Illustration by Sarah J. Coleman

Ben.

2026-07-29T17:34:42.091+01:00

“The universe is vast, but love makes it intimate.”

It’s a baking hot day, like HOT - really hot, the sort of hot I always imagined Texas would be all year round, including Christmas Day. I’m walking to the corner shop for crisps and I’m supposed to be working on the cover of my own book - my OWN book - but am restless and distracted, because the first thing I learned on waking up was that Benjamin Alire Saenz had died.

My own career as an author has begun in earnest, after a very long journey to publication, in the same week that dearly-loved Ben’s has ended. During his lifetime I was very, very privileged to have illustrated 4 of Ben’s book covers, but not just any four. Amazingly - and I often think that I can’t quite believe it myself - two are among the best-selling YA books of all time (incredibly, according to the statistics, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ still resides in those assorted lists, written in 1960, which I also did the cover for. You’ll find ‘Wolf Hollow’ by Lauren Wolk in many of those lists too, another book that wears my cover).

I don’t list these accomplishments to be show-off. Creating covers for books is a real honour, and a big responsibility. I know how long it has taken many of those authors to get that wedge of pages into publishable form, and then to get it INTO a publisher’s hands - then the selling of the book relies heavily on a good cover to get it into the READERS’ hands. The responsibility of a cover can feel like too much, sometimes, especially if the author is particularly famous, but always for a first-time author who has so much hoping and dreaming woven into those pages of the manuscript. There’s still a certain professional detachment and objectivity however that ensures protocols are followed, author’s wishes are not necessarily taken into account, and the best cover for the book is made, which may not be what they had ever actually had in mind; it has to be aesthetically-pleasing but its main purpose is, ultimately, to be one of the main tools that sell the book (which is perhaps why doing my own has unexpectedly thrown me into a temporary paralysis).

When I was invited to work on Ben’s book ‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe’, it was to an extent, just another YA book. But then I read it. I always read the manuscript if it’s available, and had a feeling in my gut that this one was destined for something. But I was in one of the busiest periods of my life and just got straight to work, no time to fuss - at that time I would joke nervously about having become an illustration robot, which has a grim foreshadowing to it in the context of today’s AI nausea. I did the cover, did my best, and felt pleased. And though Ben was an established and respected author already, nobody knew how successful that book would become. From the day it was published, my name was irrevocably associated with the title, the adored main characters, and the lore, fandom and community that spring from it and his subsequent books, that thrives ever stronger today, and which I have loved being part of.

Although El Paso-based, Colorado-educated Ben would not necessarily have been a fan, he would undoubtedly have known of Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson, the first anniversary of whose death was a mere two weeks ago. My partner and I marked that privately and without fuss, as Andrea was an IRL friend as well as a colleague and a role model, who still feels very much in the room with us. In fact, Andrea feels MORE in the room with us now, despite living thousands of miles away in their time earthside and - well; now that they are not, having become part of everything. I think Ben felt the same to me. I never met him - I thought I would when I went to the Toronto premiere of the movie made from his novel - but his books were permanently on show in my office, fans would ask me to design tattoos of or inspired by Ben’s words (happy to oblige, always), order prints of Ari’n’Dante artwork and ask for specials. I’ve made Ben-inspired pieces available in my shop for at least the last ten years; fans like to order them for each other with hand-written messages. And news of his death came as I work on a new Ben project, which is, with beautiful timing, sitting on my desk, sheets of paper and ink work strewn a bit carelessly over my work surface. He was a constant, quiet presence in my life as an artist.

So I've decided to pitch Ben's passing to myself as a cosmic thing: I start my author journey for real at the same time Ben's finishes. That’s how I’m choosing to think about it anyway, not being a very cosmic person. I had to write about him first, I realised, because something had been getting in the way all morning, and it was Ben and the thoughts of all the very sad fans who will today be feeling the loss of both the man and any future stories he may have written.

I’m so very honoured to have been associated with this gentle, gifted man and his work. I hope his books carry on inspiring, soothing and engaging people, in particular the LGBTQ+ people he gave centre-stage to in his work, and for whom his books were, oftentimes literally as well as metaphorically, lifesavers.

Austin: The Poet, in 22°C.

2026-01-26T14:58:00.002+00:00

I spent last week in Austin and on my last day there, with a few hours to go before my flight home, I did the walk from deepest downtown over the bridge all the way down South Congress to the legendary Allen’s Boots, Jo’s Coffee and Güero's Tacos. I wanted to visit all three, in the sunshine which we had been warned all week was about to be replaced by a humdinger of an ice storm.

There was a lot to love about Austin; the art, the food, the bats, the grackles with their mad eyes, the architecture, the weirdness, but mostly the people. I’d been told all my life about Southern Hospitality; by my Mum and Dad especially, who were adventurous travellers ‘til only a few years ago, and particularly loved exploring the quieter towns and side-streets of the States. I’d never been to Texas, but we’ve recently been gorging on a few Westerns, reminded of how much we love a good TV gun battle, an outraged saloon bar woman with 60s hair and a bit of Clint side-eye. So yes, when asked, I had to go.

I talked to people almost non-stop, in the lift, in the shops, on the street, in the bar, in the Uber. EVERYONE chatted, in the most welcoming and friendly way - and usually before they heard the British accent, which can often amusingly be the trigger for a friendly and curious chat. I can’t remember the last time I felt to welcomed by a bunch of people I’ve never met before in my life. Every face and voice different.

One such chap was Adam. Parked outside Allen’s Boots with his little black and gold typewriter on a tiny table and wearing a hat with jewel-coloured eyes underneath, he asked if I’d like a poem writing for me. Yes, I said; yes, I certainly would. He asked for a topic to get him started. Hmmm. What to request? I pondered. I’d spent most of my walk reflecting on how, within the same ten minute space, I’d become newly fixated on the Waymo driverless cars I’d seen all over the city (Austin being among the first to implement them), desperate to ride in one, all eye-widening invention, haunted tech and firmly reaching back to us from A Joyful Imaginary Future, while simultaneously sobered by a conversation I’d had with a Planned Parenthood lady on the street with whom I’d discussed the ongoing impact of the rollback of Roe vs Wade in her state, and the work her organisation was doing to push back on that. There you go, I said to the poet; forwards, and backwards, all in one walk and thought bubble. That’s your topic.

Here is the poem he wrote. I think he did very well.

I paid him for his creation, of course, and we chatted for another ten minutes or so before I went into the boot shop and browsed the beautiful hand-made boots and hats I would never buy and couldn’t afford even if I wanted to. But I could try them on, so I did, and felt like a kid for a bit, taking a goosey selfie in the changing room, and thinking that this is what travel is anyway, isn’t it? You try a place on, see how it feels, and you take it off again, taking a little piece of every place with you and absorbing it into your being.

Clutching my poem, I headed into Jo’s Coffee and stared at their famous wall as I waited for my Cortado. And despite all of the reasons why I might not have, all the reasons I was warned against going, and never at a more urgent time to be reminded of the joy of meeting humans outside your own little sphere of existence, I felt it in that moment. I really did.

Look; she roams the night! 🦇 - my new poster for Benjamin Christensen’s revolutionary 1922 film about witches.

2025-10-14T18:55:00.002+01:00

Friday 3rd is not 13th, but it’s a good enough day in October for my first post in ages. It’s been a busy and very fast summer, but more on that, and the failing-to-Substack guilt that’s been gnawing on my right hand the whole time, in a later post.

For now, here’s my new poster for the 1922 film ‘Häxan’, written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen — who also stars as Satan in the film.

Technically deeply impressive for its time, it’s a documentary-style exploration of how the characteristics and behaviours that led to women accused of being ‘witches’ in the past were potentially behavioural, hormonal, neurological or mental health issues, including now widely understood conditions such as insomnia (“she roams the night!!”) and depression (“look how the devil possesses her mood!”) It was revolutionary thinking at the time. Not only was it the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made to date, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor, it was eventually, and predictably, censored for what was at that time considered graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion, and anti-clericalism.

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The torture was purposefully explored in the film because of course, it is historically accurate. Whether young and beautiful or old and craggy, as a woman alive at a certain time in history, you could never assume you were safe (which directed the addition of the blossoms and the dying roses in my poster). The film shows women again and again placed in situations where their autonomy, already compromised by their social and family situations, plus the very period in time they found themselves existing, is stripped from them by men: men of faith, men of the law, and men of power.

The film however points its sulphuric lamplight in the direction of their fellow women. Devoid of scientific or rational explanations for whatever awful thing they’re experiencing, mothers, daughters, friends and colleagues accuse the more vulnerable women in their community of ‘witchcraft’. According to the rules, to accuse a witch is to recognise one, and therefore to be one, and to prove you aren’t one — well. We are all surely familiar with the options available there; to quote the deliciously political warning of the folkloric Radiohead song Burn The Witch, “if you float, you burn”.

Witches are not a new subject for me. I took a clammy dive into a modern reimagining of the Pendle Witches for my 2009 exhibition ‘They All Came Back’, asking precisely that question: if the Pendle Witches were alive today, how would that look? How would they do their accusing? How would they muster the deadly hysteria that resulted in 10 executions? Mother accused daughter; daughter accused mother, man accused dog. I got my friend, author Dr. Ed Garland, to write the voices of each Witch, and I made pictures, and dolls, to accompany those voices.

This piece proposed the witches’ most obvious route to channeling hate, accusation and bile — Facebook. I set the witches up, and got them talking. They’re all me, and I’ve sprinkled in “direct quotes” from the records of the time, but boy that conversation could have rolled on. It was delicious.

(and by the way. I didn’t know how to delete the profiles of the ‘witches’ I’d created for the purposes of this piece. So I left them there. And — I’m not making this up — when I finally logged back in years later, there’d been, shall we say, ‘activity’. Having lost the password long ago, I can’t get back in to check whether Alizon, Anne and Kath carried on baiting each other. I hope they did. I hope it’s a total maelstrom of utter spite and shitposting in there).

Created for illustration collective Hire an Illustrator’s new project ‘The Video Shop: A Blockbuster Experience’ curated by Darren Di Lieto, this was an invitation to reimagine one of 13 classic movie posters. I chose this film from a list of terribly appealing, Halloweeny options — Nosferatu, Little Shop of Horrors, Night of the Living Dead — but I went for this one because of its important role in introducing some prematurely modern ideas about women’s health. It felt uncomfortably relevant, and I’ve learned the hard way that discomfort is historically what produces my best work (a literal example, one of many, is to be found here). Naturally, my poster delights in the panto-esque Satan and his wobbly tongue, but I’ve flanked him with the ‘hysterical’ nun (if you don’t know, look up exactly where that word comes from!) and Maria The Weaver, the poor elderly lady who is tricked by a man of the cloth into confessing to witchcraft.

I remain doubtful about whether we have genuinely moved beyond baying mobs pointing fingers at other humans and shouting ‘witch’; all the way back in 2009, I was asking what is social media if not an omnipresent, all-welcome opportunity to do just that, should we choose it, either through fear or rage or panic (each being borne from the other)? But that’s a whole other blog. I am fully aware of the globally harrowing context in which I’m writing this, and it’s another reason why I grasped at illustrating a film which wasn’t just ‘fun horror’ and entertainment — though god (or the devil) knows we need escapism, even if horror-shaped, in a time of genuine, creeping dark.

Thanks to Darren for the opportunity to take part in such a ‘Sarah-perfect’ project.

You can, if you would like, buy a print of mine or any one of the other 12 pieces in this show:

https://press.hireillo.com/

I’ll stop doing Christmas cards when they stop doing Christmas.

2025-02-08T11:58:00.003+00:00

2024’s seasonal greeting was fully analogue, with inspiration from an 8 year old’s ink experiments.

Every year, from childhood to 2019, I’ve designed and produced something postable for Christmas. And when I say ‘postable’, I mean that in the traditional way — put it in a postbox! One day I’ll write a piece about some of these extravagant productions and the hours of work they entail, but they are legion.

After all; I am an illustrator, an artist, a person who does lettering, loves print, and works with ink and pixels and paper all day/week/life long. You would be correct in saying there’s something of an expectation there.

They've ranged from a snow-white 7" record release on white vinyl complete with fully illustrated storybook and website, to a foil-embossed trio of hangable mandalas illustrating prose my my writer friend Ed, to a set of mini chocolate barshand-wrapped in my own Christmas wrapping paper (sold separately in my shop, 7 different designs), and individually hand-printed book marks.

These myriad creations are not necessarily on my website — I think of them differently from client work — and for many of them there isn’t a copy left, so if you had one, you were #Blessed, a sort of ‘you had to be there’ vibe.

The lockdown of 2020 meant that these very physical greetings were put on hiatus as people moved to home working, changed jobs or retired — or even left the industry altogether for something else. Who would be where? And for how long? How do you find out where all those people are and is it worth the postage spend when half might not arrive? My four-figure mailing list was suddenly in doubt, so an equally time-consuming animation was sent out instead — I still made some hand-printed greetings tags as well, unable to fully abandon the analogue.

The world had seemed to have lost a little of the joy in the tangible — or even become a little afraid of it, with all the sanitiser and hand-washing? — but I wasn’t too fretful at the time. It would, I was sure, be back.

Took me bloody ages but I loved it. There was text in the middle of this! Favourite bit: waving dolly.

Hand-printed tags to accompany the animation.

2021, 2022 and 2023 were a mildly fretful mix of ‘cards just for family and friends’ and an online creation for the ‘Big Mailing List’, but carrying over a thousand identical but individually-signed objects to our local post office seems to have become a thing of the past, the list requiring a significant amount of updating and research before risking the associated expenditure on postage. Instead my aim, at this point, is to have a postable list of perhaps a third of the size, of colleagues and clients I know are still working, or in my orbit in a mutually-appreciative way, and who would still welcome funny little creative indulgences in the post.

