Thomas James talks to Stephanie Glaros of Utne Reader Magazine about how she became an art director going in depth. I listened to this interview throughout a pod cast and found the discussion very alluring learning about someone else's experience's in the industry.
Here are notes I made from listening to the podcast;
I found out that it was the 25th anniversary over a year ago of the magazine of Utne with 1500 publications, zines, journals etc. and they pick the best of the best to put in the mag.
Stephanie Glaros did some freelancing and she never had a clear path in her life. She got a Batchelor's degree in women's studies when she was in her mid-20s and she was thinking about being in politics. Unfortunately, this did not happen, but she is happy that she has experience. She was a waitress for almost a year, she travelled, learning more about her country, getting different perspectives. Co-operating with the environment, working in marketing, learning about photoshop and illustrator and then went on to become a graphic designer. This is when she went back to school and then became a freelancer.
Here is a picture of Stephanie Glaros:
At one point, she was sat on a bench, looking at logos when a woman from Utne magazine walked past and started to ask questions about the work Stephanie was doing. The woman seemed very interested in Stephanie's work, so took her off to see the manager of Utne magazine. This was Stephanie's first contact with the magazine. She later emailed the company asking if there was any work going. A woman took a chance on Stephanie, hiring her, despite Stephanie not knowing how things worked, the reason behind this was that the woman saw Stephanie's passion for the work.
While Stephanie met a freelancer called Wayne Wolf, who taught her how to do publications and that is how Stephanie learned how to do art directing. She had to learn most of this on her own as there is very little communication between art directors. She feels like this 'trial and error' method is unfair and that there should be some sort of job training to help someone to become an art director. She started to communicate via email, looking for the right person, receiving sketches, talking to editors and the more she did this process, the more she got the hang of it and feels like she has grown with the magazine, finding her voice and visual preferences.
Illustrators are doing very well in finding their own resources and feedback for their sketches. Stephanie likes to get connected to other art directors, the more you talk to others, the more you learn about each other, because there is less of us out there, it is a competition to get some jobs. This is odd because illustrators are doing the same thing. She is always looking for interviews with other art directors, trying to get more involved, asking questions and emailing people.
It would benefit us all more if we were all talking to each other about the mistakes we have made, what works for individuals and what doesn't. Pieces of advice from Stephanie are:
- Don't be afraid of being in control
- Trust your own judgement
- Let the editor/artist gain control
Stephanie found that she sometimes had trouble having faith in herself, so she often takes time to figure out things, the answers may not be found in a book. She also had to make sure that people were not walking all over her, standing up for herself and he own work. She took a year out for herself, to take control and express her own vision, working out how to sort out her life and organising things. Throughout her work, she likes white spaces and not a lot of colour. She likes to have concrete solid ideas of what to do. She needed to find her own process to get things together for the magazine, to get out of the door. She read and looked upon a lot of other magazines, to help her and she was identified more as an art director and a photographer, but not so much as a graphic designer. She likes her own aesthetics as simple, not making the magazine too cramped and making use of white space. Her library of publications is very niche, trying to keep a balance between photographs and illustrations.
She likes documentaries and a wide range of subject matter, she deals a lot with ideas and this is where illustration is used. Throughout personal narratives, she likes conceptional thinkers and she hires two-three people, always looking for new illustrators as she likes a solid group of people working on a regular basis, allowing her to work with all types of different people on the spectrum, which she finds most fun, such as:
- screen printers
- graphic novelists
- children's illustrators
Creating a monthly magazine takes a lot of planning and pitching and meeting up, getting involved from the beginning. She is always informed, she makes samples of illustrators, then gets together with the editor to talk about her ideas and artists she has looked at. When she decides who to have, she will contact them by email and sometimes with a phone call. She will send the artist a timeline, a budget and gives them 3-4 days for sketches and then around a week for a final design, giving them a push in the right direction as some of the content they print is quite heavy, so she feels her job is to sometimes help illustrators break it down to understand what it is about and what they want. When writing an email, she has to choose her words carefully, to try and help nudge them on the right path.
Some of the fun things about her job include seeing the final design from illustrators. She likes illustrators to send sketches in monochrome because sometimes the sketches colour palette isn't right. She expects illustrators work should be predictable, but sometimes she is surprised by the work that she receives and this can be a double-edged sword, with some work being better than expected, but other work not being up to scratch.
With editorial illustration you need a consistent style, advertising can work with a lot of styles as they work with art reps and don't need a middle man between the art director and the artists they are able to directly communicate. A cover of a magazine is like an advert for what is inside, which needs lots of approvals. Throughout this process, there are a lot of restrictions, for instance you have to think about where the logos go, do things have to be vertical etc. Type in illustration is not used very often as the text is heavy already and there is no space for type. They like straightforward consistent typographies.
Stephanie finds new illustrators by letting them contact her as she likes to feel special and have a bit of an ego. She prefers it when they show familiarity with the magazine as that goes a long way with her and showing that they have initiative in contacting the right person and researching in what they do. Stephanie prefers it when she is able to easily find what someone does through sites such as illustrationmundo, where their work is front and centre on the blog, for people to see easily. She is also happy to receive personalised postcards from prospective illustrators with their contact details and she freely gives feedback.
In the future she is hoping to continue her work, refining her process, learning something new every project or job. She feels that she is in a good place at the moment and really wants other art directors to share resources, struggles and successes as this would benefit the art community as a whole. The key factor is Stephanie's eyes for advancing is communication, if everybody communicates more, then they would be able to share experiences and everyone could learn.
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