Welcome

As many of you know, art isn’t my profession. I’m actually a full time data analyst – odd combination right?? That is another conversation for another blog post…

So anyway early last year my workplace was moving it’s main office in London to a new location, and as part of that they sent a call out to any creatives in the organisation to create something to put on the walls of the new office! How exciting!

Of course, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass so I ambitiously submitted 3 ideas and all 3 got accepted. Suddenly I had the realisation – I have to make these 3 big artworks (big because they’re going on office walls so they’d look super tiny if they were A4 drawings!) and I have to make them fast. There was a deadline of around 12 weeks or so to send them to the office, where they would organise the framing and where they would go in the office.

So it was all hands on deck! Lots of people tell me I work fast so I wasn’t too concerned. I set out a bit of a schedule for myself to create piece 1 by this date and 2 by that date etc so I was feeling comfortable. Worst comes to worst I can take some annual leave and commit a bit more time to meet the deadline.

In short, I finished them in plenty of time actually! Some of the other artists who were picked got delayed so it ended up pushing the deadline further back so it was all good. Eventually we were all able to go to the new office together and see them framed and in their full glory, it was great!

Plot twist – they then annouced they were moving to Manchester office from the outskirts to central and did another call out! So of course I had to apply again! I submitted 3 ideas, two of them got rejected but they asked me to add two that were similar to the ones I did in the first office so I did end up doing 3 again. I took some of the learnings from round 1 and I was happy again with how those turned out.

I’ll put some pics below of them up on the walls of the office, it’s been a fantastic opportunity and my legacy will live on there for as long as my work is on the walls haha. Ironic that I am now known as the Artist rather than the Data Analyst – which is what I do there every day!!

Designing for office space: my learnings:

• Think you’ve made it big enough? Make it BIGGER! Commercial wall space is HUGE, so make the most of it
• Go bold. My work is usually fine line drawings, and they just don’t cut it when you’re looking at a piece of art from 10 metres away: it looks like a blank piece of paper. Use thicker pens, thicker lines, and have a clear silhouette to make your work visible
• Think about yourself as an artist. Sounds silly but that artwork is going to be there for a long time (hopefully). I sometimes wish I’d done one show-stopper of a piece that makes people stop in their tracks, rather than 3 ‘good’ pieces. Quality over quantity
• Don’t be a yes-man. The second time around, they asked me to make some ‘like the ones you did for London’. Which I did, and then thought…”but I didn’t want to draw that!” If you don’t want to do it, say no

Overall it’s been a great experience, and who knows maybe they’ll move another office and I’ll put some artwork there too!!