Settling into the new office…
February 19th, 2012 | Darren Di Lieto
It’s been a chaotic few weeks, but we’re starting to get back on track now at our new address. More updates coming soon! To find our new address please check our contact page.
A job well done!
February 3rd, 2012 | Darren Di Lieto
We really appreciate it when one of our member’s clients send us a nice email to tell us what a great job the illustrator did! Here’s one we received a few days ago…
“ While I was searching for an artist for my novel, The Vampire Girl Next Door, I came across hireanillustrator.com and looked through the portfolios of many artists on your site. I had a particular style in mind, so when I found an illustration by Jose Pardo for a horror novel, Widdershins, I knew I had found someone who could create an illustration I would like for my own novel. Fortunately for me, Jose Pardo is not only a talented artist, he is also an easy person to communicate with. I had spoken with some other artists before him who may not have liked such a specific idea I had in mind for the cover. With Jose, he welcomed all my ideas and suggestions which were often quite detailed. The result was a cover just like what I wanted. It’s a cover I would have illustrated if I were an artist instead of a writer. In addition to the cover illustration, he also designed the cover with the lettering for the title and also the logo on the back cover. The cover is now a perfect match for the idea of my novel. Everyone who sees it compliments it and I know it will contribute to future book sales.
I belong to a local writers group and I recommend hire an illustrator in general and Jose Pardo in particular for their book covers. “
– Richard Arbib
Mini update: 2011 Review…
January 4th, 2012 | Darren Di Lieto
We’re currently doing a review of what worked and what didn’t in 2011, as far as promoting our lovely members is concerned. So there are hopefully going to be lots of new promotion and advertising opportunities in the pipeline as we work out our timetable for 2012 over the coming weeks.
Elf & Safety – the new hai background illustration
January 2nd, 2012 | Darren Di Lieto
A few weeks ago leading up towards Christmas we asked the loverly Miriam Bos to create a winter background for the hire an illustrator website. We love the way it turned out and we hope you do too!
Here’s the finished article in all it’s glory.
Backtracking a bit, here is the original rough/sketch. Miriam was a joy to work with and very quick off the mark. From the word go, she knew exactly what we were after.
Miriam explained to us that the image had a story behind it and it was the story that was the basis for the concept. There was an elf who thought that the winter was so cold that the trees needed clothing to keep them warm! After receiving the rough I made a few small suggestions, like moving the squirrels onto the inner trees to give them a bit more screen time, but all in all I was happy for Miriam to proceed to produce the final image.
The final was then produced and we went back and forth a few times, knocking off a few pixels here and there, optimising the image for web, and arranging it to work with the layout of the website and logo. Once that was all done with a couple days to spare we got the new background up for Christmas!
With a great eye for colour, Miriam Bos was a pleasure to work with! Check out the new background on the hire an illustrator website. 
Mini updates, like an update, but smaller…
December 21st, 2011 | Darren Di Lieto
We’re going to be attempting to publish more regular mini-updates on the Staff Blog over the next year. So to get the ball rolling, Darren has been working on a new version (version 2) of the White Label Portfolios and is hoping he’ll get it finished before Christmas. Also we’ve recently made a few improvements to the hai website, but one to take note of is the improved search facility. In the past if you wanted to see which Children’s illustrators we had in Spain you would need to go to our Advance Search page and click on the Spain and Children’s & Young Adult option to see the results. Now you can save the URL from that result and go directly to it anytime you want rather than preforming the search again. For example… http://www.hireanillustrator.com/i/search/#childrens_young_adult&spain
Hopefully lots of mini-updates will be published on the Staff Blog over the next few months, but if you want the latest news and titbits, follow our micro-updates on Twitter… https://twitter.com/hireanillo
The holidays are coming and we’re looking forward to them, we hope you are too.
