, as per usual) and expected nothing to come of it. So, imagine my surprise when I got the email from them to tell me that I had won not one but TWO Awards of Excellence for both these projects! Yes, I admit I did a little dance and the dogs got confused and started to bark.

Of the 1,498 entries submitted to this year's competition, only 152 were selected by a jury of respected creative professionals, representing the work of 132 type designers, hand-letterers, design firms, agencies, publishers and in-house creative departments.

All the winners are featured in the luscious Jan/Feb Typography Annual, which is OUT NOW  both in print and digital formats. 
Thank you CommArts!

© Jill Calder 2013

My Illustration Workshop on Iona - Inkery on the Island!

It's true, I have years of experience as a lecturer (Edinburgh College of Art and several other educational establishments too) but I have never hosted a residential Illustration workshop!
 Well, it's about time that changed and I was finally convinced to go for it (with a bit of friendly persuasion and encouragement from the book artist Rachel Hazell, no less).

So,  I am delighted to tell you about my first ever residential workshop called Inkery on the Island which is taking place on the magical island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, from 6-10th March next year! Exciting, isn't it?

My workshop is about discovering new ways to respond to words, developing ideas for visual narratives and learning to trust the creative gut instinct...as well as experimenting with ink and dip pens!
Creating finished illustrations based upon unexpected forms of text is the goal - Ink, drawing, paper, looking, thinking, ideas, words, random elements and playfulness will ALL be involved in that process, that's for sure! There will probably be wine and biscuits too. And cake.

 It's open to anyone who likes to dabble in art in its many forms and who simply fancies stepping outside their everyday work and doing something a little different! You don't have to be a professional artist /illustrator/designer/maker but if you ARE , then you are very welcome too. View it as a chance to re-boot, especially if you need a bit of space and perspective to reflect on what and where your creative practice is heading. And yes, ideal for anyone who needs to re-engage with their playful, most creative side!

There are 8 places available on this 3 days /4 nights workshop, which costs £400.00 per person inclusive of tuition, accommodation, food and basic materials...and bags of creative inspiration (and of course there will be a goodie bag too)! We'll have the exceptional, super-comfy award- winning Iona Hostel as our exclusive base - there really is no better place to experience this beautiful island. Arrange your own travel to Iona which is actually quite easy to get to both via car/ferry and by efficient public transport links - and the journey is all part of the fun.

This will be, I hope, a truly fun, inspiring and creative break. If you are interested and want to know more information, discuss whether it's right for you or just fancy a blether please contact me on jill@jillcalder.com or call 01333 313737 for an information sheet.

Now for something joyously inky, inspired by my travels to the glorious West Coast of Scotland. Who knows, maybe you'll see a wild otter too, if you come to Iona!

Little Black Book of Seafood

This was a dream illustration and lettering job that first landed on my desk almost a year ago, took a while to get going, then BAM! - it's everywhere now! Here's the story:

 The lovely and sassy team at The Leith (an Ad agency in Edinburgh who I have worked with many times before) got in touch to say their client, First Great Western, were collaborating with award winning chef Mitch Tonks to produce a guide to the best seafood restaurants, cafés and fish and chip bars in the South west of Britain...and would I like to illustrate it? Why, yes I would, thank you very much.

 Now, I love my seafood, love cooking seafood and I live in a fishing village so I felt very at home with this project - I just needed to look out my window for inspiration: Crab and lobster creels all stacked up, blokes fishing on Cellardyke Harbour (catching pollock), the prawn boats from Pittenweem out in all weather and the haddock on my plate at the Anstruther Fish Bar, served with a mug of strong tea.

I adore drawing foodie things and on this project I got a pretty free reign to produce imagery, maps, lettering and also a selection of wee line spot illustrations for the book. Heaven.

sketches... crammed in like sardines

As an added bonus, the book was animated for online viewing and you can see the whole thing HERE

Of course, First Great Western are promoting the book to inspire people to travel to Devon, Dorset, Cornwall and South Wales, explore the region and discover some fishy foodie gems tucked away down there in the Southwest. A culinary pilgrimage, if you like...with sporks.

Little Black Book of Seafood was launched at Paddington Station in London, where Mitch and fellow chef, Mark Hix created a pop-up dining room, offered oysters and fizz to rush hour commuters and had a good chat about how great the quality and range of seafood on offer in the Southwest is!
What I really like is that all proceeds from the sale of the book ( it costs £1.50) are donated to The Fishermen's Mission, a charity dedicated to helping the lives of fishermen and their families.

