Directory of Illustration

This has been big on my list of things to get done. It's the design of my Directory of Illustration page for their annual book. I thought things were getting kind of stale so I decided to add another huge deadline prior to Surtex. I'm silly (stupid) that way. I burned the midnight oil on this baby. I'm glad that it does a nice job of representing who I am and what I do.

Normally when I design something I know exactly how I want it to turn out. This just happened. I moved things around a lot and then I'd draw something new to stick in a blank space. It was an organic way to pull it together. I had most of the girls done as line art and I needed to color them for Surtex.

I'm obsessed with lists. I make them about everything. The nice part about this project was that I got to cross off a bunch of stuff, like 'Design page for DOI,' 'Submit page for DOI,' 'Color 'Perfect Package for Surtex, 'Finish color tests for 'rainy day,'' '"Design new 'AmberAlvarez.com' banner,'' 'Create textile inchies for Surtex''' etc. etc. It was a happy day. I'm nursing a migraine but it's doing wonders for my color work :)

**update: Ultimately I have found the Directory of Illustration to be a poor investment. Of all the marketing that I do, both online and in print, it has proven to be by far the weakest form of drumming up new business.

I am constantly being written by artists who are looking into doing it and wanting to know how I feel about the experience. I like the professional look of the site. I feel that it does improve the professionality of my work and diversify my online presense, but other than that, I think that it's not doing its job. I am speaking just for me, I'm sure other artists have seen great success with it, but it's not reaching my market the way it should.