Carson Ellis

At Pete’s recommendation I decided to research Carson Ellis. Carson was born in 1975 in Vancouver, Canada. She illustrates both album covers and children's story books. The 'stripped back' use of colour Pete was talking about is quite prevalent (see images above). It is good to have some idea of what ‘stripped back’ is supposed to mean and what it looks like in practice, but it doesn’t look like anything I would produce.

From what I can see from her website, she also gives back to society by holding free art classes to teenagers every autumn. Not only does this give her something additional to put on her cv (not that she needs it anymore!) but it gives her the exposure that every illustrator requires to keep generating work.

I understand from my portfolio visits thus far that it is of very limited work, it is by no means expansive and it needs to be by the time May comes. Additionally, it doesn't boast the range of skills I have to offer. I am most comfortable illustrating children's story books, they allow my imagination to run off with itself, but to appeal to the widest possible market I need to include different types of brief. Craig Oldham from Music in particular pointed out that he wouldn't feel confident commissioning me for a package brief for example because my portfolio doesn't show him that I am able to tackle that type of a brief.

So, for the latest brief dealing with a live competition, I have decided to undertake the challenge of designing a magazine cover for Little White Lies. I think that this will give me scope to develop my skills further and show potential clients that I possess the ability to undertake different kinds of briefs. With this brief I intend to consider the colour as part of the overall image and not think of it as an afterthought, the type too needs to be considered because if I could integrate it into the image rather than putting it on top as a separate layer it would look much more aesthetically pleasing. The middle and right image above by Ellis look like they have type integrated into the image making it look much better than the image on the left for example.