How to: Make a Self Promotional Mini Portfolio

There have been various options going round my head of how best to make this sort of thing. I really enjoy bookbinding, even though I've never actually been taught properly how to do it; it wasn't a part of my Uni course at all. But, like most things, that never stopped me. I made all my own sketchbooks in the last 2 years of my course, nothing fancy, just binding them myself when I was all done. Then, for my Seven Sins project, I made a handmade book as the outcome, of which you can see here. I followed a tutorial in Computer Arts, which you can download the PDF of here. It was definitely a trial and error thing, and a labour of love. Came out well but much too time consuming to make 20, or 50 of. Which is about how many I need, to promote myself effectively.

So after a bit of internetting, I decided upon a Concertina book. Seemed the easiest to make and the easiest to alter the contents of, from book to book; this means that I can slightly tailor the insides according to who I'm sending it to and what sort of illustration they commission. Aha.

You can buy books that teach you how to make handmade books, the simplest one I found was Handmade Books: Binding, Folding and Decorating by Heather Weston. Cheap, too. I probably will buy it at some point (I wonder if you can get it at the library..) but as I'm trying to spend as little money as possible here, I just found a tutorial off the internet and made it up as I went along.


Here's how I did it.

1. Learn how a concertina book works.
The websites that I found seemed to make it sound harder than it is. Basically, you need lots of sheets of paper, the same size, folded to make a small flap on each side to glue to the next piece, and so on, until you get one long massive piece of paper that folds together. You then need some hard board, slightly bigger than the area of the paper, to stick to each end, and end papers if you want. That's about it. You can get complicated with spines and all that, but I'm doing simples.

Taken from this website - follow it if you wish, it's not so simples.

I decided that I wanted my book to be A5, landscape - A5 is a good size for a mini portfolio, and I chose landscape because a lot of my work is landcsape; just fits the pages better.

I did a lot of experimenting with scrap paper to figure out how to fold the flaps and where they had to be:

Before I decided to go landscape.It's a lot easier to do this because you can figure out what side the flaps have to be in relation to which side of the paper is getting printed on.

So I decided that the easiest thing for this was to set up an A4 portrait sheet, with the flap folds on the right hand side, of 7mm. Then I could slice each sheet in half once printed to make my A5 landscape ones, and glue together.

2. Set up a document in Indesign/Illustrator to work from.

This is probably the most important step, so spend lots of time getting it right. I used InDesign for this as you can set up the Master pages then just add content from there, but I guess you can also use Illustrator just as easily, with separate layers for each page. Whatevs.

If you click on that image up there you'll be able to see what I did a bit more clearly. Use whatever system you find easiest; this is just one that I understand and know works. Again, experiment with it, print out some test sheets, find out if it all works ok.
Gridlines and margins obviously don't print, so I added tiny dotted lines so I knew where to fold, and where to cut, once it was printed. Image above is without margins etc. Nice.
Experiment with colours and fonts at this stage too. Before you print out 20. Just a heads up.

Once you have the format perfect, save it, and keep it forever - you can change images, add or take away pages etc, but your rules and spacing will always keep it pretty.

3. Start adding content.
This is the fun part.
Add your images and descriptive text, fiddle about with alignment, size, etc. I added a few more rules for myself at this stage, like where to align the text to, etc. It all ends up quite organic though, if you want to ignore your lovely grid, then do. It's what looks best, after all.
Choosing fonts is important - I went with 2, which could even be too many, one more decorative for my website title and one for the descriptive text. I decided a sans serif font was less conspicuous, as a lot of my work already has type in it and I wanted to be as discreet as possible. So Gill Sans saved the day.

4. Print out your pages and start folding.
Start off with printing enough for just one book first, ok. You just don't know if something's gone tits up and you have to reconfigure your creation. Once you've made one from start to finish perfectly, then you can get into assembly line mode and make as many as you need.
So here are all my lovely pages. I figured out while doing this that when assembling single pages like this, your first page's flap needs folding up, the second one needs folding down, and so on. The flap sticks to the underside of the next page, so you'll see why.
Eventually they were all stuck together in a several foot long book of joy. I just used pritt stick (other types of glue stick are available) but a more permanent choice would be double sided tape.