Installing Exhibitions: A practical guide
October 24th, 2011 | Jane Di Lieto-Danes
Exhibiting your work is always exciting, but how do you know what the right way to display your artwork is? What fixings should you use? What’s the best way to light your work? How do you make a shelf for your 3-D pieces to stand on? Even if you have a professional gallery install and curate your art for you, it’s always handy to know how to the practical side of things work. And if you’re doing it all yourself, then it’s really important to know the best and safest way to do things. So, it’s time to look at another useful book from the hai bookshelf!
Installing Exhibitions: A practical guide, by Pete Smithson, does exactly what it says on the cover. If you want to know how to transport, fix, hang and display your prints, paintings, 3-D or audiovisual work, this book will give you the information you need. Pete Smithson is the Technical Manager for Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London, so he definitely knows his stuff!
The book starts off by asking you to consider the space that you are using, then briefly talks about risk and health and safety issues (important as you will have people visiting your show). Next it looks at the tools you’ll need, how to prepare the space, and how to safely pack and move your work. There is plenty of information about different types of wall fixings plus a chapter on using rigging to suspend items. For 2-D artwork, there is advice on how to plan where to put the pieces so they look their best and how to hang different works. For those artists who create audiovisual art, there is a chapter that covers using projectors, video and audio, how to install the equipment and what to check to make sure it works.
If you fancy having a go at a bit of construction, this book will show you how to make various shelves and plinths. The final chapter looks at electrics (UK, Europe and North America), managing all those cables and using lighting. At the end of the book is a glossary and space to make notes.
This is a great book for anyone who exhibits their own or other people’s work at any level (or who is planning to). It’s totally hands-on and full of useful advice and plenty of diagrams. We recommend it!
Publishing info -
Title: Installing Exhibitions: A practical guide
Author: Pete Smithson
Publisher: A & C Black Publishers Ltd. (2009)
ISBN: 978-1-4081-1016-4
How do you like them apples?
October 10th, 2011 | Darren Di Lieto
It wasn’t a quick job, but we’ve finally finished it. The hire an illustrator website has been rebuilt from the ground up… and we’re very happy with it! I’ve been testing it live for a week now and I’m pleased to consider it officially launched as of today. So tell your colleagues and friends as we would love to know what they think. Whether you send us an email or leave us a comment via Facebook or Twitter, get in contact!
Visually this wasn’t a redesign, as we wanted to keep the look the same, but we’ve made some big improvements in leaps and bounds as far as the underlying code is concerned. Have you checked out our new search pages yet? I’m hoping you’re impressed with the ease and speed at which you can now find our artists and illustrators. We now list additional links on behalf of our members, so you can now see if they have an online store or have a Google+ or LinkedIn profile along with the usual suspects. Also we’ve made improvements to allow artists or animators to have video galleries in their portfolios. There’s more brilliant new features to announce, but I think that’s enough for one blog post…
We hope you enjoy and have as much fun using our new site as we do! For the latest updates sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
Fish on a Stick, Pugs and more…
September 5th, 2011 | Jane Di Lieto-Danes
We just love having interesting, original items created by illustrators on show in our home and office. It really makes for a unique environment to live or work in and provides shed-loads of inspiration! We thought we’d share our latest arty acquisitions with you
We were very happy to give this rather cool, folksy fish a new home! He’s hand carved and painted by the awesome Jim Bradshaw and if you swim on over to his Etsy shop, you might be able to find your own fishy friend to brighten up your office or living room! Jim also has lots of other original character-based artwork to choose from.
Jane was extremely chuffed to get some fab Gemma Correll stuff for her birthday, including one of Gemma’s Boston Tea Party tees, some badges, a roll of Animal Parade tape and a brilliant original framed Pug drawing. We’re not quite sure what to do with the tape yet, but suspect it won’t be long before any bare-looking folders or boxes are covered . Check out Gemma’s shop on her website for lots of great gift ideas!
If you have a favourite illustrator (or several!), don’t forget that they probably have their own shop online or sell items through other websites. If they don’t, but you fancy having a piece of their work hanging in your home, it’s often worth getting in touch with them to ask if they would sell you a print or create an original for you!