This 2023 article from Vice is mildly insightful.

Meanwhile, this year I was fully intent on some hand-made action. And I thought it would be nice/interesting/distracting to show the process of producing these actually quite simple (by comparison) cards.

I was entranced by a piece of artwork my eight-year-old niece made one day in September when I was looking after her, using some prototype inks from the UK ink company I work with. I was to put them through their paces; they didn’t exist yet, they didn’t have names, and I only had a tiny bottle of each (“ooh, don’t use too much of that”) but in she went, using too much of that, with a cotton bud and some gusto; dot dot dot.

The colours blended and overlapped in an exquisitely simple CMYK kind of way. I kept that piece on our studio wall for weeks. I knew it would be my Christmas greeting, but I decided I would figure out what the rest of it would look like nearer ‘the time’ (with the world being as it is, any outward-facing visual communication has benefitted from a certain ‘reading of the room’ before committing). Ideas were floated and rejected. I knew two things: it needed to use the newly-arrived batch of neon ink I’d bought for my obsolete Japanese Gocco printer courtesy of a friendly new supplier, and it needed to be simple.

Tests were carried out!

And sure enough, what the world needed towards the end of November was a big smiling bauble face, because I am ALSO eight years old and like drawing and sharing big smiley and preferably imperfect faces.

Some of the faces auditioned.

Smiley faces were drawn with ink and the wrong end of a paintbrush and auditioned. Those rejected were cut up to be deployed as gift tags on the family pressies. Then a rigidly symmetrical star was made in Illustator and tested, and laid over one another.

Boom. The infectious joy of a Christmas bauble backed by a neon star and an explosion of 6-coloured dots, overlapping and interacting with each other like CMYK Christmas lights.

I got the niece back in the studio to make as many dots as she could, but this time on pre-ordered pre-folded blanks. Since this was a solid collaboration, I also got her to draw her logo so it could be added to mine on the back of each card.

This she did.

The stars went down first on pre-scrored Hagaki-proportioned cards, the bauble colour laid over, then the bauble face in 3 separate screens:

And when G tired of dotting (she wasn’t being paid after all), Auntie Sarah finished the last ones off…

Drying on the racks.

And thus, a couple of hundred cards were made and sent.

Called ‘Print Gocco’ by their manufacturer Riso, whose name you will probably know in connection with other, larger and less analogue machines, my little printers will not last forever. They’re essentially made for children and their parts and supplies are obsolete, but luckily I have a supplier and have been buying up supplies for 15 years. While I have them in full working order, though, smelling the get-high printing inks and running my hands over the dried print, knowing that someone else at the other end will open an envelope and do the same thing, is a sensation I never get bored with. It’s one of the things that gives me joy in a very, very screen-based, fast-to-make world. I hope that it does the same for the recipients too, a hark back to the times when you waited for a return hand-written letter, knowing that the hands of the writer — of whom, it is assumed here, you were fond — had touched the very same paper.

If you would like to receive a hand-made thing every Christmas, you can let me know here.

And you can buy Gocco-printed cards in my shop, if you fancy some of that intoxicating print smell for yourself…or know someone who will!

To Steal A Mockingbird

2024-09-25T14:21:00.003+01:00

I accidentally wrote my most engaged-with Thread a couple of days ago, when I posted that I’d found another little collection of infringements on Etsy and Redbubble:

(there was a picture of the nasty product with it which I don’t want to post. It was fugly.)

ugh.

more ugh.

In a scene from ‘Beautiful Creatures’, a film adaptation of Kami Garcia’s novel

Best thing to do, I always think, is to keep creating — which *I* can do, whereas they can’t — because presumably, if they could, they would. Even if you can’t or won’t get the pencils out and you’re determined to open an Etsy or Redbubble shop selling stuff with pictures on you can fire up Midjourney/Stable Diff/Firefly and chuck a few words in.

This is by no means a rare occurrence. I find them regularly, when I can be bothered to look, and if someone sees one and alerts me to it. But find them I do, and many of them — in the last handful of years alone, I have found around 70, and those are just the ones I’ve known about. I don’t even know if I have the stomach to look in the cesspits of hyper-shite, Temu and Wish, to see what might be festering away over there. (OK I just went and looked — filed one report, couldn’t see any more).

Etsy has a much-improved system for reporting sellers (Redbubble’s is more hoop-jumpy — I always feel like they’re rolling their eyes while I’m filling the form in) but I prefer in the first instance to contact the seller directly, tell (not ask) them to delete the listing and all listings which use that image, the take them to school on why using other people’s artwork is copyright violation etc. I did once secure the profits from the sales of a product that had sold in great quantities, with those sales numbers shown clearly in her shop; I didn’t enjoy how scared she sounded, but I couldn’t let it go either. I donated the money. I have also been asked to ‘prove’ I’m the creator of certain works —for which I’ll unleash the kraken. But rarely do I have to engage full combat mode; depending on their attitude and promptness of action, I usually leave it there, making sure I follow their shop first to keep an eye on any future ‘borrowings’.

Usually, people are all shades of awkward at being caught out, then apologise. I sometimes get The Bare Minimum, however:
But it was my update a bit later, following up on progress, that really got Threaders furious. People were mad about the original infringement — I get it, there are a lot of us artists on there professional and non-professional alike, and we all hate a picture thief — but this post had people roaring:

You see, aside from the puzzle that they’d used a sketchbook version of my cover which had never been made public — not beyond a lo-res jpeg in a classic old blog posted 15 years ago — my infringer had told me they’d asked the author for permission to use the artwork. And that author? Harper Lee.

Obviously, we could discuss all day why that’s funny/sad/infuriating/embarrassing for her — and some people were RAGING, and also baffled when I told them I felt a bit of sympathy for the infringer, the nuanced reasons for that proving harder to articulate than I’d imagined. And we can also unpack quickly that obviously, it’s the artist’s permission she should be asking, not the author’s, and that that artist is me. I get it.

But the huge engagement got me thinking. I created the cover for that book for Grand Central Publishing in 2009, in a quiet, nervous, ecstatic period of focussed excitement. That’s 15 years ago. The book was the 50th Anniversary mass-market edition — which is a big deal, because not only does it mean it gets gold foil on the front, it means it goes into every school, college, library, university and book shop. It couldn’t be a bigger print run.
And as such, it appeared in films, documentaries, essays, theses, dissertations, fan art, you name it. The novel itself is universally known, land loved, and part of the very texture of human culture and writing. As such, so is the artwork on the front. Although it’s mine, it stopped being ‘mine’ when the book first went out into the world, and became part of the canon of the handful of iconic covers that were created for this book in Harper’s lifetime.

So I began to seriously think for the first time that I really should let this go. I should stop wasting my precious time (feeling even more precious as I head into my 54th birthday in a few months) preventing people from using the image to generate a few quid and focussing on making new art. It makes me cross — it’s lazy and grotesquely entitled to use artwork someone else has made to make money for yourself, and there is a whole, loooooong piece I could write there — but it takes time and a certain kind type of diligent energy to hunt them down and report them; engaging with the sellers I find particuarly draining.
But as I said in my original Thread:

Best thing to do, I always think, is to keep creating — which *I* can do, whereas they can’t — because presumably, if they could, they would. Even if you can’t or won’t get the pencils out and you’re determined to open an Etsy or Redbubble shop selling stuff with pictures on you can fire up Midjourney/Stable Diff/Firefly and chuck a few words in.

For any other works that get infringed, it’s business as usual — if I spot you using my art, you better get ready because I Am Coming For You. But this one? It’s in the collective literary consciousness, and it’s inextricably and permanently connected to the book, in much the same way that people have ‘my Heathcliff’ or a favourite ‘version’ of a film or a character they love — they’re given over to the public when they’re created. most people I speak to have no notion whatsoever that this is someone’s ‘property’ — “it was just on the book/internet!”

And let’s face it, times are fucking hard. People are trying to generate extra cash wherever they can. I’m not saying life’s a sodding breeze for me either — I still have to earn money and pay bills; one life-changing cover (with a bog standard industry fee attached, I will add — this type of book project does not qualify for royalties) does not ensure financial comfort for life, despite comments I’ve received over time which suggest this is actually what some people believe.

I’d be interested in what others think. After 15 years should I retire the artillery on this one? After TKAM I went on to create several international editions, and the cover of Ms Lee’s ‘next’ novel, Go Set A Watchman. I gave talks about it, was featured in the papers and on the radio. My cover is in the Norman Rockwell Museum, and the original artwork was acquired by Harper Lee’s estate. I also have a precious hand-written note postmarked Monroeville, the content of which I shall never share publicly. And that, quite possibly, is enough.

If you love the cover image, you can for the first time acquire a signed, embossed and authenticated print of this work on 300gsm museum-quality paper, featuring artwork details never seen before.
It’s available from my Book Cover Print collection here.

Haunting Digbeth, drenched in art

2024-06-09T17:09:00.004+01:00

I was in Birmingham yesterday for one of the Design Festival talks I was especially interested in (by Territory Studio) and as it was a soothingly sunny, breezy day I went on a good long haunt of my old stomping ground, Digbeth.

When settlers first came to the area we now know as Brum it was Digbeth they started with, and you can feel that in the solidly industrious maze of chimneyed buildings, bond houses and factories clustered around each other. I was there briefly for one night in late April, but since I was there on a regular basis many years ago the ghoulish mask of gentrification has been slapped over much of the area, a process that’s really ramped up since work on HS2 began. Graf and street art, professional and non-pro alike, is being feverishly applied to every un-developed surface, as if the artists can feel in their bones that their time here is almost up.

On the way back to the car I visited the Custard Factory, central in our lives for a long time due to our historic involvement in music, pirate radio, DJing and events, and was unmoored by changes there — I initially couldn’t work out what felt wrong but then I saw it all: the lake in the middle was filled in, the gallery where I had one of my first shows (with Solo One) had been turned into a Laser Quest, and the little bar where we went to the infamous Selfish Cunt gig was now a Pieminister. And the Medicine Bar, where we’d danced (maniacally, to DJ Food and myriad others), DJ’d and handed out myriad flyers? Derelict and shuttered, its immense dragon sculpture replaced by a gaping white wall.

Time marches on and, to mutilate a favourite Dolly Parton quote, one day you wake up to realise it’s been marching all over your memories. But I was filled with appreciation at being there for this great, free creative event (I wanted to do a talk there but was too late to apply; that’ll have to wait for the next one) in a city I still get a buzz from, absolutely drenched in street art and organic graffiti on the walls of buildings designed and built for, and still echoing with, the business of graft — my comfort zone.

Even picked up a scuzzy pirate for the drive home. #castlevale #iykyk

Enjoy the pictures.

Beautiful buildings built for work:

A vintage Will Barras?

Medicine Bar: Before

Medicine Bar: Now

And here's us DJing in that very spot, looking back at the audience!

I was filled with an odd relief that there were still buildings like this to find. With paste-ups!

Bring The Paint

2024-05-28T14:29:00.006+01:00

There was so much to see at the weekend that it took me two days; Bank Holiday Monday I was a husk.

Leicester’s Bring The Paint festival is organised biennially by Izzy Hoskins and Anthony Overend of Graffwerk (2026 for the next one then) and their paint shop GraffHQ. It’s a phenomenal achievement that shows what can be done when a community pulls together; an abandoned mill that’s’s become a hub of artistic energy and collaboration.

Clusters of artworks are to be found throughout the city so you can visit Leicester and gorge on it all year round. But some are not forever, so make it a summer trip if you can, park up and be sure to scoff down something from Bitsy’s Emporium before you start out via the canal towpath, which itself is alive with colour and humour.

The whole thing revitalised my slightly jaded, tired artist’s mind and reminded me how fortunate I am to live in the area, and to have so many generous and creative people that I call friends — it reminded where I’ve always felt the most comfortable, my whole professional life having never felt like I properly fitted into any one of of the creative cliques or circles — always loitering a bit on the edges of several, where they overlap. Social media’s exhausting, the commercial landscape is exhausting, and Bring The Paint was like a large cup of strong tea with a fat nutritious meal, followed by a hearty nap.

Artists include:
Inkie / Kid Acne / Philth / Voyder / N4T4 / Soles / Aches / Ertjwe
Mono / Idle / Smug / Triple / Vamp / Zomby / Epic / Drax / Aper

but for a full list you need to pick up one of the chartreuse-coloured maps they made for the event.

(My own contribution to the first ever Bring The Paint, in 2017, is at the bottom - I managed to get a little space right by the canal and HQ and I had about a day to plan what I was going to be doing!)

Large and fulsome photo dump to follow, because enough words.

...but AI says you did.

2024-04-15T14:44:00.001+01:00

About a quick and surprising exchange that’s got the AI-coloured sections of my brain whirring afresh.

A common scenario is this: a client asks me to do a project, referencing some work of mine that they love, except that one of the pieces they refer to wasn’t done by me. I always explain politely and get them to check their sources and double-check that they actually want *me*, not whoever did that work. And it’s fine — it happens.

This week, it was different. I let the client know the reference - which I’ll call Project X - was nice, but not mine. I said I could see why they thought I did it; but what made them think I did?

Here was their answer:

Client: Who created the intro for “Project X”?

ChatGPT: The intro artwork for “Project X” was created by the illustrator and designer Sarah J. Coleman, who is also known by her professional name, Inkymole. Coleman’s distinctive style often combines hand-drawn elements with digital techniques, creating visually striking and memorable illustrations.

Oh.

Now, I’d love it if I had actually done Project X. I didn’t. But what piqued my interest immediately was that we know about the reductive, destructive power of AI on artist’s reputations and folios, obliterating credits, ownership and attribution — but it has never occurred to me that it could do the opposite.