Next I added coloured end pages to each end - just so the hard board has something interesting to stick to. I chose blue because... I like blue.


What the book looks like as you turn each page over.

The front page, with the blue end papers. My hand looks strangely tanned. It's not. I'm as white as a sheet =/
The back, which I'm going to add something to; more later.

It's already pretty lovely, but won't withstand any kind of manual handling.

5. Make it sturdy.
You need some kind of hard board or mounting board for this. These days you can get mounting board in all kinds of colours, which would be a fine choice. I however, wanted to go for the more rustic, grey board look, for reasons you shall find out.

Cut your board so that it's about 1cm larger than your paper on every side. This means that it's all protected inside and has an attractive overhang.

Don't stick the hard board to it yet - we need to decorate it.

This is the back of my portfolio. Before sticking the end paper down, I made 4 slits to hold one of my postcards. This is just so that the recipient has something to stick on their desk/wall too - the dangers of a mini book like this is they get looked at, then put in a drawer. Postcards are more likely to be left in a place where they'll get looked at.

6. Design your cover.
You can do this anyway you like. Draw on it, screenprint it, stamp it. I'm banning glitter though. No no.
What I have decided is to use tracing paper as an overlay onto the card. That way, you can still see the natural colour of the board, but with a layer of plastic-ness. It's a nice juxtaposition, and you can print straight on to tracing paper, if you've got an inkjet printer.

I designed a simple pattern for the front, and decided to just go with my name. I could have done 'Rachel Lewis, Illustrator' or 'portfolio' or something, but I think you need something striking and uncomplicated. This fits in with the rest of my identity (speech bubble, colours).
Cut the corners of the tracing paper and fold round the back of the board - stick down. Don't stick the front, just the underside - that way there's a slight separation from the board and the tracing paper, which I think gives a nice feel.

7. Attach the hard board to the book.
Stick your end papers to the board with something better than glue stick - double sided tape is best, or industrial strength glue. Don't glue your hand to your face.

8. Admire your handiwork.



The one thing to remember about a concertina book is that it will all just fall out into one big line if you're not careful. You can fold it like a book but if you drop one end it'll just concertina out. Of course. So you might decide to seal the pages together, if you feel that's an issue. Make sure you include all your contact details somewhere in or on the book - in my case, I used my business card stamp to stamp the reverse. I'm also going to experiment with paper luggage tags too, as a 'to and from' thing.

9. Make as many as you need and send the bad boys out to prospective clients.
This particular one was made to leave behind at a recent interview I had, at AMV.BBDO. I'm buying more hard board tomorrow and spending this week making ones to send out. Having spare ones at hand to take to interviews/portfolio meetings is a good idea I think. And remember what I said, you can customise each book with different examples of your work in relation to who you are sending it to.

Good luck! And if you make this, please leave a comment telling me how you went with it! :D

Oh, it seems to be 2010. How did that happen?

Hello there! It has been a while, almost exactly a month since my last post. This is of course because something called Christmas happened, which we all know is the best time of year, except if you work in retail, then it is the worst. So I literally stopped internetting for about 3 weeks - didn't even check my email or nuffin. The hours that I wasn't spending at work I was doing christmassy/relaxy things with family, and it actually felt great to completely unplug. It also meant that I did almost nothing creative, except wrap some presents rather beautifully, but honestly, I feel no guilt. Christmas was hard. I got 6 days off over the whole xmas/new year period, which is a lot less than most of you, I bet. This is the problem you see, if I was still a student I'd get 2 or 3 weeks off, and if I had a decent job I'd get about 2 off as well. But, as a recent graduate and bottom of the pile, I had to sell sell sell to you consumer people. Ah.