Evolution of the new hai background image
July 10th, 2011 | Darren Di Lieto
I’m please to announce that we have a new background image on hire an illustrator, created by the talented Jose Pardo. The new background wasn’t just a simple case of asking an illustrator whether they had a piece of work that could just be reused as-is on the site… What we wanted was something original that reflected the illustrator’s style, without being too dominating on the page, and I’m really happy with what Jose produced and how it turned out. As the hai website is all about the illustrators and illustration I’m going to share with you how we got to the final piece.
Here is the first sketch that Jose sent me a few weeks ago.
Following the first sketch, Jose started to flesh it out and it was only a short period of time before he sent me this next image.
After I had reviewed the above piece, I let Jose know how well things were proceeding and that the image looked great. I then left it in his capable hands to complete the image with no set deadline for delivery as the deadline was at his discretion.
The next thing I heard from him was that he was tweaking a few things and working on a dragon! Later the same day he emailed me the following image.
Click on the image for a larger preview, so you can see a bit more detail.
Now this would have been a fantastic place to leave the image alone and call it finished, but there are some rules that neeed to be followed if an image is going to work as a background image on a website. I asked Jose to email me a layered version of the artwork and a few minutes later that’s what he sent me. I then got to work on ruining his creation.
I then emailed him back this image…
I had dropped a lot of the small details, the land and changed the background colour to white. Jose and I discussed what I’d done and he said that he much preferred a blue background as the clouds had been illustrated to work with that. From my point of view I was also happy to go with blue as that’s the colour we tend to normally use on the site. So Jose then refined the images a bit and sent me a white and a blue option…
I did like the white one, but it felt more right to go with the blue one still. So I then took the blue one and got to work on the arrangement of the elements to make it fit with the website framework. At this point I actually uploaded what I had to the site and sent Jose a link to it, so it could be seen as a live preview. I had squeezed the floating castles into the top section and put a cloud behind the main large one to try and balance the overall look. The red from behind the hai logo was also removed.
After I sent Jose this version, being the perfectionist he is, he then re-did the layout and sent me another copy which became the final version which can now be seen on the site in all its glory.
Click on the image for a large preview or go to our main site to see it in action.
Jose (MoonVisionStudio) Pardo was brilliant and so easy to work with… You can see more of his work at: http://hireanillustrator.com/i/jose-pardo or http://moonvisionstudio.com/
A big thank you, Jose, for all your hard work!
They seek him here, they seek him there…
June 28th, 2011 | Jane Di Lieto-Danes
Being easy to contact when you’re a freelance illustrator, animator or designer is pretty important. If an art director or agency wants you for a job, they need to be able find your email address or phone number quickly. Otherwise, they might just pass you over for someone else…
It always surprises me how many creatives don’t make it straightforward to find their contact information on their websites. Or even on their business cards or promo postcards. Really, I hear you say? Yes, indeed. I’m not talking about the majority of people, of course, just a small number, but surely no-one should be making it difficult for potential clients to contact them. Over the years we have seen illustrator’s postcards with gorgeous images, but no contact details on them at all, or with just a website URL – which is fine, but doesn’t make getting in touch as easy as it could be. Make sure that somewhere on there is a name, email address and ideally your telephone number, as well as your URL. Make space for a contact section or page on your website too. You need to make it nice and clear who created all that amazing artwork and how ADs can get hold of you to produce some more for their project!
This isn’t just an issue with contact details, however. Very occasionally, it can be almost impossible to find an artist’s name. Presumably while maintaining an uber-cool, minimalist image, some people neglect to add their name to their website or other marketing products. This certainly isn’t a common problem, but when it does crop up it is very frustrating having to trawl through Google and other websites trying to work out who that person is.
Always remember that art directors are very busy people. They will not want to spend their time hunting around for either a name or a way to contact you. Make it easy for them. And once you are in contact with them, be consistent with the information you use. If you send a out a postcard to an AD, make sure your follow-up email uses the same name and email address that you used on the postcards so they can see who you are. And it may seem obvious, but don’t go and change which name or email address you use half-way through working with a client.
Keep your work visible, get your name known and make getting in touch with you a breeze!
