Central Station - Creative Social Network

In my relentless bid to get my work into the ether and get noticed, Twitter is pretty much the glue that holds my efforts together. I can never remember how I end up following/hearing about half the people on there, but my feed is always proving incredibly useful at pointing me to where I need to be, before I know I need to be there.

Central Station is one such thing - I really can't remember how I began following them, but I did, and then eventually got round to sorting my profile out on there. It's a great little site, quite new and so the community feels quite close and friendly; I hope it stays that way. Creative social networking is nothing new, there's everything from Society6 to IdeasTap. Society6 is great but full of so many amazing creatives that it's a bit scary and you don't really get noticed when you've got so many people around you. So Central Station feels worth it (uploading your images to these sites is always a pain I find, no way round it though so you gotta set some time aside and just do it) and, I guess, as always, you get back what you put in.

Creative Networking probably isn't going to mean you'll start getting tonnes of requests for your work. You might get lucky and someone spot you, but the main reward of things like these is just the exposure; the first step to getting noticed is getting mentioned (to quote Phonebooth, which I watched for the zillionth time last night, I am in love with kiefer sutherland's voice. Just his voice.) The other main benefit, which I think is probably better really, is getting exposed to everyone else out there. Sometimes it can be daunting (ie Society6) but collaboration is key these days - if you can share your work, and create some really strong ties with people who each have a mutual respect for each other's work, this is where good things happen. Once you're out of Uni, where do you mingle with artists and designers on a daily basis? Most likely the net, and mostly Central Station et al if you're clever.

So you can check out my profile here. I was contacted shortly after publishing all my work that I was featured in their February We Like This blog. Which is ace! They featured one of my humble lil ampersands and it made me happy. Have a look here.


Which has reminded me that I haven't done a new ampersand in a while. I found it hard to keep finding interesting fonts and endless different ways of rendering them. Until I came across 300&65 Ampersands. Which is exactly what it says it is - a new ampersand every day of the year. So this may help me stop searching for new fonts - I'll just refer to what they're suggesting. And maybe I'll stick to pencil from now on. I always love working with pencil, why deny it.

So, if you're an awesomely talented creative-type person, come join Central Station and like, totally be my friend. Yeah.

I've been working on new stuff but it's not going great so will have to see what tomorrow brings. I'm frustrating myself these days. But that may be because my life is a big ball of frustration. Ell oh ell. Etc. Need to stop blogging so erratically. What happened to daily blogging? Ugh.