Catch Up Post #1: EUSA

Greetings followers,

It has been a really long time since I last posted anything in here. I'm afraid it has been a hectic time for me as I've attempted to get on my feet with running my illustration/design as a business while simultaneously working in an outdoor equipment and clothing shop. It has been a steep learning curve but I've learned a lot and am really happy with my situation! I feel really blessed to be able to make a living (or part of one anyway) off of something I am so passionate about. Anyway, I would like to make a few posts about the work I've been doing over the past couple of months to start with, because there is a lot of it.

Over the summer I did an internship with EUSA (Edinburgh University Student's Association) and did a number of projects with them ranging from campaign posters to beermats! It was a lot of fun working there, and it was really cool of them to offer the opportunity to a graduate. It was paid as well which I am told of is relatively unheard of for the majority of "internships", but that's a can of worms I won't go into. I was really fortunate with my experience, the people there were great, my boss Dave and I got along really well and i had loads of support from him while still being trusted with enough responsibility for me to feel like I was making valuable contributions. I've even continued to work with EUSA on a few freelance projects after my contract has ended so I am very pleased that it worked out so well. During my three months there I completed over 15 different projects, some of which involved creating more than one piece of artwork, and all of which required a couple of different deliverables.

Here are some of the posters I did for various events/campaigns/adverts in the student's union. It's not the exhaustive list of my work but its a fair representation of the sort of things I was doing!

Alongside these sort of things, I did some logos and identities as well as helped out on a few other things that were led by other people from the marketing department.

The coolest project I was responsible for was to create beermats for all six of Teviot Row House's student union owned bars including The Lounge, The Loft Bar, The New Amphion, The Underground, The Library Bar and The Sports Bar. I came up with distinct and individual patterns for each bar based on the function and aesthetics of each location which go printed on one side of a set of collectible beer mats. The reverse side held the bar logo and a bit of information about it. Here's what the finished beermats looked like. You can see the patterns on their own in the new section of my website.

That sums up the first chapter of the past however many months nicely, so I'll leave it there for now. In the next few posts I will be writing about my work with Edinburgh's Queen's Hall, Couthie (a Scottish giftware company), two big murals for Zizzi's restaurant, a nature book cover and a few other projects so watch this space!