I don’t have any negative vibes toward the client, by the way. They’re a busy person and they were looking for answers — they laughed and admitted they ought to have fact-checked the answer before emailing me. Agreed. I know they’ll use this as a teachable moment.

(And at this point it looks like I am doing the job they wrote to me about — this exchange hasn’t any negative bearing on that).

It didn’t take long for me to realise that if ChatGPT can say I drew something I didn’t, what else can ChatGPT say people did, when they…didn’t? < brow furrows / chin-stroking commences and a whole load of new worrying unfurls >

In the same week, I saw a Thread accusing [non-AI] artists of gatekeeping (yawn — I will simply direct you to my colleague Kyle Webster’s article for that), bullying children and burning witches in an amusingly teen-rage trollstream that attempted to defend what appears to be the poster’s love of making AI art (which in itself does not need defending). They do this by name-calling and yelling, in a loud series of furious threads based on, at best, an ‘intentionally modified’ grasp of the fundamentals of copyright and public domain. So I know that the rage of the prompters that I wrote about is still there, and making its way into the historically peaceful space of Threads (they seemed to be just having a really good time generating engagement, which might be all it’s really about — attention):

(someone replied calling them an ‘Aren’tist’, which just made people CHUCKLE’.)

I wrote a three-part piece about AI early last year as a way of organising and processing my thoughts and knowledge about AI, and to sort of put a stake in the ground at that point in time. I never had the intention of continuing the series, as I already knew that things were happening too fast and too often to keep up. As people sent me article after article in response, and I went off to deliver a talk on the subject, I quickly realised that unless I ditched my full time work to become an AI reporter, I couldn’t hope to stay on top of developments, so vowed to keep reading and observing without commentary instead. In fact someone emailed me for my thoughts on AI for an article the other day, and OK, I was ill at the time, but it was just way too broad a question — I had to pass on it, directing them to the thousands of articles already out there.

But this little ChatGPT incident needed recording. I don’t have ChatGPT but know people who do, so I plan on a little experimentation. The time I want to dedicate to writing about AI might be very extremely limited, but my curiosity isn’t.

Let me know if something like this has happened to you — I’m all ears!

Sage Francis 3.0: an always-evolving logo

2024-02-09T18:13:00.004+00:00

Artist, record label boss and rapper Sage Francis has just unveiled his new logo, over 20 years since I first fell in love with his records, 18 years since I did the biggest art project of my life on his work, 16 years since I did a piece of art that wasn’t meant to be a logo but became one, 17 years since I did his first proper ‘new logo’, and ten years since I designed him another ‘new logo’. Like the artist himself, this is a logo — and a relationship — that doesn't stay still!

We never sat down to do a logo, to brainstorm or sign an NDA or moodboard or A/B test or anything else. It’s been a fully organic journey. The first one was actually a piece specially created for the 2007 Manhattan outing of our big Sage-inspired show, If A Girl Writes Off The World (a pre-Adobe Dreamweaver-built site will open up. I built it myself and it’s so poignantly 2007). It was picked up and put onto some of the hoodies in Sage’s Strange Famous merch range — best-sellers at that. Detailed and writhing, it was made with a very fine Nikko-G nib and black ink. The original is actually very small, and framed in our hallway.

The second was kind of accidental as it was made for the cover of Sage’s 2007 album Human The Death Dance. It just kind of…started to get used on things, posters, ads, posts and merch. In the way that a logo does, I suppose. Made with an inkpen and nib, it featured sad faces and a minimal slope, just designed to peer over the shoulder of the man himself, next to a watermark-like Death. With hindsight, it was flimsy and odd, but then again…unlike a lot of my formal client commisssions, I hadn’t ‘sat down to design a logo’.

The album cover. Which was almost…

…this one instead.

The one that came after that was also for an album, 2014’s Copper Gone. It formed part of a single piece of ink-on-paper art but once again lived a life of its own, and served as Sage’s identity for the ten years prior the current one. I almost can’t believe myself the huge spans of time I’m casually throwing around here, by the way — but those are the dates, and this is the longevity of it all.

Again if I’d known at the time that this would be deployed in the way it was, there are things I’d have changed — but would it have improved anything? Not sure. Really not sure, but at some point someone filled it in and made it solid — which wasn’t a cool move, and around that time I began thinking, I really need to do that properly, or scrap it and do the whole thing again.

Eventually I did. I can’t remember whether I just did it and sent it to Sage with a note saying ‘this really needed doing’, or whether he asked — it doesn’t matter — but the outcome is this one. This time I *did* sit down to ‘make a logo’ from the roots put down by the Copper Gone iteration, but clean and clear. I faffed and tweaked and moved vector points and smoothed out bezier curves then undid it all, and repeat, eventually creating so many versions I think we actually really should have done some A/B testing. But there it is.

There are still things I’d change, even now, and it may or may not serve for another ten years. But I like the organic and slightly clumsy way all of these were done. They sort of ‘happened’, which is very different from the art-directed, purposeful, accountable way I do my other work.

The final. I think. Not sure. I like it. Sage likes it. But do I like one of the other versions more? We can always use one of those…can’t we…I think. We fly in the face of your Logo Rules, sir!

When Sage posted it to the fans, most people just loved it and started slapping money on the counter for the T shirt. Someone said ‘Francis’ reads as a completely different word. Someone else said having seen it they’re now expecting a country album (which I applauded).

I still look at it and see a curve I would change, bits I’d move, and I stare at it till I’m logo-blind. But honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks Sagey for the wholesomely organic way we do things, every time.

(If you want to read more, there’s a bunch of historic blogs here).

P.S.; this one was a wild card, and Did Not Make It. Nor shall it ever…I think…

Writing Their Story

2024-02-07T23:00:00.005+00:00

I’ve just posted a new project in my folio, and although I’ve got over 20 years of pharmaceutical work hidden away in a password-protected archive for all manner of legal reasons, this one I was able to share. And I’m glad, because it was both a privilege and a responsibility to work on.

We watched 'Still' last week, the documentary about Michael J. Fox’s life as a person with Parkinson’s Disease. We were shown the myriad clever, agonisingly secret techniques he developed to hide the effects of the disease for as long as he could. We watched the trembling left hand always given the task of holding something or gesticulating, and the way he exaggerated his already restless manner of moving through the day, in order to fold any twitches or unexpected movement into his famously energetic modus operandi.

It was funny, educational and extremely moving, and the moment we were shown his hands beginning to move I thought of this project.

Commissioned in 2020 by Saatchi Wellness, it was designed to communicate the effect that Parkinson’s Disease has on motor control through the power of handwriting. My job was to develop a set of authentic handwriting styles for a set of fictitious patients, each with unique characteristics, that are shown both subjected to the effects of Parkinson’s, and after treatment by the drug Duopa.

Although it isn’t suggested that the treatment returns the patient to pre-Parkinsons handwriting, their motor control is shown to be sufficiently improved as to render their writing readable once more, communicating a sense of a return to empowerment and confidence. The stories of each individual are based around achieving modest, important tasks such as picking up a grandchild, or dancing with a partner.

From the Duopa project, working with Saatchi Wellness: the patient’s handwriting is challenged. It had to be hard to read, but not difficult, and accurately demonstrate the potential effects of the condition. You can see this image in use on the website.

The conclusion to the story is the patient’s handwriting showing the improvement in his condition; he’s able to hold and read a book.

The two shown here are from a larger set we created, with a complete font developed for use on behind-the-scenes assets. The research and development for this project was extensive and very moving at times, and I cried a few times as I channelled everything I’d learned through my fountain pen into the words of the imaginary, but also very real, patients.

Part of the developmental work for this project.

A small section of the font I created for the Duopa project, including the range of variations that are possible within the scope of the disease’s effect on the patient’s ability to write. This is manifested in the changing ‘T’s, ‘U’s and ‘V’s shown here.

Some of the many. many experimental pieces created for the Duopa project, showing notes and adjustments. Each of these handwriting styles must be thought of as ‘a voice’, rather than simply ‘this is how they write’.

I do a lot of what might be called forensic lettering work — maybe that’s too exacting, perhaps ‘reproduction lettering’? — whereby I’m called on to recreate the handwriting of a famous person, or someone deceased (sometimes both) for advertising or TV, film or books. Some of won’t be seen publicly. I’ve also done a lot of work that involves developing handwriting for fictitious characters — in fact, I’m doing one right now, three different ‘voices’, three different ages and situations, with a different choice of writing implement for each.

An example of the specialist lettering work I do. Here I’m recreating the handwriting of the physicist Paul Dirac, one of the founders of Quantum Theory, for use inside and outside the book, using just handful of the extant references available. The age and style of fountain pen used were of great importance too.

It’s harder than you think to override your own muscle memory and install new clicks and flicks of the wrist, different angles and pressure and descenders, a way to dot ‘i’s and cross Ts that’s someone else’s, and to keep it consistent — while tying in any historical factors too. In fact, it feels more like acting than design or lettering work, and it’s a million notebooks away from calligraphy. Once I’ve got the writing locked down, I can get into that costume and ‘be’ that person for as long as I need, even switching between them day to day. (There is, incidentally, always a voice that isn’t mine that accompanies the words I’m writing.)

But I love the immersion and focus that comes with the task, and the attention to detail. It’s very different from the kind of lettering I might make for an editorial or a logo, where I throw my brush, nib or Apple Pencil across the page with energy and only the loosest idea of outcome.

If you would like to know more about this type of work, please get in touch. In fact — write me a letter; I’m far more likely to respond…and who knows, maybe I’ll do it in your own handwriting.

Images shared with the permission of Saatchi Wellness.

https://www.duopahcp.com

A Logo for Maine.

2023-11-30T12:31:00.007+00:00

My new logo for the US state of Maine has begun to roll out in the last few weeks, and it's a thrill to see it.

It began in early January 2023 with an email from creative Jordan and VP Neal at Miles Partnership, asking if I'd like to have a stab at updating the logo for the state of Maine.

Now all I know about Maine can be summed up in three points: 1. Our friend, the poet Andrea Gibson was born there. 2. It's huge and beautiful, and 3. Stephen King!!!

I said yes and within a couple of weeks was hashing out some proposals. The Miles team had made my job easier by carrying out acres of research with the inhabitants of the state itself. They'd got a stack of feedback on what they liked about the original logo, what they didn't; what living in Maine meant to them, what they thought of when they pictured their home state, and hundreds more answers to in-depth and nuanced, thoughtful questions.

The existing Maine logo looked like this:

The core feedback was that the logo felt "outdated, bland and uninspiring, particularly among Maine visitors". When asked what the new logo should be, the answer that came back most often was "bold" - but with the near-unanimous caveat that it should nod to the traditional nature of Maine.

The findings came to me in an extremely thorough 45-page document which formed the backbone of my thinking. 'Organic, craft, charm, outdoors, nature, wood, trees, breathtaking, rustic, authenticity and sustainability' were other pivotal words which came out of the research.

And that was plenty for me to go on! I had the final logo in mind almost immediately, but presented lots of different looks to the team. After all, sometimes it's just as useful for the client to see what they DON'T want as it is for them to see what they do. All but a couple were analogue, made with ink, crayons, pens and pencil on paper, I was keen to communicate movement with solidness and history; contemporary energy with tradition.

A still from one of the WIP videos I made while working on the logo.

While wax crayon, used to make a resist version.

Here are a few of those initial suggestions - there were a LOT. I do this because, at this stage, the client could spot ANYTHING in an idea which triggers the final outcome - so I tend to leave very little out; I guess you could call this a brainstorming of sorts:

Preferred options were 'put to research', and after a few weeks a trio was isolated for further tinkering. And by tinkering, I mean the start of the fine-tuning process - without knowing which the final choice might be. This is things like examining the weight of letters, kerning, trying different options on 'e's and capitals, whether on a single line or a little bumpier, like this exploration:

Often at this point the client's curious to see how my very analogue work will look when transformed into vector art (presuming we're working with art that wasn't created digitally to begin with).

This isn't a 'click the button' or 'apply that filter' step - rather, I do this via a series of processes which sensitively and carefully change the format of the piece (from pixel to vector) without changing its nature, preserving its human warmth, detail and idiosyncrasy. Without blowing any of my hand-sketched trumpets, it's often why people come to me for logos; in a sea of Canva-generated/off-the-shelf/plastic-looking logos they want something very obviously crafted by human hands, but which functions in every format, at every size, and performs in any technical, screen or print environment. I've been doing that a long time, and it's surprising how that need has remained consistent.

Here you can see a close-up of a very carefully vectorised version of this inky option:

This option from the second round of ideas was chosen to get through the third round. Made with simple, freely-drawn capitals in ink on paper, it worked as well in colour as it did greyscale and vector:

And as a partner suggestion to this I made a version created separately with ink and pencil to hint at cut wood, wood and trees being things that emerged as strongly connected to Maine and eliciting affectionate responses in their research group. Here's the raw art before any refinements:

Watch some of the process here:

At this point, I got The Tingles - when you know underneath you've cracked it, and you desperately want the client to agree with you...but you daren't hope too hard, because your experience tells you it can go completely in another direction! But those Tingles came when I played with these layered and coloured versions. Suddenly, I could see this on all the signs, the site, the products, the T shirts...

The team liked it. But there was one more thing. I was aware from the start that when I said the word 'Maine' in my mind, it was actually 'Maine.' - with the full stop. I couldn't stop seeing it this way. I felt it communicated a confidence and pride in this single-syllable name, and suggested that the state was everything you could need - the full stop made it both a name and a statement.

"Where you from?"

"Maine."

And so it was added to the next round. Would they go for this punctuatively unusual choice?

The answer was YES. And so, over the course of six months, our logo was born, and final artwork was prepared in myriad formats and al the colours of the new Maine branding guidelines. In its final iteration, the logo is currently working its way over the next few months onto hundreds of products, signs, printed materials and online platforms, but you can see it right away on the visitMaine website, and on these satisfying examples.