So as a result of this, here are some facts:

I have 500+ unread emails in my hotmail, all of which are newsletters of some sort. Ugh.
I have 1000+ unread items in my RSS reader. Yep. Clearly I was the only one who stopped blogging over christmas. You crazies.
I had about 35 comments waiting for approval on this blog, 34 of which were spam. Which I don't mind because a few of them were hilarious. Most are just in chinese which means nothing to me, but some seem to be written by spam bots who string several unrelated words together to form nonsensical sentences. Which, me being me, I find fascinating and am going to make a new illustration project from because they are great :D
I have 0 job offers. (unsurprisingly, lols.)
I have about 7 new twitter followers, how I don't know because I stopped tweeting for a while too.
I have a brand new shiny digital camera (its pink!!) which I got from father christmas so I can post even more amazing pictures. Ah. Did I tell you its pink?

So, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, let's get this show back on the road.

Oh, yes. My job wasn't extended past christmas temp. The most gutting thing ever. So last day was yesterday. So I'm FRIGGIN UNEMPLOYED AGAIN. However, I'm still waiting to hear back about an interview I had at none other than AMV.BBDO before christmas so mega fingers crossed for me. More on that later.

So I'm spending my new found free time so promote myself to commissioners and get some illustration jobs, hopefully. Again, more on how I'm going to do this in the next post, which is tomorrow. I'm literally going to do the 9-5 thing at my mac up here in my loft and work my ass off to become rich and famous.

2010 = Rachel gets awesome jobs, moves out, finds some sort of boy-type. Trust me.

The Daily Ampersand Project: Days 16 - 19

Well, I certainly fell off the wagon with this one. Haven't done a new ampersand in weeks! Working 32 hours a week plus trying to keep illustrating as much as possible, when it's cold and all I really want to do is sleep all the time means that I haven't done everything I wanted to, and my To-Do list is several feet long. Anyway, enough excuses.

Day 16 is Cursive Std, a nice handwriting-esque font that isn't scribbly and horrible. Drawn with thousands of circles! One of the most therapeutic things you can do is fill a page with tiny circles. It'll drive youcrazy and take ages but it's so relaxing and nice to stare at when done. If you have a spare few hours. Which I don't.
Day 17 is Odstemplik, taken from dafont.com again. Quite an unusual font, I liked it instantly. This ampersand is obviously based on the 'et' form. Rendered in purple coloured pencil, nice and simple and naive-looking. Pleasing. Mmm.

Day 18 is Apple Chancery, which clearly came with my Mac, hence the name. It's an ok font, but the swishy bit at the end of the ampersand made me choose it. This is a cutout of some left over wrapping paper. Getting semi festive now.
Day 19 is this crazy thing, Stretched Signature Flex, from dafont. It's mental! Look it up, all the letters are like this, sort of disjointed and tres random. The ampersand is particularly ambiguous and spacious, so I did it in plain red ink, no messing today. Looks like a lovechild of an anchor and the on/off button.

The Ampersand Project also has it's own page on my website now, so you can see them all in full. Have a look!

Book City Jackets - Make Every Book Beautiful

I stumbled across these lovely little things, from Book City Jackets. A great idea:

"Even as you polish off Eat, Pray, Love and dive into the Twilight series*, “Reading List” ensures that you always look classy. Perfect for the aspirational reader. $12 for set of 3."



Basically, if you're reading a book that's kinda not cool, or has a rubbish cover, or is one of those stupid 'How to be amazing at everything' self help books that you SHOULD be embarrassed to read, you stick these wonderful modern/bauhaus esque looking book covers on. Minimal and typographic porn. And you look clever because you're 'reading' some great literary classics. Noice.

Alternatively, they always do Artist editions, which are my favourite:



Now how lovely are those? They are also accepting submissions for new artists covers, I'm going to see if I can get in on the action.

So you could be reading the worst book ever and you just look cool. A great idea and not too expensive either. A great christmas present for that friend you have who always read's Katie Price's 'novels' and similar drivel. Instant classiness.

Also; "Our covers are off-set printed on recycled kraft paper in downtown New York and “fold-to-fit” almost any book. A Book City Jacket isn’t just beautiful — it also protects from spilled drinks and prying eyes and provides a convenient space to doodle and jot down notes. Book covers were a good idea in junior high school and they’re a good idea now."

Recycled + Brown paper + New York + doodle approved = Rachel likes.

*And yes, I have asked for the Twilight series for Christmas. Can't actually wait. Although I'm not actually ashamed - I do find the twilight covers quite pleasing. Everyone has said the books are better than the films. And the films have been AMAZING. Sooo... yep.