Enjoy the book and if you love a little bit of fishy in your dishy then please take a moment to donate to the Fishermen's Mission here
 Now, someone pass the tartare sauce, my chips are getting cold!

Central Illustration Agency and Me...

Big Announcement, folks!
I am delighted and truly thrilled to be invited to be part of the mighty Central Illustration Agency, based in London, who will now represent my illustration and lettering work exclusively in the UK and Europe. Good, eh?

There is a wealth of mega talent currently repped by the CIA and I will be joining the likes of Sir Peter Blake, my hero David Hughes, the wondrous Sarah Coleman (aka Inkymole), cool dude Paul Wearing (a stablemate at Friend + Johnson too), my friend and colleague Jonathan Gibbs, lovely Wendy Plovmand...oh, the list goes on and reads like an Oscars roll call of top illustrators!

This is good for my business too: my American reps, Friend + Johnson, have been so busy getting me great jobs from across the Pond that I have had less and less time to attend to marketing myself here...criminal! As I said to Ben Cox, MD of the CIA, it was getting to the point where I either needed two of me or the services of a decent UK rep, so I am very glad he contacted me a couple of weeks ago to pop the question :-)
As I say to my students when they ask about finding a rep - the relationship works both ways and is very like a marriage: you have to be prepared to put work and ideas into it and to listen to reap the benefits. So, I am very much looking forward to this new working relationship and seeing what lies around the next corner!

I am passionate about the business side of illustration: all the marketing, promotion and negotiating fees...but having two heavyweight agencies looking after my interests allows my business to grow and I can concentrate on being creative!

So, hello CIA and all who sail in her...let's get ready to roll!

Treat Yourself...new Pop-Up shop!

I am delighted to be one of the 30 artists and makers who have been invited to take part in "Treat" – Fife Contemporary Art & Craft’s very first pop-up shop! If you fancy a Jill Calder signed  print then this is the place to get it over the next 2 weeks.

Treat opens 10am - 5pm from Friday 1 July - 16th July up on the first floor of J&G Innes, (wonderful stationers & booksellers), 107 South Street, St Andrews.

Shop for fabulous jewellery, ceramics, glass, textiles, wood, original prints and artists’ multiples - all  available to buy at this Pop-Up Shop!  More info and pics can be had on the FCA&A website – www.fcac.co.uk – and blog – http://blog.fcac.co.uk

Be there or be square!

Illustration Friday : Artificial

Artificial leg, arms...everything, these days. I heard on the radio the other day that scientists have successfully grown, from stem cells, new hip joints!
Anyway, this image was for a health column I illustrated every week for a newspaper in Glasgow. It's quite a strange one for me, don't you think? I do like its oddness though.

Marmalady made me a CAKE!

OOOH, I may live in a small village but I am surrounded by talented folk! One such person is the lovely Loren Brand - aka Marmalady - who not only has trained at Duncan of Jordanstone to be an illustrator but is busy trying to set up her business as a cake baker extraordinaire. She visited me during Open studios and when I heard she could bake a mean cake, I asked her to create a cup cake special for my "40 and a Bit" Birthday BBQ. Isn't it fab?
The flavours for the grown-ups were gin & tonic, margarita, strawberry daquiri and my favourite liquer, frangelico. The big ladybird on the top was a yummy vanilla sponge especially for the kiddies.
Want a cake ?- ask Marmalady!

East Neuk Open Studios - it's that time of year again!

After a year out from ENOS due to house renovations, I have been very busy getting ready to open up my studio to the great British public again. The dates this year are June 5th and 6th, and again on June 12th and 13th, 10.30am - 6pm. If you fancy a daytrip to the beautiful East Neuk of Fife, come and visit me!

I am really looking forward to it and have created some brand new prints especially! I decided to get some of these new ones super-sized and found a great place in London called Digital Print Studio run by Andrew Turnball, who has produced some gorgeous big 50x70cm prints on Somerset Velvet Enhanced paper for me - recommend him totally!
Another new thing this year will be my work on ceramics...I hope. I need to chase up the company where I am getting the transfers done, as their website is a bit crap and they are even worse at communication! Luckily I have a good friend, Karen, at Funky Scottish who is going to help me out and will fire all the mugs for me in her kiln.