To my delight, as well as embracing my 'thing' for the full stop, they're using both the flat-colour version and the textured version together, deploying them in different environments, and that in itself is unusual. I applaud their boldness!

If you live in Maine and you see it about, please take a snapshot and send it to me! "Out in the wild" has become a cliché, but only because the thrill of seeing one's work out doing the job it was created for never gets boring.

Not for me, anyway.

Thank you to the brilliant team at Miles Partnership in Denver for bringing me on to do this prestigious project, especially VP Neal and Jordan, and thanks to my agency BAreps for their patient, professional cheerleading!

Fran.

2023-11-28T15:08:00.006+00:00

I learned yesterday that my New York agent, Francine Rosenfeld, died at the weekend.

I'm really sad about this. I came across Fran’s last ever email to me only last week, by accident while I was looking up some info about an old job. I was thinking about her the rest of that day, wondering what she was up to, worrying that I hadn't done my Christmas promo yet and thinking about the time I told her I hoped she'd get some decent time off at Christmas: " ...not my holiday", she said, and shimmied off presumably to book in another seven meetings.

When I joined Bernstein & Andriulli in 2007, now BA Reps, I went to their office in Manhattan and was introduced by agency director Louisa (who'd recruited me to the agency) to the tall, slim Fran on arrival. She had dark eyes, dark, thick hair with a reddish tinge, boots, and a forbidding vibe; sort of Goth Lite, and I knew she meant business.

And she was ALL Business, with an upper-case B. She set about shoving me under as many art directors’ noses as she could, within a couple of weeks bringing me a fat pharmaceutical project with a price tag I’d never seen the likes of before. And from that moment, she was my boss. VIVIDLY I can still feel the anxiety of being chased around the town on a Saturday afternoon as I was getting coffee, having just climbed down from a scaffold where I was trying to finish a wall piece, while in the throes of releasing a record the following day, finishing a pharma job AND getting on a 6am flight to Lisbon the next morning. She didn’t care — she just wanted to know that I was working on her client’s job. “Saraaaaahhhh….where ARE you? The client NEEDS you.” We got it all done somehow. With decades in the industry, she knew everyone and everything, quoted fees like a demon (a fee-mon??) and managed projects with what can only be described oxymoronically as a kind ferocity, keeping clients calm and artists on their tippy-toes till the work was signed off.

Later on she got a tattoo I designed of her little dog’s name, Kody. I'm always surprised and honoured that someone would want anything I've made on their skin forever, but with Fran's I felt especially trusted with what would have been an important little creative statement for her.

My Mum will be saddened too; as Anne The Accounts Lady, she frequently emailed her to chase TAs and client details. Equally brief with comms, they were around the same age, I think, though Fran was notoriously coy about her age, partly because she looked so fantastic and full of confidence. Not coy enough, however, to hold back on advising me which cosmetic surgeries she thought I would benefit from the most, during a walk to a downtown meeting one sunny spring afternoon. Her background was mysterious and I liked it that way - she was all about the now, and her enthusiasm for creativity and commerce was infectious.

She was my agent, my friend, a tyrant and a pain in the arse, and she was responsible for bringing me some of the biggest projects of my career (so far!) We spoke almost every day while she was with B&A. Over a period of almost 13 years, she was a core part of my work family; the day genuinely did not feel normal if I hadn't had a call with Fran.

I missed her when she left the agency. Her mantle was taken up by a set of handsomely able successors, and the BA family continues. But Fran will always have a special place in my memory. Her terrier-like ambition helped put me where I am now, I'll forever be grateful to her.

She was really quite amazing.

Fran, Stan and Bec, taken by me, on a Manhattan rooftop in 2009.

Fran just being very Fran.

KODY.

I mean...look at her! (from her brother Gary's post on Facebook).

F R A N with Tristan Eaton.

Factoryroad: A Shop of Industrious Creatives

2023-10-05T15:28:00.001+01:00

Exactly ten years ago we opened our shop, Factoryroad.
Working prototype for the FR shop site. This wasn't all of the artists.
Possibly ahead of its time, it was named for the street we live and work on — known, as the name suggests, for its rows of factories, humming away all day and sometimes into the night with a half day on Friday. Channelling the industrious, round-the-clock nature of working, the building we still live and work in — Factoryroad’s base — was built by one of the factory owners for himself, with the foreman’s house built next door, and we still look out from our studio every day at the Victorian factory behind us (now flats, of course).
I’m thinking about the Factoryroad Shop today not only because I’ve just noticed it’s ten years since its launch, but because had its roots in the collaborative, spontaneous, risk-taking way of working that we’ve always fostered, and which we’ve struggled to get back to after a hammering by the isolation and hesitancy of the pandemic. It’s coming back, but our shop represented an energetic pulling-together of friends and colleagues who all made and designed lovely things, and whose work we wanted to sell alongside our own in one place — the site itself was commissioned from an ex-student and creative colleague, Nathan at Smile, then a new company.
From robustly working-class backgrounds, and living with a strong sense of purposeful industriousness, both of us channelled usefulness and productivity in all that we did. You can see it in the design of the site, based on a found invoice from a real factory, hand-drawn rubber stamps included. For us Commerce + Art was never, and still isn’t, a dirty combination, and we embraced the idea of giving a leg-up to our creative mates who made beautiful things.
Factoryroad itself as an entity had existed since the late 90s, making T shirts, 45rpm record adapters, doing record distribution and and making records under our label Blunt Force Trauma — it even had a Tumblr!
From our lovely Tumblr, still there today.
A natural follow-up to a lifetime together putting on music, social and creative events in clubs, empty and unorthodox spaces, we’d done promotion the long-hand way — going out, driving miles to see people in person, make friends and connections, taking pressies and enthusiasm. To network, you had to travel, and travel we did, in our series of odd little cars.
And the thing about FR is that we did it all, everything, without funding. No arts council money, no grants, no awards. Not that we didn’t try a few times — we were just never eligible, or the hoops to jump through were creatively restricting, or we didn’t move in the right circles. So we gave up on that fairly quickly. More correctly, we funded everything ourselves, sometimes putting the household in a precarious position. We didn’t come from money and neither of us had any - only what we earned at the time from freelance illustration, a little part time lecturing and Leigh’s job at the time in a series of record shops — which he proactively decided to leave behind in 2007 — and we were paying a mortgage and studio rent. So we took what with hindsight were huge risks, gambling sometimes thousands on ambitious projects that we never sure would pay us back. But they did pay us back — always in ways we couldn’t predict, and always slowly, but surely.
Nowadays, I see the ease with which Crowdfunding or Kickstarting is deployed — and good for you, if you can do a nice job of that; there’s something terribly appealing about being answerable to a hundred strangers who’ve given you money. I’ve funded plenty of those projects myself, but we never felt comfortable risking anyone’s money but our own!
I still don‘t know who this girl was! If you’re her, let me know.
Getting someone to wear your T while DJing was a superb free promotional method!
Gifting our wares!
To this day, our manifesto remains:
“Our projects are usually created and executed together, and are usually things we want to try out, do for the sake of doing, or experiment with. They’re neither designed to make money (though they sometimes do), nor to satisfy any brief but our own. They’re also, sometimes, collaborative, and are almost always for the entertainment and engagement of other people.”
You can still read this at the top of my Special Projects page, which attempts to gather as many of these together as possible, though there are too many to list (and many, though it seems improbable, are ‘pre-internet’, with no traces online to link to).
As well as a shop, Factoryroad was also a gallery that held myriad events in its space, and was supported by a network of creative friends from a mile away to 5000 miles away — they attended in person, contributed work to shows, and spread the word. Every event was a huge undertaking, and you can read about some of those shows and events here.
We even ran a radio station from there, Altar Ego — itself an incredibly challenging project, even for two ex-pirate radio people, which we weren’t sure we could pull off till we’d, erm, pulled it off…several times.
“Go ahead and chew everything that you’ve just bitten off, Sarah”.
Instructions for using Altar Ego Radio’s mixer. Oof. Sounds like a bollocking.
Doubling up as our working studio space, the gallery space itself eventually became too disruptive and energy-consuming amid the mad amount of client work and other commitments happening at the time, so we pressed pause on it. (We just do things now without disassembling the entire studio for a week.)
Painting scrap cars, because we can! And not inside our office space.
The Factoryroad shop was a commitment to our friends and colleagues to provide a platform to sell their work, which most didn’t have at the time. We built it to offer a selling space to some of the people we’d worked with the most, at a point in time when it was far less easy to jump online and set up a payment system and a shop. But it was also a time when was Instagram wasn’t as massive, Etsy wasn’t the big thing it is now, accounting and book-keeping was still a little on the time-consuming side, cheques could still be written, and the avenues for selling were fewer.
Even just ten years ago, promoting, in other words, was harder, but we had the audience and mailing list to make it work.
Some of the artists involved eventually moved away from their creative practice, or lost interest in selling products, and our shop, though beautiful, wasn’t live for long. It might have existed for longer had it been set up today where, a mere ten years later, selling your art online is not just an nice added extra, it’s pretty much mandatory for any artist.
In the end Factoryroad evolved into four separate shops — the busy one I run now, a Discogs shop for records, a smaller shop just for our 45rpm adapters, and a new one for our other business, Inkymole’s Motors, designing and selling automotive accessories and parts. But I look back at all the FR stuff today — stuff it’s impossible to do justice to in one brief article — with fondess and gratitude that we crammed them in, and took those risks, feeling the roots of it all underpinning everything we still do, and tuning into the gentle tapping of my foot as I feel the same urge to ‘get cracking’ again — but with the added perspective, experience and wisdom of someone a few years further along.
For the curious, here’s some of Factoryroad’s collaborators, who either took part in projects or shows, were the star of a show or film or collaborated in some other way — music, film, art, sound or video recording, food, admin. Most are still creatively active, though not necessarily in the same at form.
In no particular order:
Melanie Tomlinson (metal sculptor, jeweller)
Strictly Kev / DJ Food (designer, recording artist, DJ)
Henry Flint (2000AD comic artist, illustrator)
Buddy Wakefield (spoken word poet, author, performer)
Dick Hogg (prints and artwork)
Peter Horridge (illustrator, designer, typographer)
Aaron Lloyd Barr (was illustrator, then agent, now co-owner of ATRBUTE)
Max Ellis (illustrator and photographer)
Anthony St James (photographer)
Ed Garland (author and musician)
Sage Francis (rapper, hip-hop artist, label owner, musician)
Buddy Peace (hugely prolific musician and producer)
B.Dolan (musician, producer, rapper, activist)
Gareth Edwards (screenwriter, film director)
Louisa St Pierre (illustration agent)
Jed Smith (chef)
Alisha Miller (public artist)
Jonathan Levine (gallery owner)
Andrea Gibson (spoken word poet, author)
Anne Coleman (textile artist)
April Ball (designer)
Beth Robinson’s Strange Dolls (dollmaker and artist)
Caroline Allen (sculptor, artist)
Drew Jerrison (author, now senior marketer in publishing)
Florence EMA Blanchard (artist)
Andrew Bannecker (illustrator)
Nomoco (illustrator)
Stan Chow (illustrator, DJ)
Joe Rogers (artist)
Alan Titmash aka Jonathan Pelham (musician, now art director)
Graham Robson (illustrator, now a senior artist at Games Workshop)
The Cloud Commission (prints and original artwork)
Solo One (original artwork and stickers)
Dick Hogg (prints and artwork)
Tom Hare (woven sculptures and vessels)
Jacquie O’Neill (illustrator)
Jill Calder (illustrator)
Kelly Merrell (doodler)
Lisa Hayes (jewellery)
Rebecca Lupton (photographer)
Shirley Gibson (designer)
Nigel Axon (architect)
Sarah J Coleman (illustration, prints, stationery)
Factoryroad itself (music ephemera, T shirts, 45rpm adapters)
Linkless But Nonetheless Participating People:
Lisa Hayes (jewellery)
Tracy Walker (artist)
Brook Valentine Menown (assistant)
Lily Blythe (assistant)
Rebecca Lewis (artist management)
Bob Neely (music)

Artofficial Inktelligence III: Copy; right? - A human-generated story in 3 chapters.

2023-06-12T13:15:00.003+01:00

After I’d been on BBC Leicester to talk about AI, I arranged to visit Andrea Soltoggio, Associate Professor in Artificial Intelligence at Loughborough University.

Although I probably knew a fair bit about AI compared to Maureen, busy shopping in the High Street when she was vox-popped by the Beeb (although not necessarily: Mo could be knocking out thousands of Made-By-MJ Adonises every night after work Because She Can Now) I realised I needed to increase my knowledge all-round; especially in the area of copyright, a wiring-loom-style nightmare of confusion that’s currently the subject of myriad studies and manifestos.

©Maureen. Except, not, because this dude can’t be copyrighted. Maybe he needs a girlfriend, though?

Andreja had been on the radio just before me, so I went over to the university and talked for an hour and a half over decent coffee.

I’ve advised on copyright and IP, and obviously deal with it regularly for work, but what I knew about AI and copyright amounted to this:

First, copyright is automatic at the point of creation — in this country (the UK, from where I’m typing) you don’t have to ‘do’ anything ‘to copyright’ an artistic, photographic or literary creation.
Copyright is enshrined in UK law, poignantly enough, as a human right by the Berne Convention of 1887, still applicable in law, which states:
“All (artistic and literary works) except photographic and cinematographic which have different terms) shall be protected for at least 50 years after the author’s death, but parties are free to provide longer terms if they choose.”
However there are many countries who are not signatories to the Berne Convention.
The Copyright Act states that the author of an original work owns the copyright to that work. At the time the law was enacted, the purpose of copyright was to act as a financial and intellectual stimulus:
“The Act exists to incentivise original authentic effort. The person’s contribution is protected.”
This government page is a nicely readable, brief guide to whether and how your copyright is protected abroad, but since geography is irrelevent to AI-generated art, this is only so comforting.

