So You Want To Be An Illustrator? 12 Helpful Tips - Lisa Maltby

7. Think about portfolio presentation

What services are you offering? What is your unique selling point? It could be an illustration style, a process, a sector (such as book design) or a specialism (such as lettering). If you’re solely offering illustration, are you working in one style or several? How can you categorise your work to make it clear for people to find what they want? If you work in several styles, you may want to categorise these separately or show examples under different services such as ‘portraits’ or ‘food illustration’ and so on, unless you have a specialism that can group your styles together in some way. If your aim is to work in one style, this needs to be consistent – take off any work that does not fit in with this and ty to push your style to its limits, experimenting with different formats, such as editorial, packaging, publishing, or whatever you feel your work is suited to. You may need to do personal projects in order to fiil these categories but make sure you fill it with the type of work you WANT to get. imagine you are your ideal client looking at your work, would it be obvious how you could help them? I often find this hard to see with my own work so I sometimes ask other industry professionals to give advice on this.

8. Don’t be shy

A lot of advice I’ve received in the past made me focus too much on my illustrations (drawing style, medium, experimentation) and not the importance of a good network. Although a consistent portfolio is important, your main source of work will be through the connections you make. Most of my clients come back to me because they like working wiith me over my particular style of work. Don’t feel afraid of approaching people, and don’t discount anyone – you never know who they know. Similarly don’t be shy about putting your work out there and advertising yourself. No one else will do this for you. How else will anyone find you? Make sure you’re on social media (you don’t have to be on them all but choose one you can connect with others on). I find that Twitter has enabled me to build a solid network that often refer me for relevant work. Other networks, such as Linked In, are great for finding out names of Art Directors and potential contact details, wheras others are great for building an audience based on the type of work you are producing (such as Instagram and Behance). Find one that suits you and find a rhythm with how often you post and engage with others. If you have the opportunity to write, speak, blog or teach, these can also be great ways of sharing your skills and connecting with people who may also be interested in your illustrations.