Deanna Halsall - Portfolio crit

Whilst working in the LOVE studio, we were introduced to an illustrator who had been commissioned by them before and who had become friends with the design team in the studio as a result along with Chris Gray and Rob Bailey of design collective, of This is Toy.

Deanna Halsall was kind enough to spend time looking through Stephen Nuttall’s and my own portfolios offering advice about our work and freelancing in general. Now I had already sat down and spoken to 3 other people before this point and had received some feedback on the general appearance of my folio.. so when Deanna came to look at it, I felt almost embarrassed as I knew straight away of the things I needed to change in order to make it more appealing… so sadly I think I muddled through describing some of it to her. Despite this, she was still rather helpful in offering suggestions with my work but also confirming things I wanted to hear such as with my Ice Cream Celebration poster, I spent a lot of time drawing the character in pencil but then I scanned the image into the computer and vectored it thus rendering my work in drawing the character… Useless. I had added texture to the vectored lines afterwards in the computer where as Deanna pointed out that I already had texture in my pencil work so why not use it.I think she was actually the final person to mention to me that I can use hand drawn lines in my images and not worry about making everything digitally, after all Deanna’s work is primarily hand drawn and you can see this in the quality of her line work.

Having spoken to some of the designers before hand we also knew that Deanna was in the TOY collective, however rather than working collaboratively now she focuses more on her own freelance career. Also, as one of the last people to see my portfolio in it’s previous state she too mentioned that not everybody would want to see my sketch work alongside the finished products and that a separate portfolio for all of my sketches could be an option instead. This was originally said to me by Mika and Lise who work for Manchester based design agency 'The Chase' when they popped into Stockport college for a presentation and also a portfolio session with all of us 3rd years... so technically now I have completed 4 portfolio reviews.... but I want to do more..

1- Svend of EBoy in Berlin
2 - Mika/Lise - The Chase
3 - Deanna Halsall
4 - Alan Wardle - LOVE

4 and a half? - Phil Skegg - LOVE.