One of the largest swells of research and discussion has been to work out whether copyright can be claimed by someone making a picture using AI , and conversely, whether the copyright of an artist whose image has been ‘scraped’ from the www has been breached, which would normally automatically trigger a conversation about financial remuneration. This might seem obvious now, but it wasn’t at the creeping outset of the current rabid AI use, when it was all ‘look, I put my face into the Lensa app’ — you could never own those beautiful, flattering but heavily stylised portraits of you, based robustly on existing artist’s styles.

So platforms have been making up their own rules, since there’s no umbrella policy to cover things. Midjourney’s looks like this:

people on their PAID MJ plan theoretically have copyright granted in anything they make, since it assumed the fact that they’re paying means they have commercial interests or incentives in using the programme; at the same time, an unlimited licence to use the image is granted back to the platform itself, meaning ‘it’ can do anything with it:

Anyone else is free to put in exactly the same prompts used by someone else —you’d get a different output anyway, because that’s what ‘generative’ means.
people on the FREE MJ plan (who it is assumed are generating experimentally or just ‘having fun’) do NOT get granted copyright:

Unusually, the UK is one of only a handful of nations to offer copyright for works generated solely by a computer, but it deems ‘the author’ to be “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken.” Interpret that as you will.

In the US, there is currently no copyright protection for works generated solely by a machine.

It’s the chain of creation of an AI artwork that makes it so difficult to determine where the work ‘originates’.

AI-produced works of art start with a programmer (or more often, a large team of programmers) who have written an algorithm. That person may — or may not — provide some input data. Another person - an artist, or group of people - might do this. The output is then generated by AI independently.

So if an AI-generated artwork isn’t copyright-protected by law, anyone can freely make copies of, distribute it, use for commercial purposes or sell the work to anyone else; it can also be remixed, chopped, imitated, and so on.

…which sounds exactly like what can and does happen to copyright-protected work, just without the financial or legal consequences.

Which makes me wonder; the rather cruelly-named ‘prompt monkeys’ describing themselves as artists and selling their output online — don’t they want some ownership over what they’ve made? If Maureen’s keeping herself in fancy earrings through her Etsy shop selling those meaty He-Men, would she be mad if Dolly in Pennsylvania started ‘borrowing‘ her screen-shotted He-men, but to fund her Louis Vuitton habit instead?

Possibly not. Maybe that’s going to be the big pivot — that all art becomes universally, omnipotently open-source; no-one’s, and everyone’s property. There’s something in that I like the notion of, in an incredibly idealistic woo-woo kind of way — but then, money. Paying the bills, buying food, you know; the things we do to stay alive. If we already lived in a world where the Universal Basic Income was a well-established fact of life, and capitalism wasn’t the system, something like that could be beautiful.

At least one Midjourney user has it all figured out:

“Watching Artists get mad 😡 at ai wondering why? I mean as an artist I don’t understand copy rights [sic] because I’m constantly wondering about influences and I think these artists concerned with ai copying their art is a compliment because you know every artist is copying someone else’s work to inspire themselves regardless original ideas are very slim compared to imagination. As an artist I’ve never seen a non influenced art piece besides imaginary creatures and they’re [sic] not many left to create… never see any landscape artists bitchhing [sic] about the same mountain scenery…”

(I’ll wait a sec while you spot the really special bit.)

This is why there are big moves to work it all out, before the alleged robopocalypse — known in scientific terms as AI Singularity — hits. And my chat with Andrea very much started out as a list of questions about copyright, but ended up a broader conversation about the philosophy of art, its purpose, the human intention, and much more besides. He talked extensively about which artificial intelligence projects are already redundant — the self-driving car was an example—and which aren’t, such as medical and scientific problem-solving applications. There are things that are un-AI-able too — something it’s easy to overlook when there’s a constant stream of doomy prophesies flying at your head.

By the end of it, I felt reassured and freshly curious about AI and its place in our lives in a bigger-picture way. This was a man who works with the machinery on a daily basis - his life’s work — and if he wasn’t afraid, why should I be?

But there’s still the fact that copyright and ownership of intellectual property is tied up with money; it’s how revenue is generated for artists, through royalties, licensing, re-licensing, adding work to stock libraries and more. And since copyright is granted for 50 years after a creator's death, the artist is not the only human to benefit financially from their life’s work — providing wills are left and all in good order, children, spouses and grandchildren can, too. This notion of artwork being stolen by AI and melted into an enormo-bowl of cake mixture from which billions of new cupcakes emerge doesn’t simply put the much-maligned Tarquin The Painter’s nose out of joint — it could have a tangible, terrible impact on the futures of his dependants and descendants, too.

“Legislators will take forever to even fathom the tech, let alone build in any guardrails, so it takes things like litigation and public debate to move the needle on the ethical use of this technology.” — Jason Chatfield, president of the National Cartoonists Society.

Hollie Mengert is an illustrator for Disney who found that her work was being cloned as an AI experiment by a mechanical engineering student in Canada. The student downloaded 32 of her pieces and trained a machine learning model that could reproduce her style — it only took a handful of hours. As she told technologist Andy Baio, who reported on the case:

“For me, personally, it feels like someone’s taking work that I’ve done, you know, things that I’ve learned — I’ve been a working artist since I graduated art school in 2011 — and is using it to create art that that [sic] I didn’t consent to and didn’t give permission for.”

Hollie’s illustrations, left, used to train the model, and the trained Stable Diffusion output on the right.

“I see people on both sides of this extremely confident in their positions, but the reality is nobody knows,” said Baio in an interview with The Verge. “And anyone who says they know confidently how this will play out in court is wrong.”

For now, our own government has decided with the input of the Designers and Artists Copyright Society to scrap controversial plans granting artificial intelligence platforms an all-encompassing exception to copyright, asking instead to work with creative industry leaders to strike a balance between promoting innovation within AI, and supporting creativity in the UK:

“The debate followed months of objection by the copyright and creative industries warning of the detrimental impact the proposals could have on UK creators.”

The words ‘could have’, written in February, already sit uneasily with me having watched colleagues talk openly about reductions in their client work on social media; others new to the industry talk in bewildered terms about a tentative career they’ve just got off the ground that’s already impacted. Others at the very outset of their career, perhaps still studying or recently graduated, are openly questioning the point of pursuing such a career — careers that, as of 2020, were contributing almost £13million to the UK economy every hour.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I doubt this is the last time I’ll write about AI, though to be frank it’s been exhausting, keeping up, reading and archiving articles and continuing to walk the tightrope between my natural excitement and curiosity, and outright fear.

Though I didn't react the same way, I feel for the very, very established and much-loved Dave McKean, whose response to playing with AI for the first time was visceral:

“I spent a day on the floor of my studio in a foetal position…My immediate response was: Well, that’s my career over. Why would anyone pay me to do an album cover when anyone can type a few words into Midjourney and, in a couple of minutes, start downloading endless finished possibilities for free?”

I thought about ending this article by summarising the idea of AI itself as a playful, obliging but not very bright puppy that’s been let into the park too early, and everyone wants to play with it but as a result lot of people are getting bitten and shat on — but that sounds a bit naïve, and not quite right.

“There are a lot of people whose argument seems to be: ‘Well, the technology is here now, there’s no taking it back.’ I personally find that ridiculous because you’re just telling artists to give up without a fight.” — Sarah Anderson

Instead I’ll quote my partner Leigh:

Making AI Art vs Making Human Art is like masturbation vs actual sex with another person. It’s like PornHub; you go in and type what you want (‘big boobs’, ‘forties’) and there it is. You might get the same outcome, but none of the feels, the textures, the scents, emotions; you feel your way through.

Like a PornHub user, a prompter is always still sat safely tapping a keyboard. It has its place.
But an artist is in a way more akin to a porn actor; willing to go the whole way, in person, for real, many times over, to get the result they want.

For now, I’m still refusing to think of AI (as it relates to art) as a monster that’s escaped from under the bed. I enjoy playing with it. I still think it’ll be useful to me and I watch in awe as people use the machinery to generate beautiful, beautiful things. The following pictures made me gasp, and almost brought a tear to my eyeballs — and if that’s not an example of a picture triggering a human emotion, howsoever created, what is?

Further reading:

https://www.mybff.com/discover/the-risks-benefits-and-ethics-of-artificial-intelligence

https://theaoi.com/campaigning/campaigns/consultations-blocks-2/artificial-intelligence/

https://theaoi.com/2022/12/09/artificial-intelligence-ai-aoi-survey-results/

Maybe this will interest you:
https://theaoi.com/event/aoi-webinar-ai-and-illustration/

PS: At the time of writing, AI is still struggling with type.

But the spectre of Banksy’s chimps is never far away.

Artofficial Inktelligence II: Bro, they feel threatened. - A human-generated story in three chapters.

2023-06-12T13:13:00.005+01:00

“All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?” — Banksy, Existencilism.

Oof, AI eh. Never in all my career have I experienced something so dramatically divisive, threatening and talked about; discussed, debated, vilified and worshipped.

I’m not talking about any old artificial intelligence — the inoffensive metallic triage voices that follow a flow chart of responses when you ring your insurance company, for example, or the delightfully clever stuff that knows how you want to fill in the space when you use your ‘content aware’ setting in Photoshop (check this brand new and exciting one here).

I’m talking, of course, about the one that knows how to mimic artists.

This was the tweet that caught the BBC’s attention a few weeks back.

A while back I tweeted this, and 48 hours later sitting in my car on a break from a gleefully visceral IRL primary school day, I found myself thrust into the position of impromptu AI consultant for BBC Radio Leicester and their imminent vox pop feature, an in-person verson of this. At that moment, as I advised on which artists were great examples of building AI creatively into their existing workflow (this man and this woman in particular) and talking about copyright, I realised: if the man-in-the-street is opining about this, it is HERE.

The next day, I was live on air talking about it — specifically the complexities of copyright and a little about whether I personally had been negatively affected by the rapid, and rabid, uptake of AI to make pictures. That was March, and my answer was no. But in the interim weeks, during which I made notes and researched, that answer has turned to yes.

This is another article about AI, but I’m not really wanting to write about ‘it’ — ‘It’ gets enough column inches as it is. As with Chapter I of this series, this is about how I’m experiencing the growth of AI — living through it — as a human artist who’s a month away from having spent thirty whole, full-time years making a joyful, thriving life as someone who creates pictures.

My face when I worry about AI. I need those specs to see the unseeable future. Generated for me by a machine.

First, since humans find comfort in tribes and a binary (‘scuse the pun) approach, let it be stated: I’m not anti-AI. I’m not anti-future, anti-evolution, nor anti-tech. Never have been; never will be. I’ve used AI. I liked it. So has my Mum. It’s actually been useful: it wouldn’t have been me setting fire to any of those looms. Here’s an AI-generated Luddite. He has five fingers, but he’s actually quite amazing isn't he? As is his machine.

The lucky lad’s hard at work doing…something.

But where we seem to have to got to very suddenly is a scenario which sees professional artists facing an enforced exit, or partial departure, from their vocations. It’s a terribly-timed soup of circumstances. There’s the combination of post-pandemic changes to the business (senior or experienced art buyers and creatives taking early retirement or switching streams, replaced with with individuals less experienced and less au fait with commissioning artwork, if replaced at all), visceral shifts in the fiscal landscape, budgets plummeting, a growth in ‘race to the bottom’ offerings such as Fiverr, the free/cheapness of the likes of Canva, corporate clients taking work in-house, triple-bidding, ghosting, brands producing work themselves rather than using agencies. (As you might be able to tell, I have been researching what exactly the hell is going on for a couple of years).

And into this landscape waded AI, itself devoid of personality but dragging with it shocking levels of hitherto unrevealed entitlement and resentment.

I never in a gazillion light years envisaged my third decade in business. All I ever wanted to do was ‘draw for a living’, do it well, and do it consistently. I wanted to be in demand, but I didn’t think about getting rich. I definitely never wanted to be ‘famous’. I did want to be able to do my job indefinitely, until I choose not to. Standing there at 23 and being told I’d be doing this 30 years later would have taken my breath away — I’d have felt like the most privileged girl in the world.

But here’s what seems to be a revelatory word in the story of AI — privilege. The exposed vein of resentment toward artists suggests that ‘we’ (everyone is very ‘othered’ in AI-fan conversations) are in the positions or jobs that we are through privilege or deceit, rather than hard work, consistency and persistence. What happened to the diehard notion of the starving artist being the only valid or authentic one? (which itself is nonsense).

I joined the Midjourney FB page a couple of months ago just to see what other people were doing. As I’ve said in the previous article, I play with Midjourney myself. Some of what’s posted in the group is a bit dull, but some of it is exceptionally eye-catching, arresting, even. Some of its users are utilising the new, cheap power at their fingertips to finally make their kinks r*e*a*l. A lot of it is just funny, people making the kinds of visual mash-ups and remixes we saw in the 90s and early noughties with sound, the likes of Richard X, Cassette Boy, DJ Rubbish. I feel obligated to be in the group — not exactly ‘keep your enemies closer’, but something along those lines—despite it causing me to swing nauseatedly between ‘omg that’s beautiful’ and ‘I haven’t got enough Ugh for that’.

Unfortunately, comment after sour comment reveals among users a feeling that, somehow, ‘we’ had been keeping creativity all to ourselves; we’d been gatekeeping all these…erm, millennia.

