Portfolio Review - Little Brown Book Publishers

I travelled to Blackfriars in London to visit the studio of Little Brown Book Publishing. (see separate blog entry). While I was there, Hannah Wood took a look at my portfolio. It was quite nerve wracking to go into an industry head-first with about 10 marketing directors waiting to see the book designs I had made. Hannah and a lady that was with her sat and waited for me to tell them about each piece of work. I'd never professionally explained each piece of art I had done until this point, it was even more scary trying to talk through the silence of them.

Overall they seemed to like my work, there was a tight schedule, and my portfolio review overran so I had to make haste, keeping it short but sweet. They said that it was a good idea that I chose to put drawings into the portfolio, because far too often do people slam all their best final work into a portfolio and sometimes it can be difficult to see where a certain brief could have gone if they had done things differently. Showing some decent rough work allows them to see the foundations of where a project could potentially go.

They thought my Animals in Anguish characters were a little "extreme" but I explained that it was because I was trying to make an extreme point and 'shock' the audience. They saw this with reason but I do acknowledge that some people could seem offended or shocked by these characters, but this is what I wanted them to feel.