If you can make it over to Fife, then please do go and visit all the other artists, designers, jewellers and textile artists who make up our group- there really is a great variety of work to look at and buy. Then, if you are feeling peckish, you have a whole host of places to grab a bite to eat. If you are feeling flush go to The Seafood Restaurant in St Monans, just along the coast - tell Norah I sent you. If you fancy the best fish n' chips in Britain (seriously, they won an award) go to the Anstruther Fish Bar . If you want delicious pub grub and a mean bloody mary overlooking Cellardyke harbour, go to Trevor and Wendy's place, The Haven - I can thoroughly recommend that too! To work it all off again, you can wander along the Fife Coastal Path !

Anyway, for a wee taster, here is a sneak preview of one of my new prints, titled "Urban Fox"

Illustrating Julian Barnes

Lovely commission from Roger Browning at The Guardian to illustrate Julian Barnes' new short story, "Sleeping with John Updike".
Had to work super-quick on this one, as I was away teaching in Sunderland Uni on Monday when the call came through, and the first illo (for the inside spread) had to be in for Wednesday lunchtime. I had until Thursday to do the Cover art. ** adrenalin rush**

I love having meaty characters, with lots of undercurrent in the dialogue to work with - a dream!Thank you Julian Barnes.

Incidentally, I got a lovely email today from a well know wine writer, (who happens to be friends with Julian Barnes too) who loved the illos and said she would consider me for illustrating any of her future wine books! Considering most of my illustrations have someone with either a glass or a bottle in their hand, I'd say I would be suited to that particular project!

Off to Edinburgh for a spot of teaching all week, so getting ready for that tonight. I have a few potential jobs on the horizon, as well as tweaks to make on artwork for another advertising job I worked on last week too, so I need to be armed with laptop and all the various files and pen and inks. the words Pack and Horse come to mind when I see all the stuff I end up taking with me to Edinburgh!

Images 34 success!

What a way to celebrate moving back into my newly renovated house and studio than to find out my work has been selected for Images 34: The Best of British Contemporary Illustration! I have had one of my Garden Detectives illustrations selected by a rather prestigious jury for the Design category, so I am well chuffed! Images 34 kicks off with the exhibition launch in London in July 2010 and then the book is sent out to art directors and designers from early August.Ooh, that seems ages away...

Garden Detectives exhibition - grand opening!

After all my hard work creating the illustrative element and all the National Museum of Scotland's design team's hard work bringing the show into 3D, interactive life, Garden Detectives finally opened at a private view on Thursday 25th June!

Go here to see loads more images of the opening night, the exhibition and my illustrations, of course!

It was a great evening - starting with speeches by the museum's director, Gordon Rintoul and by Roseanna Cunningham, who is the Scottish Minister for the Environment. Of course a tasty canapé or two with a glass of bubbly was in order.
The whole design team were there: Maureen Barrie (project manager), Stuart Kerr (3D), Lisa Carrington (graphics) and Cathy Sexton (she who ensured I was paid!).I was also delighted to meet Matt Black who had built a lot of the exhibits and interactive elements.

Also present were lots of children and they simply proved that the show will be a big hit, as they poured into the exhibition space and leapt upon the exhibits with enthusiastic glee! I think the most popular section was the fishing pond, "Pond Dipping" where you got a magnetic fishing rod and tried to catch all the beasties, such as minnows, waterspiders and waterboatmen beetles and then post them back through appropriate slots at the side of the pond according to where they live : in the mud at the bottom, in the pondweed or poddling about near the top.

For me, it was wonderful to see the big illustration of the dreamy garden scenes in all their 8 metre long glory - very nice indeed!

Overall, I really enjoyed the challenge of this project. I love drawing but here I had to be accurate for education purposes but still retain my inky, fairly loose style. Also, working with such detailed technical drawings was at times daunting but the designers needed me to be spot on with where each flowerhead or bit of mint was placed so they could then tell the joiners and set builders what to do with out any mistakes occurring. Also, it was fairly large amount of illustration to do in quite a short amount of time but I do like a bit of deadline pressure to make life interesting!

I'll be honest though, if I never have to draw another adder in my life, I'll be very happy indeed. Snakes are hard to draw!

If you can, please go and support the National Museum of Scotland and enjoy the show.

The Class of 2009

Thought I would promote my new batch of competition in the world of illustration - namely the 19 students that are soon to graduate from the Illustration Deptartment at Edinburgh College of Art.

The Degree Show opens on June 13th (the PV is on the 12th) and it is an excellent, varied, exciting and surprising show indeed.

This group have been great to teach and I think many of them will do well in the tough 'ol business that is Illustration. I just hope they remember the pricing and business advice I gave them back in November!
I have selected an image by Toby Cook from his book "The Upside Down House" and a life drawing by Trine Mangernes as a small taster of the variety in the exhibition.