Check these real quotes from ‘professional prompters’. With artists on one side pitched as greedy, secretive hoarders of a mysterious dark skill, and AI users on the other viewed as vacant, jealous prompt-monkeys, the division and schoolyard name-calling is real, and utterly pathetic — bordering, at times, on a weirdly rapey ‘they asked for it’ kind of vibe:

This dovetails with an oft-repeated script seen in mine and my colleagues’ online dealings with fans and would-be professional artists. It goes something like this.

“Hey *artist’s forename*! I love your work. What app or filters do I use to get my work to look like that? Any short-cuts or tricks?”

Another example:

The answer is usually a little less blunt than this — kind, patient, firm, and something along the lines of “there is no app, or filter, or shortcut, this work evolved through many years of practise, experience, trial and error, and if you go through the same process, you’ll develop your own thing too.” This fella is a great example .

Generally it seems that people don’t like that answer, or at the very least, don’t believe it. The question itself seems to suggest that hidden in the answer is a lofty smugness or palm outstretched saying “you can’t come in” when, in fact, the answer given is the opposite.

People calling themselves artists and getting cross about artists being paid appropriately for their years of training, practice and accrued expertise has parallels with me on Gran Turismo driving Monaco in the wet every weekend for a year, getting really good at it and then whining that George Russell’s getting £5m a year and where’s mine?

Well; let’s see. I might not be brilliant at Gran Turismo, but I do play it and can get around tracks without crashing. More importantly, I can get around real tracks without crashing. My first ever track day was at the infamous Nürburgringin Germany - akin to your first ever karate class being a black belt one and then working your way back down — before driving at Mallory, Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Donington. The thing about driving on track is a) there are so many variables, and b), it’s a tough, visceral, physically-demanding experience. You need to have the car set up right; you need to have the right tyres set to the correct pressures for the condidions. Is it raining or dry? Do you need to put slicks on? Is the oil topped up? Have you had enough to drink but not so much that you’ll be distracted by your bladder? Have you eaten enough to maintain focus? Is your helmet in good nick? Have you driven this track before? And are you taking a passenger?

Driving on track subjects both you and the car to incredible G forces, tyre squeal, a screaming engine, unburnt hydrocarbons, not to mention the nervous exhilaration. Intuition, fast reactions, knowing the car and building experience are pivotal. It’s challenging for the body. But I can do it, and I can confirm that driving a super-realistic but synthetic car on screen is NOT the same, in the way that making a piece of art with a keyboard is not the same as making art with the hands/body (and for the last time I’ll state that I include digital painting in that): it’s completely free of risk and consequence.

So I still won’t ever get a five million a year driving contract, because a professional F1 driver’s contract pays him not only for his driving but for experience, total professionalism, commitment to physical fitness and diet, incalculable pressure, high risk of death of injury, discretion, brand awareness, interaction with sponsorship deals, PR savvy and that’s just the start. So in addressing the resentment shown by over fees paid to artists, when a client pays for a professional artist, they’re also paying for not only the art but all the rest of what makes them professional, and aside from the risk of injury and death there are many parallels in the qualities above.

Back in the picture-making world, the app/shortcut/filter to make art that looks as good as ‘the real thing’ is here, and virtually free.

You never even need to have picked up a pencil, digital or otherwise, to make a nice picture. You just need to tell the machine what you want. And yes, there’s some practice-makes-perfect in knowing how to ask, and precisely what to ask for, but that’s it. It’s art direction, without the artist (see examples of significant exceptions above) and with a vapourised budget.

But you don’t even need to go to that much trouble. I went into my MJ Discord and bashed my keyboard for three seconds with my eyes closed, producing this prompt:

kfsygrfueyg87560874jk-89374nsdvffytesfhndsdf — 33hdhdnc5x=kjehbfserjhaefb)(11erhbfb775hhsdjfvsf-sdfjsdf1jdfhbggdfjh

and got these perfectly pleasant pictures:

Reminds me of the scientific theory that if you got a bunch of monkeys to hit a typewriter for long enough, you’d eventually get some Shakespeare.

(And you can go ahead and copy that prompt to see what MJ makes for you, because nothing that’s generated by Midjourney, Stable Diffusion or OpenAI is currently subject to copyright, nor are prompts. More on that later.)

I read this morning, while trying to finish this article, that “prompting is the new painting” — the rapid turnover of gems like this is one of the reasons this article’s taken so long to finish, by the way; always something new to add to the ‘finished thing’ (a bit like a piece of work you’re really loving making).

“But you won’t be put out of work by AI itself”, the boss of my agency was told. “You’ll be put out of work by someone using AI”.

Of course. Makes sense, albeit alarming. A rapid succession of incidents over the last couple of months show this is not a theory. A client of mine, Bloomsbury, who I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with on many covers, used an AI image of a wolf on the paperback edition of a bestselling author’s novel. They claimed not to be aware that it was AI, but the image was spotted on Adobe’s stock site for $79.99, clearly marked AI-generated. I retweeted this, pondering my own dramatic and sudden reduction in book cover work, and it’s been my most RT’d, liked and commented-on tweet — it clearly struck a nerve. I truly, but perhaps naïvely, was surprised at Bloomsbury.

Before this, in another Tweetpocalypse, Bradford Literary Festival, whose lineup included events with human illustrators, were found to have deployed AI-generated pictures of a girl with three feet for their promotion (now replaced). It wasn’t JUST that it was so blatantly, crudely AI-generated; it was that the festival claimed a human illustrator had worked with it afterwards — then defended their decision-making:

- plus three pull cords and a hoof, for good measure.

Then Google’s Geoffrey Hinton stepped down, and since we were speaking of racing drivers, a German magazine drew heat for this interview ‘with’ Michael Schumacher, and an AI-generated picture won the Sony World Photography Awards. There were a few weeks there where it felt like we were living in a blizzard of AI stories, and I still wasn’t convinced AI was actually having a negative impact on my work.

Until I saw that it has to be. A fellow illustrator sent the most apt response to my second-most-popular tweet ever, about the ‘inexplicable’ fall-off of my previously plentiful book work: ‘What a time to be alive’.

Part III follows.

Artomotive Adventures: Painting a Pao! / ‘Take On Me’

2023-05-02T12:41:00.003+01:00

With a rolling canvas in front of us, and a long weekend, why wouldn't we do it twice?

This much-loved Nissan Pao, at the end of its life and destined to be recycled for parts, was re-imagined this time as a vehicular extra in A-ha's phenomenal hit record, Take On Me.

The superb, revolutionary video made with 3000+ rotoscoped drawings.

We used snow white Montana spray paint (A LOT OF IT!) and Posca pens.

With an 80s theme still firmly in mind (because I WAS an 80s girl and don't think I ever quite left the decade behind!) we whited-out the Vaporwave car, and I applied an homage to the 3000 or so rotoscoped pencil sketches used in the iconic, groundbreaking 1985 video (they took months to do that, but we had a couple of days!)

I couldn't actually use pencil or charcoal on the smooth surface of the car, even painted in aerosol white, so went for a near-simulation with specially-mixed graphitey colours in chunky Posca markers.

We'd love to have used the original track on our film but couldn't afford the licensing - I did ask for a price and got one fully and fairly in line with the track's legendary status - so we went with something that had a similar vibe and pace. Sorry Morten. Yours would have been better...

(Did you know the song was released twice? The first time it didn't 'take' - here's that version, in case you're interested.)

Watch the film of our process here.

Artomotive Adventures: Painting a Pao! / 'Vaporwave'

2023-05-01T13:15:00.006+01:00

What do you do when a car comes your way that's not gonna make it? Well, you can paint on it!

I've painted a few 'things' - office walls, advertising hoardings, giant sunflowers, brick walls; I've customised speakers, radios, baseball caps, shoes - there are bound to be more I've forgotten - and bits of cars, but never a whole car.

The information superhighway is awash these days with cars clothed in glittering wraps, mad paint jobs and stickers, and over the years illustrators and graffiti artists have been called upon to apply their art to corporate advertising pieces in the form of a high-end vehicle parked up somewhere painfully cool and covered in someone's skilz.

Well; this wasn't that - this was a 'let's have a go' weekend adventure while we had the car at our disposal! Our other business is parts and accessories for the iconic and rare Nissan Pao (of which we have two) and buying and breaking ('parting-out') dead ones, so that others may ride again. Before this one met its organ-donor fate, it got fancy.

I knew I wanted it to be a vapourware/synthwave inspired thing, as I listen to a LOT of that stuff and, being an arty teenager in the 80s I lived through all of those sounds and looks For Real - and drew them, on my pencil cases, exercise books, tapes and homework. And it tied in with another project running parallel, so an easy choice.

And, against the backdrop of the noisy bilge pump of (ironically ⬆️) synthesised pictures made with AI, we’ve been feeling more desire than ever to make things that are physical and real, wonky and textured, even.

And in rolls a canvas on wheels!

The car was sketched out on my iPad and painted with two boxes of Montana spray paint from GraffHQ, after a semi-thorough masking. I'm an amateur when it comes to spray paints, having only ever used them twice before (this mural at the National Centre for Children's Books, and this wall at Bring The Paint festival in Leicester) but chucked myself in after the obligatory nervous pacing and dithering. That first stroke of the nozzle, brush or nib is always the hardest.

We had the use of the paint oven at Uncle Keith's Paint Shop for just the weekend, so we couldn't go as detailed as we wanted to and ended up leaving the boot uncovered, but that didn't matter because we were about to paint it all out and start again anyway...

Watch the film here!

Artofficial Inktelligence: A human-generated story in 3 chapters: 1/ Mad Journey.

2023-04-04T16:28:00.001+01:00

This article’s been a long time in the making.

Not being able to ‘get to it’ has hassled me for ages but, as I finally get my assorted notes and thoughts assembled, I realise that quite unintentionally, the right time is now.

I’m writing about AI. Of course I am. Not only am I expected to have an opinion on it, as an artist (I do), but every man and his hamster knows about AI and moreover, also has an opinion on it. This is no bad thing; but you know that something’s ‘made it’ into the public consciousness when you’re asked to talk about it live on local radio; literally ‘the man in the street’ invited to share their thoughts on the matter, before switching to Sarah on the mic.

But more on that later.

In 2015 I began to play with Google’s DeepDream. Our mate Kev told us about it. You had to input a picture and wait for it to render — a long enough wait that you could go away and do something else, like have dinner and sleep, as opposed to Midjourney’s amphetamine-rush of fired-out images made in moments. In fact, facebook tells me I uploaded it on 30th July, and got the result on 2nd August:

So this was my first AI picture, and it’s a horrifying belter:

Kev, Sarah and Leigh, after 3 days Deepdreaming.

We laughed and pulled faces at it and then I forgot about it, and about AI for the most part other than following a few scientists on tumblr who were doing silly and very funny things with neural networks; getting them to write recipes, for example (generating the bewilderingly unappetising meal equivalent of what you see above) and poems. I would chortle at their painfully awful but nearly-there attempts, helplessly projecting human concepts like ‘trying really hard’ onto what I knew was not an earnest seven year old, but early machine learning.

A bit later I got to try out Adobe’s Neural Filters in a new PS update. I shoved a picture of my face into it and played with the sliders that deployed artificial intelligence to change expressions and age. The results were deliberately awful, because I knew I would never actually use them, so I went to extremes and pinged them off to family for Whatsapp LOLs. Regardless; the very gentlest of alarm bells was ringing. If I can change a face to this extent so easily, what’s to stop someone else changing a face for nefarious purposes?

Fast forward to 2022. Our mate Kev Again — featured previously after his mauling by DeepDream — mentioned an AI programme he’d been using to create pictures. He was having rather a lot of fun with it, and I had a go myself. Hm, I thought, yeah, it’s quite fun! (“Pin all the things”.) But I couldn’t really see how I might use it in my work, even if I’d wanted to, and besides, my contracts for client work are pretty much 85% a giant sign held aloft that says Thou Shalt Not Submit Any Work That Might Ever Have Had Anything To Do With Anyone Else Ever.

So, NightCafé Studio was also just a toy, then, and I forgot about that as well. Besides, at that very moment we were too busy getting excited about NFTs to think about artificial intelligence (more on THAT later, too).

And then; out of the blue I got an invite to beta test an app called DALL*E, which made artificially generated pictures. As you might be able to tell by now, I’m never one to back away from the thrill of a new piece of kit or technology, especially one so apparently BRAND new that it isn’t even out yet, so I seized the day. I asked it rather predictably at first to make a picture of ‘a night-time street scene in an 8bit art style’, because I was deep into my vaporwave playlists that week. And it did. Not bad, so long as you don’t want to print it at any sort of acceptable resolution or pass it off as your best work:

I did it again; this time, ‘shopping for pens and ink in a haunted pen shop in the style of Aubrey Beardsley’. Hm; it made a decent fist of that too. In fact, I liked them quite a lot. They had a certain charm.

After a great deal of messing about, I realised I should really have a look at whether it could reproduce anything that looked ‘like me’ — I don’t mean ‘a portrait’, though that’s happened since (it didn’t work very well). I wanted to know if the system could produce work that looked like mine. For the first time, I got the barest inkling — pun entirely inktentional - of the theory of a notion of an idea of a suspicion that this might, at some point, perhaps be a threat.

Let’s go in with possibly THE most widely-known of my pieces of work, I thought. Let’s ask it for a cover for To Kill A Mockingbird. I could see from the results exactly what it had been trained on — I could even name some of the illustrators — but nothing was usable beyond rough concept sketches or layouts, with useless lettering.

I then asked for ink drawings of Christmas iconography — I thought I’d try some old and very mainstream work that’s been out there a long time. And it made some alarmingly naturalistic looking stuff. Immediately I was put in mind of all the times I’d been ripped off in the very early days of doing hand-lettering, by people and companies who should know better but were seeing hand-drawn type for the first time (we’re talking late 90s and early 00s) and weren’t thinking that lettering was capable of being plagiarised as well as images.

…hmmm.

