Throughout my research, I’ve read about, spoken to and watched a lot of illustrators talk about their work and their processes when creating work. I feel like my biggest takeaways from this project are that, firstly, it’s difficult to get people to discuss their work in a way that really explores their process entirely. This is either conscious or sub-conscious, or simple the “language of designing.” (Schon, 1983). However, this means it’s difficult to really dissect the reasons behind decisions when creating work.
Secondly, the other takeaway has been that this is something that people who can draw, and have a passion for drawing, do all the time. At the very beginning of this project I spoke to Darren Tate about his drawing style and he explained that a lot of what he does and the way he draws, is just how he’s been doing it his whole life (Tate, 2023) and this view point has been echo’ed throughout the whole research project. People who can draw, draw.
I do feel that I have developed a lot of my practise in this project but the fact remains that 99% of my work is non-illustrative graphic design: layouts, marketing assets, posters etc. And so I don’t have the opportunity to work the mussel of drawing enough to keep the skill up to the level required.
And so to resolve the project, it felt like to logical solution would be to make my own guide, that I can refer to whenever I need to emulate an illustrative piece of work. Something simple and handy that I can refer to whenever needed, that includes all the steps and tricks that illustrators use to create work.
Looking into the world of zines, I came across what’s known as a ‘Mini Zine’. This is a zine that can be printed on one sheet of paper. Then folded and cut in a way that creates an 8 page booklet.
I started by working out the steps I wanted to include in the guide, and then the pagination of the zine. I wanted this to have its own illustrative feel as thats what we’re talking about, and make everything as straight forward and simple as possible. And here’s the results:
This is now something that can live on my desk and be picked up whenever I need to remember how to use the skills I’ve learned in this project.