Naja Conrad-Hansen: Designer and Artist from Copenhagen

I've just come across Naja Conrad-Hansen's work in the latest issue of Varoom! Magazine and have to share it. She's so talented and her work is beautiful, edgy, with a hint of darkness and horror, firmly rooted in fashion.

"Graduating from Danmarks Design School in 2003 with a Ma in Visual communication and a background in fine art; she started her profession as a freelance designer and artist in 2003. Her practice embraces illustration, painting, graphic design, art direction, and making silk-screen prints + definitely more. Inspirations comes equally from the worlds of fashion, hardcore music, and traditional art and design and in general observing the world around her. The illustration style is basically about "finding some untouched areas of the mind and stimulating the eye and imagination. Naja Conrad-Hansen has worked on projects ranging from Max Mara to the solid perfume Filth, as well as an award-winning children book. Her works have been included in a wide variety of fashion/graphic magazines and books. She also designs print and pattern design for different clothing labels including limited edition print for her own brand Meannorth."

I love ink work and the selective use of colour works very well. Her figures have that similar distorted feel like Julie Verhoeven's fashion figures do, and there's so much energy. Also I love how she uses text as well, that always goes down well with me. I would love to be able to create work on a level like this. This is another example of an artist who inspires and makes you depressed at the same time. Take a look at her portfolio site, Mean North, there's tonnes to wade through.

All this work posted is copyright to Naja Conrad-Hansen.

Coveting: Floozie by Frost French

Let me just say, it is entirely silly of me to covet these. I work in a large chain of underwear shops. I get a good discount. I do not have any need for more underwear. If I did, I would buy some with said discount.

However.

Frost French is an underwear line created by Sadie Frost and Jemima French. I spotted the Floozie line in Debenhams the other day and went 'omg!' while my friend went 'Those are horrible, Rachel you are weird.' I get that a lot. But in my opinion, they are so cute and pretty and ridiculously vintage/granny looking. Which is uber cool, unless you are a granny. Then it's not. Get it?

I've seen a few styles of bra like this recently, with the extra bit at the bottom. Topshop did a few, I'm sure. Anyway, because it's different, I love it. And I bet it's really flattering. Also, you could totally wear this as outerwear, over a cream lace top. I so would.



Look! A little mini teacup! So if you are going to tea, perhaps with some form of royalty, you could totally wear this underwear. Other clothes are advisable as well, however.

A pair of knickers. In a cupcake. Genius. I bought something very similar for my friend for her birthday, only it was a pair of socks,wrapped up in a cupcake. Cute AND practical. Everyone needs socks.



This might be my favourite design. Blue and red = awesomely modern vintage. And check out the close up of the pattern:

Tiny mini teacups! So pretty.


And here as well, mini teacups in a different pattern. Ah.
Like I said, you can buy the range at Debenhams, have a look. Also, Debs are doing a 20% sale at the moment, it ends tomorrow. I may have to go in on my lunch hour. Maybe. Oh, I so don't need any more bras =/ Help.

Look what dropped through my door....

Do you remember, a while ago I posted about the loveliness of Crispin Finn's screenprinted 2010 wall planner? And I was coveting it madly, but even refraining from buying it in London because of my (relative) poverty?


Well I got an unexpected and awesome email from Crispin Finn, saying they saw said post and wanted to thank me for talking so enthusiastically about the wall planner, and thought they could help my overdraft by sending me one!

Enter grinning Rachel!


It's uber lovely. It hurt me slightly to rip the sealed paper to open it, but here it is! It's not on my wall yet as it isn't 2010 and I'm sure that's bad luck or something.

So thanks Crispin Finn! My overdraft thanks you ^.^

I actually got this in the post last week sometime, but have been so busy that there hasn't been any blogginess at all. As you can see. Working in retail at Christmas = tiredness. On a better note, said overdraft is reducing ever so slightly every week, even after succumbing to sparkly dresses in River Island. Well, it is Christmas. You gots to have sparklies. Might be out of parent's house, I dunno, in the next year? Lol....*

*Not actually Laughing Out Loud.