Despite the minor shudder, I kept on. I asked it to make words with ink. Totally illegible, though the energy was kind of there. Then logos. Then ink bottles. The cross hatching. Then illustrations for horror stories for kids…in black and white. Then landscapes in ink. And on it went.

It did them all, with its only stumbling block being that lettering was entirely unusable and hands were snigger-at-the-screen terrible. This was still only about a year ago, but even at that point a tiny but chilling voice was whispering Banksy’s ‘Laugh Now’ into my brain.

Over the course of the rest of the year I kept on playing. Kev Again was integrating AI into his image-making, and nicely so. Hands continued to be grim. But humans in my creative orbit began to make uneasy noises. I love tech, especially the sort that enriches my work and my process — whether the ancient Adana, my 80s Gocco printers or the latest Adobe feature, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be threatened by any of it; try it, learn it, and find out how I can deploy it. Another thing in the pencil case. But…but.

Never mind. On with the work. As well as playing with AI I was simultaneously immersing myself in the Web3 world, buying crypto, building an NFT collection and spending sometimes too much time in Discord because such things, just like Apple Pencils, Photoshop and magical things before them, are always just the next step in how we make, share and sell things. Nothing phased me — peak excitement was reached when minting a hotly-anticipated NFT after getting a whitelist spot. WAGMI! It was later stolen, but…yep, more on that later.

Around summertime I dove into Holly Herndon’s Spawning project. A lifelong lover of electronic sounds, I knew her records and was enthralled by her conjoined-twin Ai+Holly progeny. At the same time, she and her colleagues had developed Have I Been Trained?, a site which claims to allow artists to choose whether or not their images can be scraped for use by Stable Diffusion, MJ and OpenAi. I thought long and hard about what to click, yes or no. Did I want my images included in any large image training model? In what feels like a lifetime ago, I had a rather generalised feeling at the time that I didn’t want to be *excluded* from the world of AI, so clicked ‘Yes’. But that wasn’t actually what was being asked, and by the time I understood the specifics of the question some time later and went back to change it to a ‘No’, the site had inverted its system to one where, rather than choosing to opt in or out, you had to manually seek out any images of yours in the system, and ask for them to be excluded one by one (that’s still the system they’re using today).

I carried on. Towards the end of the year the world of commissioned work began to feel distinctly odd, with subtle but long-in-the-making shifts in modus operandi, their origins in the pandemic, finally manifesting in the way that work was coming in (awkwardly, unpredictably) and being managed (slowly and painfully). I began to see colleagues talk publicly about work being ‘weird’, and turnover being down. Against this landscape, my social media feeds began to fill up with people excitedly spewing out picture after picture made mainly in Midjourney, some calling themselves…artists. I, businesslike as ever, shut down the usual quarterly roundup of IP violations on Redbubble and Etsy, annoyed by the usual brazen help-yourself attitudes to artists’ work in the public domain — something which feels quaint now — and continued to stay abreast of the NFT world despite a sobering wallet theft, a gifted NFT stuck in cyberspace and a shady ‘buy it back’ deal with an anonymous stranger.

In the run up to Christmas I was busy with the annual seasonal promotion, the demands of the daily Inkvent project and assorted client jobs. I didn’t ‘play’ with AI again until the new year, using it to generate some atmospheric 80s-style pieces as refs to try and capture the vibe of some upcoming illustration work, and to experiment with layouts for a looming book project. We used MJ to make targets for my Dad’s shooting practice — zombies who may or may not look like certain politicians, all OK because of course they weren’t real people — and introduced my Mum to AI, whose first Midjourney piece was a beautiful Japan-inspired coastal landscape rendered in ‘ink’. She was fascinated, and loved the process — “I can put away my paints now’”, she said. “So can I”, I said, trying not to let inherited gallows humour extinguish her lovely anticipation.

I made a part-AI-part-Photoshop-part-Procreate leaving card for a mate, and used it to help make a silly birthday card for my sister. It was useful for generating some demographically accurate reference figures for an artwork I was making. And I did some more of those 80s experiments. I even started an Instagram page to capture the best ones. Kev Again continued to deploy AI subtly and successfully in his design work, and although I still hadn’t found where AI might ‘fit’ into my work, I still felt like it was a friend rather than a foe.

And then…and then. I joined the Midjourney facebook page, and at the same time, people calling themselves ‘professional prompters’ (to a great deal of derision and hilarity) and ‘AI artists’ began writing about how ‘real artists’ had somehow been gatekeeping, hiding secrets and lying about how long it took to create work. Look! many of them said; it IS easy after all! How dare those artists charge so much to do this!

I love this picture. She’s beautiful. I made her. Or did I? I didn’t. I asked a machine to make her, in quite a lot of detail. I worked with a machine. Or did the machine work with me?

Almost overnight, the world seemed flooded with articles about AI: the threats, the warnings, rabid defence of it, declarative statements against, over-confident opinions thrown in all directions. People fought to defend their use of AI, to explain why human artists didn’t deserve to keep working, and others outlined how the world could never be without human-made objects and pictures. My stateside agency had begun to talk about it in their newsreels, and my Medium feed was suddenly full of tediously repetitive articles loudly telling me how to generate five-figure sums with a ChatGPT side-hustle. How to generate pictures in Midjourney and flog them back to people via Adobe Stock. How to bypass concerns about copyright to make AI pictures to print and sell on Etsy…oh, yeah, Etsy. Back to that old chestnut.

I talked about AI at length with my agency’s boss, collected opinions and followed real-world artists creating beautiful work using AI as one of their tools, trying to keep healthy, future-positive role models in my line of sight. I remained determined to be neither for nor against AI, neither scared nor cultishly absorbed by it. And despite wanting to pontificate in the public domain many times, I held off writing about it, not wanting to add another voice to the clattering hubris of prompters calling themselves artists, and artists throwing shade on users; the world did not need another article wanting to sound knowledgable and finite.

So I didn’t, until a single tweet brought me to the BBC’s attention.

Chapter 2, in which I talk about my research with regard to AI + copyright + IP, follows.

The future looks bookish.

2023-02-23T15:43:00.005+00:00

I recently received this email from David Shelley at Hachette Publishing, along with many other contributors to the book industry, and am sharing it here as it contains some beautifully positive, useful and curious insights into the landscape of books right now, as we move away from a pandemic into a different set of 'challenging' circumstances.

As you will know, I love books - buying, reading, designing and illustrating them - and people sometimes ask me whether 'books are dead', or on the decline; the rather simplistic assumption being that digital advances have somehow pushed paper books off the shelf.

One of the loveliest highlights is learning that things are actually rather good in the book world. Not fabulously, sunnily glowing, but productively optimistic, fuelled by a return to reading courtesy of pandemic-enforced hibernation, and a significant growth in the numbers of younger readers.

It's long, but well worth the read if, like me, you're a bit soul-tired of bad news, sad endings, scary AI stories and financial and political developments which feel at best threatening, and at their worst (usually at around 3am), malevolent. Take some joy from David's words as he talks about the growth in reading, strong book sales in Ukraine, Tik-Tokers' love for books - and an uptick in the manufacture of book cases!

(I also noted excitedly that Hachette have bought Paperblanks, whose delicious, bejewelled notebooks I have bought for years. Having not seen them around recently, I'm glad to hear they're still going to be there for my fevered collector's hands.)

Enjoy this chunk of gently uplifting news. It has been lightly edited for brevity.

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Dear authors, translators and illustrators,

I’m writing at the end of another eventful year to give an annual update on the current books market, to share some information about what’s happening at Hachette, and thoughts about what 2023 might hold for book publishing.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

As I think it’s important to find reasons to be cheerful right now, I thought I’d start with a few pieces of positive information about the overall state of the books market. Firstly, the data to the end of October shows that print book sales in the UK slightly increased in 2022 on 2021 – which was already a buoyant year for sales. Our figures show that audiobook sales have also shown some growth, and that ebook sales have remained steady.

Given the economic challenges in the UK, this is extremely heartening to see. There is a truism that two products are more able to withstand recessions than most – books and chocolate, because both are affordable luxuries that repay investment with great pleasure. For the hours of enjoyment that one gets from books and the depth of their emotional impact, I think they are terrific value for money compared to many other forms of entertainment (gaming, cinema, TV), and this year’s robust sales bear this out.

It is even better to see because, as has been well-documented, there was a boom in reading during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The fact that the market has remained strong – and a long way up on the pre-Covid sales of 2019 - suggests that even after lockdowns had ended, people have kept up the reading habit. Looking back in history, there is precedent for this: there was a marked and permanent jump up in sales of novels after the Second World War as it was a habit that many acquired during that time. The hope is that these readers acquired during the Covid era will remain with us in the future.

In terms of trends in the market, the other thing to feel hopeful about is the boom in younger readers. We are seeing TikTok as an incredibly strong driver of book recommendations and sales, and much of this market is made up of teenagers and twentysomethings. Their preference is predominantly for physical books, and there is great focus from this market on the production values of books and an emphasis on collectability. One nice side-effect is a boom in the production of bookcases after gradual decline in previous years; many teenagers now have a large collection of books and want to display them. Plus there has been a real rise in the popularity of subscription boxes, where readers get a book every month; it feels like another testament to the power of curation, and how much people like having a book chosen for them.

Some key themes in fiction include novels that feature or combine romance, fantasy, suspense and that have inclusion at their heart. It’s always hard to generalise but a lot of the bestsellers recommended on TikTok feature worlds and experiences that are different to the reader’s own. I think we’re also seeing a (welcome) dissolving of borders between genres. Research has long shown that readers often don’t read within narrow genre parameters – ie wouldn’t categorise themselves as a ‘crime reader’ or ‘science fiction reader’ and that seems to be more true than ever for younger readers now who are more influenced by story and character than genre. As someone who used to work as an editor predominantly within a genre (crime) and was frequently annoyed by the way this was used by those outside it to compartmentalise or reduce the impact of it, I couldn’t be more pleased to see this largely artificial industry system start to crumble.

In non-fiction we have seen a real rise in our specialist publishing. Even though the internet holds information on every conceivable subject, people are increasingly turning to books to give them trusted, fact-checked and detailed information on a particular issue that they are invested in. One example of this is the success of our Jessica Kingsley list, which is the world’s leading publisher in the fields of autism, arts therapies and gender diversity and sold more books than ever in 2022.

One other very positive phenomenon is the continued rise of independent bookshops, not just in the UK but also in India, Australia and other key markets. The rise of ethical consumerism and localism seems to have grown during 2020-21 and we are seeing more consumers who want to buy their books from local and independent retailers. It’s something we’re keen on here as the hand-selling independent booksellers do can often launch an author’s career, and it’s why we’re proud to work with the Booksellers Association and to be the official sponsor of Independent Bookshops Week which had its biggest and best year yet in 2022.

The Future

I think it would be probably be reckless right now to try to predict what even the near future will hold for our industry as things are changing so fast. But the things we are gearing up for in 2023 are a continuation of the supply chain and consumer confidence challenges I mentioned earlier – none of these look set to get any better in the immediate future – yet also, I hope, a continued recognition that books are a vital way of getting through difficult times. Thinking about the books published across our lists, they variously provide escapism and entertainment; an educational route towards success; a means to help improve health, wellbeing or life satisfaction; a deep dive into complex issues that cannot be adequately covered in a social media post or newspaper article; a route into other people’s psychology; a source of joy for adults and children alike; and a vision for a better future.

Lastly, I just wanted to share one interesting export sales statistic with you, which is that we have observed that book sales in Ukraine were at exactly the same level in 2022 as in 2021 – this is in addition to various charitable books contributions. I think this is a striking testament to the bravery and tenacity of Ukrainian booksellers, a number of whom came to the Frankfurt Book fair and whom we met with there, and to the enduring power of books.

All my best,
David.

Avon Called!

2023-02-23T14:59:00.002+00:00

Cosmetics, jewellery and perfume mail order behemoth Avon asked me to create illustrations that worked with and around the model for their new fragrance range last year, in a campaign which has just gone live.

The 'Eve Become' quartet of fragrances consists of Truth, Privé, Confidence and Eve; each created to reflect a different aspect of the wearer. Taking their cue from womanhood and everything the word can mean, and presented in beautiful, contemporary glass bottles, the scents offer alternative vibes depending on your mood on the day. The company needed a collection of images that spoke to the changeable nature of femininity.

Working with UK-based One Production, I went to London on the day that the PM resigned - definitely the topic of the day while we had our introductions - to be present at the campaign's photo shoot. Peering 'behind the curtain' of the hours-long process was a thrilling treat - I've been on site for all sorts of ad and photography-based things, but not a shoot quite like this. After a coffee or two I got to work sketching live on my iPad as the models went through their day, having makeup applied, hair tweaked and clothing pulled into place around them (with two very appealing dogs to entertain us in between takes - see below). Those girls were impressively professional - young, skilled and infinitely patient!

Surrounded by a team that included photographer, stylist, lighting team, director, photo editor and a catering and logistics squad, I wove my way in and out of the action Procreating spontaneous sketches. Not intended to form part of the final ads, these were made to capture a vibe that would inform the work later, back in the studio:

(Her name was Margeaux, and she was enormous!)

Back in the office week or so later, the selected photos were sent over to me and the work began. We'd already explored some ideas - two sets of suggested looks, one digital and one ink-made - so we had an array of looks to base the final pieces on. Here are some of the analogue tests:

And here's a handful of the digital pieces. These ones I absolutely loved, because they're very much in the realm of the kind of work I'm really into at the moment - free, energetic, and with a delightful amount of spontaneity!

