Friday, 20 April 2018

professional presense

I've wrestled for a long time now with ideas about the professionalisation of my practise. I've always maintained that I felt on this course I was being pushed to think of myself as a professional and start marketing myself as such long before I was ready to. I've also been vocal in the past about thinking that the push toward websites/instagram/etc is a very prescriptive way of measuring professional development and isn't currently in line with how I want to keep exploring my practise, or how I feel about it.

I am still creatively in embryo, and I'm happy there. What I see as coming next for myself is still all about development, and learning new skills. And importantly, my work does still reach people: I use my work for community projects and workshops, I use it as the lens through which I see and explore the world. It's not online yet, so what.

How I have (or have not) developed presenting myself professionally may well cost me dearly in terms of marks, but I don't regret anything at all. Some ideas have started to develop about visual signatures that define my practise - eg the title page of my portfolio - but I haven't hurried to develop anything that hasn't happened organically.

I am looking forward to going to London for D&AD, and am totally receptive to the idea that perhaps that experience will change how I think about my professional development.

No comments:

Post a Comment