Go along to their Show, buy something from their shop and support the next generation.

A fine looking Toad

Working very hard on the National Museums of Scotland job - I literally have hundreds of animals, birds, insects, fish and flowers to draw.
As part of one of the interactive exhibits in the show, I have drawn 15 animals that all have to be sorted out (by the visitors)as to where they live (or not) in a hedgerow.
These drawings have to be accurate, as they are educational, but still done in my style.
I am rather fond of this lowly and rather warty common toad. Yes - as part of the same exhibit I have also drawn a badger (currently re-doing the badger, as my first version was deemed a bit "weird, possibly too hairy" by the folk at the museum!) and a weasel so all I need to complete a cast call for Wind in the Willows is a water rat - but there isn't one in this show!
I'll get some of the big showstopper garden scenes up soon - just as soon as they are ready. In the meantime - enjoy the toad.

National Museum of Scotland

Finally! I am able to write a bit about this absolute PEACH of a job!
The last couple of months have seen me to-ing and fro-ing to the wonderful, award winning National Museum of Scotland to meet with their very cheerful design team to discuss doing some work for their big summer exhibition, entitled Garden Detectives, which is part of the Darwin200 series of events celebrating all things Charles Darwin.

It was Stuart Kerr who contacted me - he is a D&AD award winning 3D designer and mad keen cyclist by the way - and asked if I had ever done work for interactive, large scale exhibits. Nope...but I'd like to.

Basically the exhibition is aimed at children and will encourage them to discover what lurks, lives and burrows in their own backyard, through the medium of large, custom built interactive garden sheds, flowerbeds and hedgerows...oh and a garden pond too.
There will be plenty of specimens and things to poke at too.

Where does my work fit in? Well,I get to draw and paint lovely, loose garden scenes and hedge rows with bird's nests,curled up cats and pond-dwellers, which will be supersized and applied to walls and to the interactive exhibits aswell. I am also doing a hefty amount of quite technical illustration of the creatures who inhabit our gardens too too. Now, for those of you who know my work, you would be forgiven for thinking "Jill? technical? Neat and tidy?" I did think the same thing myself. However, after doing some drawings of Dragonfly larvae and ladybirds for the Museum's resident entymologist, my style got the stamp of approval!
The brief was to draw accurately, but still be inky - these illustrations are to be educational afterall.

Needless to say, I am very excited about this job - which does mean scanning everything at 1200dpi, as it is going to be BIG!
There will be plenty more updates about this, so watch this space for any more snippets.

Above illustration is a garden cat and also another of part of a dragonfly life cycle. You knew that though, didn't you?

Sumo Arabic Brochure

Sumo Arabic Brochure, originally uploaded by jimmysumo.

The lovely folk at Sumo asked me to do some illustrations in connection with their project with an amazing new museum in Qatar.
Jim Richardson sent me through these pics of the brochure they designed with one of my illos on the cover.
It was an interesting job to do, as I had to draw a mixture of Arabic and Western people in the gallery setting (which looks like a giant sand dune, by the way) but at the same time, be respectful of Islamic customs and culture. I hope I got it right!
In the process of researching this job, I came across some fantastic Arabic art websites and blogs, such as Fann 3arabi...and discovered a couple of inspiring Arabic calligraphers too, such as Malik Anas, an Iraqi calligrapher based in Baghdad.

Lovely Pikaland

Very delighted that Amy Ng at the wondrous Pikaland has featured my work on the site!
Pikaland loves all things illustrated and is a very very readable blog.
Subscribe to their excellent newsletter here.

Paternity Leave for The Guardian

The Guardian always give me juicy subject matter to illustrate and this article was no different.
Sarah Habershon, art director at the Guardian, contacted me last Tuesday to see if I could do this piece, entitled No Father Forward by Elin Darby about the issues surrounding paternity leave in the UK. Of course I could! I love an adrenalin pumping deadline me! - which was Thursday.
The article discussed how many companies seemed not to take the idea seriously of a father taking time off to help care for a new baby, or even help out with childcare if his partner were returning to work after her maternity leave. Some men were even made redundant on the point of returning to work after taking paternity leave - with plenty of other reasons being given for the redundancy other than "you seem to be unreliable and /or uncommitted because you take time off to care for your children", which of course is illegal to claim.
After some doodling about with themes of a "flexible parenting/working environment" theme, I suddenly remembered all the images of Lehmann Bros. employees who had been made redundant a few months ago, and them walking out the office with all their possessions in a lowly cardboard box. It seemed cleaner and simpler to me to make that statement visually, but replacing the box with a good old-fashioned pram.