One of the things I'd offered to do as part of this job - in fact, something I offer all my clients now - is capture the process of making the work. This is a brilliant thing to do for two reasons; first, the client gets to see the process, which can not only help to shape the final outcome but can be really useful for communicating how long something might take, and what's involved in adjustments, and second, small snippets of film can add incredible value when it comes to social media and passing those 'peeks behind the curtain' into the client's audience and customers. So the pieces for this campaign were captured at almost every stage, in closeup, for integration into the final ads:

The process of developing final pieces was a delightful sequence of back and forth between myself, art director Rich Gent and the Avon creative team, wrestling with the edges of ink, line quality, and just how organic the art should be. In the end, the final pieces were a mix of real sloppy ink on paper and digital work - maybe you can see which is which, maybe you can't!

This little gif was a tidy example of how the team blended my

live capture with video and stills from the shoot.

Thanks to Rich, Lottie, Lesley and Melanie for involving me, and to my agents at CIA through whom the job arrived. It's become one of my favourite jobs ever!

"I can't imagine a life without music."

2023-01-18T19:08:00.004+00:00

Gordon Hayes, owner of Nervous Records, the longest-serving record shop in Hinckley, died on Monday, and a town is in mourning.

Gordon was our friend, and was thought of as a friend by most of our small Midlands town, it seems. With sparkling blue eyes behind spectacles gently channelling those of his idol John Lennon, he wielded the exuberance and sparkle of someone much younger than his date of birth might suggest; sharp of wit, firm in his beliefs, he was unfiltered in his kindness and generosity.

So far this sounds like the kind of write-up that would have him cringing, batting it away with a checked shirt sleeve while offering you a cup of tea. I can hear this distinctive voice tutting and laughing as I'm sitting here grappling for phrases that don't succumb to cliché. You can hear that gentle voice in this interview.

I grew up next door to Gordon's Dad, Eric, who lived at No. 4 Hays Lane. It was decades before I was corrected in my belief that the lane was named after Eric; it wasn't, as Gordon pointed out one day, because his 'Hayes' has an 'E' in it. Gordon would arrive at No. 4 in a rocker's jacket with long hair, cool specs, looking grown-up and dramatic, and I would watch as this elongated, slim 'youth' wandered up the drive. That's Gordon, my Mum and Dad would say.

He opened his shop in the 70s, and its history is the subject of this documentary. And although the shop's breathtaking longevity is impressive in itself, surviving recessions, streaming, online shopping and pandemics, this blog is about the man who ran it.

He bought our records, we bought his; he ordered in the rare things for us. We sold him records, he sold our 45rpm adapters during the years that we made them. He bought our vegan solid chocolate eggs and we drank tea. There were all the conversations in the Co-op; the joy over their vegan doughnuts, when such things were still a distant fantasy for us. His horror when it closed down - how far was he going to have to walk now! I still refer to brussels sprouts the same way as him, my fellow sprout-lover— ‘little cabbages’. I even designed him a new shop logo once; I think he used it on paper, but it never made it to the shopfront (why would it, when his hand-rendered type stands as bold and clear today as the day it went up?)

And he was our biggest cheerleader when we released a 12" with Sage Francis:

Gordon came to our gallery events and surprised me with his never-diminishing interest in my work. I worried I was boring him if I went off on a work chat, but he was always curious. Maybe I was still the art-school teenager in his eyes; the one that would have walked into his shop asking for awkward records when I could easily have sought them from the 'other' record shop - the one I didn't like to go in, because the staff could be aloof and they never had what I wanted.

Speaking of work, his DIY ethic was front and centre, and a significant contributor to our own modus operandi. Of particular charm were Gordon's hand-drawn shop signs. Long ago established as a way to save cash, his beautiful, almost casually-calligraphic letters were called upon to write every sale board and every poster. He somehow managed to master kerning and justification without resort to digital means - no small achievement. The little stars too; check out the little stars!

I was emailing him a week or so ago, as he'd sent me his annual home-produced birthday card - always funny. His last words to me were "Again, just the one at the back!" - I chuckled, but it wouldn't be funny here even if I tried to explain it. Gordon's desire to argue his point was strong and informed, but he was also a listener. His lapel badges and posters were a neat non-verbal heads-up to his stance on a way of life - which you could choose to engage with or not - and wherever you stood on the spectrum of those issues, he'd talk with you about them all. His influence was such that, having had to give up dairy in 1997 as an already non-meat eater, I was inspired to cut the remaining animal-based foods and products from my life, like Gordon. We continue to live that way today, and in further examples, we're able to reflect back on our music-buying and identify the things that came to us through the Nervous sphere of influence.

In the hours after the news of his death was made public, Gordon’s many customers began deploying the word 'legend' - and when I looked it up, I realised it wasn't a lazy superlative; it actually fitted like the proverbial Smiths' Hand In Glove:

His legendary status came from his humility, his wealth of knowledge, his ethical stance, his humour and warm welcome. There’s more, but they’re all quality traits in a human. His existence on earth spanned seven decades, so not only did he possess a musical knowledge that was empirical and encyclopaedic, he had a customer base that was multi-generational: people all over the area knew him, but so did their Grandpas, their Mums, Aunties, siblings - and then their children. The poet Buddy Wakefield, seen with Gordon in the photograph above, said "truly humble people don't use the word humble"; Gordon's humility first and foremost seemed to shape everything else he did and was.

He's gone. But someone on Facebook said that they thought Gordon "was just always going to be there" - and in all the ways that truly matter, he will be.

~ The growing collection of tributes outside Gordon's shop today, 18th January 2023. ~

Photos: First (Will Johnston/Leicester Mercury) and last photo of Gordon borrowed from The Hinckley Times where I briefly worked as a typesetter of obituaries for a while. All other photographs are my own.

The Annual Fist Fight.

2023-01-18T14:45:00.004+00:00

I've just seen someone talking about a website called My Future Self where you write to yourself privately and check back in later - either much later, or just a few months. The potential for encouraging, moving, sorrowful or grateful readings years later is all there, and it seized my imagination in the moment. What a novel idea, I thought.

But then I remembered I've been writing myself a letter every single year for the past 16, 17, 18 years - I can't remember how long, as I don't always keep the letters. I do it once a year, and I always do it as I'm taking the Christmas tree down, filing the letter in a sealed envelope deep in the decorations box. Then, when it's time for the decs to be put out once again, the letter is there, and I'm able to review where I was - and see where I am, in comparison.

Every single time I forget a letter's going to be in there, then I laugh at my own surprise, and then I see it and I put off reading it because I'm a sombre little sod with a leaning to the saturnine, especially at the turning of the year when Christmas is over and I've a whole year yawning out before me. No-one reads this letter, and I wholeheartedly don't want them to; I can't bear the idea. It's addressed to Moley, because that's what Leigh calls me and it's what I feel is most purely and entirely Me. And usually, in that moment, I'm feeling a bit small and mammalian with trouble seeing into the distance.

Moley's usually a bit sad, and the letter's always long and a bit rushed, because I write it between dusting and wrapping up decorations. I never thought I did journaling - I react to the word with the cynical lip-curl of a teenager who thinks All That Stuff Is Bollocks (which is a cringingly obvious sign I probably should be doing some of it) - but I realise this is what this is, albeit with entries a year apart.

What do learn when I read these letters?

Well, I learn that I love to moan it all out onto the paper. All the things I can't say to anyone. I am very cross with myself, often. I definitely swear a lot and I stay angry about things. not exactly grudges, but if I spot something that seems to be afflicting me fro one year to the next, I can see that I get really f*cking angry about it. I like to take it all out on myself. I like to take it out on others, too. I like to choose a different sparkling fountain pen ink to do it with, the glitter gel pens of the same eye-rolling teenager much in evidence. And I also see that the struggle is real when it comes to giving gratitude: these letters have shown me year on year that I can only see the things that aren't sorted, that weren't done, and that still need work.

Work itself, actually, isn't mentioned that much - a significant book publication or project might get a nod, but that's not what this is about; I have Instagram (for now) to show me chronology of professional high points. When it comes down to it, my assessment of the success of the year hinges on three things, and is seen through the prism of those: my relationships, my health, my mind, and the stuff I didn't do.

I still have a lip-curling teen reaction to the idea of journaling, of brag documents; I'm not comfortable with end of year round-ups of my achievements on social media (though we do that privately, making coffee and going over the previous year's wall planner before we put it away) but I wonder if I need to rethink my approach. Because left to my own devices, left to my own blank page, I only fill it with ire. And the amount of stuff to be grateful for, and celebrate, is actually overwhelming.

"Beating yourself up is never a fair fight" - Andrea Gibson

Line by IDLES.

In Spite Of It All, Life Is Beautiful.

2023-01-05T18:42:00.000+00:00

For 2022's Christmas project I decided, in a break from 20+ years of massive annual mailings, that I wouldn't post anything - Autumn's Royal Mail overwhelm, the cost of postage, workload and the strikes led me to that decision. Instead, I decided to make an animation instead, and make a very small print run for only those people I could physically hand a card to.

As you may know if you've already seen my posts in December, I chose to illustrate this excellent line by the band Idles; it comes toward the end of their track 'The End', from their album Crawler. The end of the year, with its political, social, economic and emotional landscape almost begging to be served a reminder of this line's sentiment, was the opportunity to deploy the words we've loved since hearing them hurled out from singer Joe Talbot's passionate jaws for the first time.

They were printed in a single colour using one of my tiny Japanese Gocco printers, which use a system that's halfway between a screen print and a rubber stamp. The Gocco can be notoriously difficult to get a good outcome from, but this one came out right first time and was the perfect printing machine for this style of work.

I've been using Goccos for almost 20 years now, and have made myriad projects with them.

A relative of the Riso (it's actually made by Riso) the Gocco is a 1980s toy made for children, also used by adults and now something of a cult item, and is a gnarly, unpredictable and joyful little beast which uses small screens that are exposed with old-fashioned flash bulbs, similar to the kind you'd get with a separate flash unit on a 35mm camera. Battery-operated, the flash bulbs are single-use, as are the screws, so this is robustly not a great environmental choice - but it is obsolete, with consumables hard to find (I collect them!) that would otherwise simply be landfilled - but I've already got an alternative screen solution lined up for when that day comes.

A to-size original is printed by laser printer into white paper, which has to have a nice and deep, even toner application - this can alternatively be created to-scale using the carbon-based Gocco pens you can still find from time to time. A new screen slid into the holder, then placed under the plastic window where pressure is applied to the lid - this houses the batteries - and the popping flash bulbs expose the screen.

The ink's then applied to the screen one colour at a time and built up once each colour dries.

Those are the basics, anyway. There's quite a bit more to it than that, but I'm going to save the detail for a video I'm making to accompany the still-sealed Gocco I have coming up for sale, if anyone is interested! I already have four...five is getting carried away...

I Gocco'd some envelopes too, and realised with horror that about 10 of our best chums were too far away to deliver by hand (I obviously didn't think it through all the way!) so did post a handful using these brilliant google-eyed fruit and veg stamps I'd saved for a rainy day - they must be 15 years old at least! But not the 1000 or so I would have posted in previous (aka 'pre-Covid') years.

I loved how these turned out, and although I adore Christmas and every speck of glitter associated with it, I sent them to people with myriad religious views and attitudes to the season of Santa, so I made them gently non-Christmassy. For that reason I also printed a heap of extras, to put in the shop, as they carry a simple message of affirmation, without the tyranny of the toxic positivity trotted out from so many memes and home decorations. You can find them at shop.inkymole.com while stocks last.

Payment for freelancers: it needs to evolve. It really, really does.

2022-11-21T15:14:00.003+00:00

I got quite upset the other day when I got the call to collect a repaired car.

It was my sister’s; I’d organised the repair in her absence, and I told the garage she’d settle the bill when she was back from her holiday. But of course, the garage, quite correctly, reminded me it couldn’t release the car without payment. So I paid.

Then it hit me. In that moment, as I settled the bill, I wondered why is it that I am expected to release ready-to-use artwork and then wait weeks or months for payment, often long after the work’s actually been deployed by the client?

I was staggered to grasp in that moment that in almost 30 years of working as a full time freelance illustrator running a limited company, the payment system hasn’t evolved. Every time I ask for a deposit, I’m looked at askance. Historically, too, suggesting it to an agent has them running scared — fearing that if their agency charges a deposit and the next one doesn’t, the client will simply go to that next one instead. There’s been the occasional downpayment, but in hundreds and hundreds of jobs, I can probably count those on my fingers.

It takes boldness to bring about change and I’ve felt like a lone voice for years, but I was overwhelmed that day by how different my financial machinations could look if work was paid for on delivery of artwork.

I can’t believe I’m still having this discussion, actually.

There’s hope. One client recently offered what they called their ‘new-style’ contract, nervous I wouldn’t like it — but it offered a third on signing the contract, a third on delivery of artwork, and the final third when the work was published. Now THAT sounded…evolved. Still not perfect, but thoughtful. And I couldn’t sign quick enough.

I’ve three decades of managing a business with a traditionally difficult and unpredictable cashflow; I’m good at it. But I’d rather not have had to get good at managing a wildly fluctuating income, based not on a variable stream of work but on the unknowable due date of the payment for that work. I spend a lot of business hours managing money, and always have — hours that could be spent doing other things. And seriously; in all that time, despite the increases in speed at which work can be generated and sent, the immediacy of modern bank transfers, the myriad options for quick online payments, technological marvels and invoice management, the system for ‘talent-makes-work > bills client > client uses work > sits on payment’ hasn’t changed.

And it really, really needs to.

Thank you Marcia Willett: all those books, and all those titles.

2022-10-20T17:45:00.001+01:00

I might do all sorts of fancy stuff as part of this job, but I've always done simple lettering for book covers - hundreds of them, many of which I never post.

I love doing them though, especially this ongoing series for Marcia Willett's books, playing my small part in these massively bestselling books.

Today, on the day her most recent book is published - Christmas At The Keep - I learn that she has died. She was amazingly prolific and adored by her readers, and I truly will miss working on her titles.