The penultimate blog! 51 weeks and things have finally caught up with me, I’m absolutely shattered and a little germy so sadly Andrew Till week wasn’t a huge event – I need to conserve energy for week 52.
I’d allotted Tuesday as ‘Make’ day, however by the time I’d arranged to drop off remaining Christmas orders and the rest of my festive cards I was left with under 2 hours to complete the task. Aware beforehand that time was likely to be short instead of sleeping Monday night my brain was buzzing with how to condense week 51 in to an achievable Make. I had planned to spend the day researching, however I reallised that part of the point is the do something creative, so sitting on the internet with a cup of tea wasn’t really going to cut it.
Andrew Till is a great friend of mine, we worked together in my previous job for 8 years, and have known each other since our late teens, enjoyed holidays together and numerous film and pizza evenings. Andy now lives in Kent with his lovely Italian wife Flaviana, they are currently in the process of making their new house their own, however in the middle of tearing off radiators and painting he still finds the time to update my website and change logos for which I’m ever grateful.
Andy runs his own successful business as a web designer and ‘app’ creator – plasticwebsites.com. When setting up my own business there’s was no one else I would have asked to create my own site and branding. The ‘Parrott’ logo that features everywhere is perfect for me and shows off Andy’s talent as a graphic illustrator as well as his design skills.
I wanted Andy to be one of my ‘Makes’ because his logo design has inspired me often to think of products that reflect the logo – to think how important branding is and how it should be used to constantly promote yourself and advertise. The plan was this week to research how I could utilise my branding to create ‘produced’ items to sell in lifestyle shops as more of a staple or steady income.
So this week I began to brainstorm what I might design and produce for more of a mass market – Cath Kidson on a mini scale. I started to thinking about how I could use my print designs on metal and have them reproduced as gift items and textile products. I guess it’s not the true idea of a maker to think in such a commercial way, however I want a house and an income to be brutally honest – this is a hard job to make a living out of and I’m always open to new ideas.
To start with I decided that a kind of brainstorming method would be the making part of week 51 – I wanted to create a method of retaining ideas as and when they popped in to my head. Using an old picture frame from a charity shop I cut strips of patterned papers and wrote on the back of each one different ideas I’d already had, I then attached them to the board, layering them up – it turned out looking a bit like a ‘swatch’ board, but it means I now have a ‘contained’ method of keeping ideas and whenever I have time to research a new product I can just pull one off.
Following the making part I then spent the rest of the time I had researching product manufacture, finding everything from having your designs put on wallpaper to drumsticks and plectrums – I became extremely excited, particularly about my new online gallery shop, which could be the home of some of these products.
So thanks to my good friend Andrew Till I’m thinking a bit more commercially – good thing to!
Next week it finishes, my 52nd Make! Items are coming in from friends and family for the ‘Ready Steady Make’ – I’ll be situated in the gallery at Walford Mill on 28, 29 and 30 creating the final piece, hopefully minus the germs and a bit more sparky – see you there.