CMY and K

Never have I given so much thought to the humble 4 Colours of the Apocolypse. That doesn't make any sense, but it has a ring to it, don't you think ?
CMYK - it could replace YMCA and you would only have to figure out how to do the "A" arm signal when on the discoteque floor (answers on a postcard please).
Anyway - I am going slightly loopy, as I am up in Edinburgh tomorrow and Wednesday, donning my inky overcoat in the eca Printworkshop in order to screenprint my part of the Imprint: 500 Years of Printing in Scotland project we are doing (see previous post). I FEEL like I have been printing for 500 years here in the studio, as I am doing a mongrel print - a hybrid of digital and screen - and so am printing the digital bits and it takes a while.
CMYK features, of course. I have never been one to use them together as a colour palette before, but I have to say I am quite hooked now - jiggle them about a bit, so they don't quite fit and, Bingo! you get fuzzy vision. You'll be seeing more CMYK from me I think.
Anyway,I was going to do something with King James IV but instead I have recycled a drawing of a rather brutish looking chap, who looks like he is from the 60's, but in my mind for this picture he is a printer - a Print Manager, or maybe a Print Operations Director...no,no...a Pre Press Repro Manager, that's it. He's worried. Books are going digital. The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book.
here is a tiny morsel of my image - miniscule.
500 years of No Printing in Scotland is the name of the follow-up exhibition.

New Folio Pages and other things of note

I am absent again, am I not?
Well, it is back to school time, fresh start time and all that, so busy busy.
This time of year usually means that I arrange some new folio pages for my books in the USA. Obviously I print out illustrations from actual jobs, but I also like to do speculative pages, personal stuff etc too. It is good to show all the other things you can draw, or think about too. I get quite a bit of work from random drawings or ideas I have printed out and put in the folio, so it does pay off.
Anyway, I am currently working on another animation with Eskymo (an epic - it's half completed but involves animals and cars) and these are SOME of the car drawings I have done for that, which I have composed into a folio page.
Generally I am crap at drawing cars, but I do love drawing them. Students, cover your ears/eyes, but i NEVER go and look at cars for reference, as I prefer making them up. You could never tell, could you.

What else am I up to? Well, waiting for some feedback on the first round of sketches for the new New Yorker/Mass Mutual job. I think Labor Day held everything up but we don't have that holiday in the UK, so I was twiddling my thumbs, champing at the bit to get going on it!

I am also working on a nice wee project with my fellow visual communicators at Edinburgh College of Art as part of the 500 Years of Printing In Scotland celebrations. Jonny Gibbs (my boss!) has organised an exhibition called Imprint and we all have to produce an edition of 15 prints responding to the theme of 500 years of printing in Scotland - quite open.
I have not done much printmaking but I want to get into our juicy new printworkshop at the college and do some screenprinting, but also using digital print too (which I do do) My ideas keep changing, but I am actually going down a bit of a conceptual route, unusually for me. Saying that, I do want to draw King James IV of Scotland (he granted the licence for the first printing press in Scotland to Chepman and Myllar) as he looks such a metrosexual thug, with his spaniel ear hair-do and furry bling bling. He did love his books though, bless 'im.
Anyhow, our exhibition will be on at the Art College in October, but I will post more about that later on, alongside my Imprint image.

Oh, can also say that I LOVE this woman's work - Marian Bantjes - beautiful, brilliant and she writes a mean essay too.

3x3 Illustration ProShow Awards

***NEWS JUST IN*** I am supersonically delighted to be chosen as one of this year's 3x3 ProShow Illustration award winners.
I got the email this evening from the publisher, Charles Hively and read that about 4000 people entered the awards, with only 200 being selected by the rather high powered panel of judges.
Very pleased that my stablemate at Friend and Johnson, Paul Wearing has been selected too, so well done to him!
Seriously, though, I am quite humbled to be in a list that includes some of my illustration heroes, such as Brad Holland, Nate Williams, Jeff Fisher, Guido
Scarabottolo, Penelope Dullaghan and Anita Kunz...stop me before I blub like Gwyneth Paltrow in a pink dress :-)
More news later on this, as I am still not sure which picture of mine the judges have selected (I submitted 4, if I remember correctly) - but it will be in the juicy little annual 3x3 produce, which will be out in January 2009.
*UPDATE* just found out that it was "the Selfish Giant's Garden" that got the votes. I posted this image before for an Illustration Friday/Garden but, what the heck, I'll post it again!