Marketing *without* social media as an illustrator. Is it possible? (Illustration Business Club doors now open!) 🎉🎉🎉

The Good Ship Illustration

The hosts announce the official reopening of the Illustration Business Club, introducing a new ten-month payment option and an early bird pr

Key takeaways

• The Illustration Business Club now offers a ten-pay option to help students spread the cost of the course.
• An early bird bonus includes access to a live pricing workshop featuring Helen, Tanya, and Katie.

Main topics

• Illustration Business Club launch
• Marketing without social media

Notable quotes

Change is ugly.

Conclusion

The episode provides encouraging, actionable alternatives to social me

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:25) Today the doors are open for Illustration Business Club and we would love to have you sailing with us if you've been looking at it. It used to be called the Illustration Business Course but we realised there's eight weeks, ten weeks in there. It spreads out, people do a week, like a module per month if that makes sense. So we've also introduced a ten pay option so you can spread it over ten months. It's a big course, it's a big boy. Okay, so your doors are open today. If you join before Wednesday as well we're doing a really exciting early bird bonus. Anyone who joins before Wednesday will get access to our live pricing workshop. Yes, it will be recorded. Helen, Tanya and I are going to be talking all about pricing in our different areas and eras of illustration. Talking actual numbers, licensing, contracts, all like usage, all those things. It would be lovely to see you there. And in the meantime, enjoy this chat with Tanya and I discussing whether you need social media. for marketing nowadays and also a little catch up after the holidays. Speaker 1 (1:28) So we're back, aren't we Katie? Yeah, back for the autumn. How was your summer? It Speaker 2 (1:34) was good. I was going to say it felt long, but actually it went so quickly because it was six weeks of no school, which is the first year that we've had no like childcare or anything. And it was, yeah, it was nice. It was interesting to take six weeks off client work. Very different. Speaker 1 (1:51) It was hilarious watching you try not to work, but popping up on Instagram daily because that wasn't work. Yeah, it was just scratching an itch. Speaker 2 (2:01) Yeah, I was like, I can't do nothing. I'm going to go insane. So that was my get out of jail free. It was just like something to keep my brain going, I think. Speaker 1 (2:09) It's too much, isn't it? Going from full time work into the summer holidays. I think it's really tough on parents. It's like whiplash. okay, get in the front room, get down on the floor, get the toys out and start playing non-stop. Forget about the work that was occupying all of your brain for the rest of the year. There's not even a kind of transitional period. You're just suddenly straight back into full-time childcare, which is what you wanted, but it's quite a heavy shift. Speaker 2 (2:35) Yeah, it's extreme. We went on holiday. We did a week in Berlin, which was really nice because I used to live there. So we did like a tour of playgrounds and ice cream shops. And that helped with the whiplash thing because everybody was like, oh, where are we? And then we got home and had like just little days out here and there. But you looked like you were doing lots of work in the summer. It's exciting. Yeah, I Speaker 1 (2:55) did. Given that we're both, we're different generations and I haven't got, my kids are grown up and they've left home. So I don't have to worry about looking after anyone in the summer, which is a treat. But I'd got some jobs lined up where one of the larger jobs was going to be over the summer. And so. I booked a holiday to Italy, which I'm going on tomorrow. And that means I could work all summer. And I thought that would be okay. But looking back, I'm like, why didn't I get more days out? I just stayed in that studio, which admittedly has two windows. Thank goodness. I saw trees and sunshine from the studio. But it was quite a good indulgent in a way, a project so that I could spend a lot more time on it than it normally would take because I wanted to change things in my work. And that was so interesting because you know how we always say change is ugly. Oh man, it was so ugly. Speaker 2 (3:43) I feel like you've been on a journey. I've Speaker 1 (3:45) really been on a journey. Speaker 2 (3:47) Are we getting glimpses of it? Speaker 1 (3:49) The internal dialogue was ongoing. I thought maybe I should just record some of this out loud. I wish I'd done that because I was like, I was really sick of it. I felt my work had got quite glib and graphic and I wanted to start to use more texture and more line. There's so much texture in this work. You can barely see what's going on. It was really interesting because the client had quite a soft deadline so I could use that time. But yeah, I hadn't drawn a lot beforehand. So slightly being out of practice was really scary. And going back to drawing a lot more was quite a shock. So yeah, a lot was going on in my brain, but at least I put it to bed. And now I can go and see the sunshine somewhere and have a quick holiday. It's completely wrapped Speaker 2 (4:30) up now. Speaker 1 (4:30) It's wrapped up to the extent that... I haven't seen how it will really look because it's one of those, it's a museum project and the image will be cut into three, a background, a middle ground and a foreground. And those will be printed on Perspex layers. It's going to be really interesting and then lit from inside. Cool. It'll look very different to the flat artwork that I've created. So I'm waiting. I'm not going to do any social media about it yet until I can try and photograph it properly in situ for a museum. That's where it will be. There's a few of us have done that in Berwick. Berwick's full of exciting illustration at the moment. There's lots going on. Speaker 2 (5:07) There's been a lot of funding and stuff for creative stuff in Berwick, isn't there? Speaker 1 (5:11) Yeah, and funding is a good area to look at for illustrators as well, illustrator artists, illustrator designers. And if there's any creative funding or regeneration going on in your town or placemaking, that will create jobs for you. So it's really good to keep an eye out on. I can't remember what you call it. A lot of design groups or they have someone designated to look at government websites to check when new projects are being put out for tender. But hopefully if you're part of your community, you'll know that. You'll know if this job's going. Speaker 2 (5:44) Yeah, there's always people Speaker 1 (5:45) shouting about it and Speaker 2 (5:46) stuff. Speaker 1 (5:47) So we're back, aren't we? And this term's project is the business course. Speaker 2 (5:52) It's very exciting. Yeah, we had a big, what did we do? We had a big meeting yesterday about all the dates and stuff. It used to be called the business course and we also call it now. We still call it that now. It's officially Illustration Business Club, isn't it? Yeah, Speaker 1 (6:07) because we started putting more and more in it and we kept it the same length as all our other courses. But I think eight weeks would you would just collapse trying to do all of that in eight weeks. So it just didn't make sense. And people were coming to it at different stages in their career