The Great CR Tate-Up

As some of you may know a couple of Thursdays back I was bouncing round Tate Britain after hours, brandishing pens at people and shouting things like "FEET! I need someone to draw me feet". All in the name of the inspiring fun that is a Creative Review Tweet-Up, or Tate-up on this occasion.

Tweeps getting their draw on.

In a nutshell; 150 of CR's twitter followers headed to a private view of the fantastic Vorticists exhibition and were invited to get networking through the wonderfully random artistic fun that is Consequences aka Exquisite Corpse. There was a digital version run by Specialmoves and then the original, ink on your fingers, version run by me.
On hand to corral one half of the group was PR lovely Jenny Ellery and photographing the weird and wacky creations was the rather talented Jonathan Minster.

We had an amazing time and I'm really pleased Neil asked me to get involved. I'm proud to have been part of a really inspiring night that is testament to the striving force within Creative Review determined to give their readership More. (it deserves the capital M, they work bloody hard)

Alex Macro (glasses) brought some mates along.

Wonderful talents @GrossmaryK & @graphicdrip

My Life As A Freelancer

Nearly 3mths as a 'freelancer' now, and a heady whirl it's been!
A steady routine is finally forming and it feels like exciting times ahead. So for all you lovely folk who've asked what my new life consists of; here goes . . .

I've 3 main client groups at the moment.

1 - Companies within AdLand that I consult with, shake up a bit and work to bring in more business for. These tend to be long term arrangements where I come by a day or so a week.
At the moment I have the great pleasure of working with my chums at Retouching House Stanley's Post & Photo Agent/Producer/Top Bloke Jamie Stephen.

2 - One to One consulting sessions for un-repped photographers. We chat about portfolio direction, website structure, client groups to focus on, personal projects. It's a bit like creative therapy with a kick up the bum for good measure.

3 - Random helping hand projects. These can involve anything from putting together an exhibition, launching a book, lecturing at Art Colleges. Or in the case of a current project, lending a hand to the team at Creative Review to add an interesting creative dimension to the #crtateup (you'll have to come to the event tomorrow at Tate Britain to find out what this is, or wait till I blog about it)


So there you have it. I still think Creative Multi-tasker covers it best :)

Email me at emmataylorlondon@gmail.com if you have need of my services.

CAMARAderie

Camaraderie; one of the things I'm loving most about my new freelance existence.

At present I'm working with a retouching company, an agent, a gaggle of photographers and a magazine. I've been careful to avoid conflict amongst my clients, in fact I'm keen to find links between them all and seek out ways they can help each other. Because, you know what, I think this creative industry of ours is at its most inspiring when it pulls together.

Partnership across disciplines isn't anything new. We're used to the Photographer/Stylist/Casting Agent dynamic, Film Directors working with Composers and of course where would a Copywriter be without their Art Director?

But what I sometimes think we forget is how exciting it can be to challenge the usual collaborations and how important it is to even view them as collaborations in the first place. We label Colleagues as Suppliers, we get used to working with them in a certain way and I think we could all do with throwing ourselves a few curve balls.

Emily & Robs beautiful piece

Take Emily Peacock and Rob Ryan. Emily, a wonderfully talented tapestry artist, contacted Rob after falling in love with his work. They worked together to produce this beautiful cushion kit, Rob on the case with the design and Emily supplying the technical wooly magic.

I asked Emily how she found working with the Ryantown gang . . . "They always have time for you and are very upbeat... and sort of loving! I was so in awe of the whole set and it was fun to be there and act weird around them"

Sounds good doesn't it?

So your homework, if you choose to accept it, look through your database/list of mates on twitter/facebook chums etc. and randomly invite a couple of them for coffee in a couple of weeks time.
While you wait for the day to creep up, tear out inspiring newspaper articles, photograph something that makes you smile or makes you stop & think. It could be a bit of brickwork you love the texture of, a conversation you hear on a train, ANYTHING!
Suggest your meet-up mate does the same & hey presto! You've the start of a random project, hopefully a fun one, hopefully one that will fire up your imagination and at the very least gets you discussing creative loveliness.

Heck you could even make your meet-up place Tate Britain next Thursday as part of Creative Reviews TWEET UP. I'll be running a bit of creative fun on the night, so sign up & come say hello.

Judging books by their covers

Illustration by Jimmy Tierney

I love books, I mean I seriously love books. I own hundreds.
Novels, novellas, poetry anthologies, biographies and Photography books of course.
I adore the smell of them, the emotional rollercoaster they can send you on, the treats they have for your eyes to feast on. I love stroking the spines of them whilst I read. And I know it would save me money to buy them all online, but part of the joy, for me, is the pawing over them in a shop. It feels like a treat.

So naturally, along with gin and puppies, good cover design is something that's guaranteed to set my heart a flutter.

Take the cover above for example. As soon as I saw Vintage had released a set of 3D covers, complete with glasses, I rushed out to get them. What a seriously inspired idea! And one that got me thinking.

There seems to have been a recent push to make printed books more tactile and collectible. Penguin asked us to design our own cover, Faber gave us the beautiful Faber Firsts. Is this a reaction to the new kid in the publishing industry, the Ebook?
I asked Granta's Artistic Director Michael Salu what he thought . . .

"Visual culture is evolving as is the design of books. I think book design will largely become a branding exercise as in music. Hence us using our content to create imagery that will travel."

A place for everything then, I can live with that. I can't quite see me rushing out to buy a Kindle as I did an IPod. But then I guess I was never much of a vinyl collector.
So I shall continue to relish attaching the exact cover to my Good Reads lists, collecting far too many points on my Waterstones card and hiding in the corners of Hatchard's.

Some recent favourite finds

Paul Graham

There is a certain delicious pleasure to be had slopping about in your flipflops on a rainy day in London. Of course the key lies in knowing you're not far from home, dry clothes and somewhere to soak your feet; like I was on Sunday.
I'd just come back from The Whitechapel Gallery taking in the sublime Paul Graham exhibition, which very much brought back to me the importance of the small things, simple pleasures and taking the time to observe them.
Work like Paul Graham's always has this effect on me, then again so does gin.

If you've not been to the exhibition yet you have until June 19th to get down there. It's so worth the trip, and it's free. Leave now, go immediately. . .

Screen grab from Whitechapel website

. . . You're still here? Ok then let me explain why you should go.

Paul Graham emerged onto the photography scene in the early '80's having received his lightbulb moment amongst his college library's photobook shelves. Please keep in mind he was not at Art College, he was one of the those Science block types looking to take up some extra curricular.
It was here looking through the pages that it suddenly dawned on him, photography can be used to tell a story.
And that's what he's gone on to do. Graham picks up his camera and tells us stories. Whether it's the one about Thatcher's Britain or the one about Belfast, they're there, recorded and ready for us to read.

Like with so much Art, Paul Graham's pieces are very much of their time and retrospectively looking at them you can't help but notice the layers in each shot.
Take the portrait above, although shot in the early 90's, the polite hidden giggle and whitened face seem to hark back to a much older era. Is he trying to point out lingering cultural repressions?
There's no denying that there's a nod to this in the shot but as Graham himself is keen to admit, in the video chat that plays across from the cafe, he's somewhat the inadvertent Historian, often just looking for a good shot and himself reading into it's messages after that initial moment is captured.

It's his honesty and complete lack of pretension in the video that actually made the exhibition for me. So please, when you go allow yourself a 40min window to sit down and enjoy it. His response to being asked about the importance of "The Journey" across his work will have Photographers and their Agents chuckling heartily :)