Monday, 2 May 2011

Babe was awesome!

So, for those of you who didn't come, you should know that you missed out. BABE was awesome! As you can see in Tris's post below, the table looked lovely. I didn't get too long to wander around but I did manage to speak to some of the people I'd already mention. Whilst I didn't do a proper interview, I did have a few conversations that answered some of my questions. Here are some points that I've written down...

-Usually book fairs won't support you financially, even if you do them every weekend. It's not a regular source of income so you might make loads one fair and none the other. Not reliable.

-People like free stuff but make sure you don't give stuff out all over the place, like to just regular people looking around etc, as they won't appreciate it and you won't have got your work anywhere else- it'll just be thrown away. (Someone who did lots of owls said this...)

-Don't expect to get into an illustration based job right away after university. Absolutely take it if you get offered one but don't be worried if you have to have a part time normal shop job or something at first. (This is a very condensed version of the conversation I had with Alex Pritchard, who makes lovely books.)

-You definitely need to have an overall definite style and look to your stall, so that people want to buy into this identity. (Again, owl people).

This last point made me wonder whether we should arrange our stall all mixed up like we do (to show the variety) or maybe have it a bit more compartmentalised- ie one section of the table is screen print, another is digital, the badges are over here, the books are over there... etc. We should talk about this before we do the next fair. What do you all think?

AND a lady named Tanya from Book Arts Bookshop (Old Street, London) has asked us if we want to do an exhibition in her window space, which we all need to discuss together but would be rather lovely!

And finally, as this is quite a wordy post, here are some pictures of the day that I did with the lovely Tris (Saturday 30th April):





Chloe x

3 comments:

Charlotte Vallance said...

Hey everyone :-)
Your table looked lovely, its a matter of trial and error for the layout issues...and as you're a collaborative group its never going to look too ordered so work with it!
Hope you all did well and had fun!

Love Charlotte

p.s. can't believe Chiu wasn't there!

Chiu said...

hi Charls :) I was in pain! Shoulder injury, but I hadn't planned to go anyway - what with such a reliable bunch of students I've been made redundant :)

How did the day go for you :)

Charlotte Vallance said...

Pretty well thanks Chiu! Sorry to hear about your shoulder...but yes your students seemed to be doing a fine job!