Commercial Practice: Competition Exploration and Decision

For this section of my commercial practice module i was provided the opportunity to look into 4 competitions in order to complete a creative brief of my choice. I was unable to look into the ‘Cheltenham Awards’ as the event for 2021 still hasn't been launched. Due to this I have a selection of Creative Conscious, Macmillan and Penguin Books.

When looking into these competitions I began with the Children’s age group of the ‘Penguin’ competition, considering I had completed this competition last year I was initially interested in recreating another children’s book cover so I could compare the two stories aesthetics in order to identify my growth across the year. The story for 2021 in my chosen category was ‘Talking Turkeys’ by Benjamin Zephaniah, upon looking at the pre-existing book cover design I identified that this may be a comedy themed book due to the artistic choices made in the design.

The second available competition was ‘Creative Conscious’ who had provided multiple possible briefs under the headings of: mental health, equality, conscious consumption and climate crisis. All are very ethically based subjects and on a much greater scale of sensitivity and political discussion. I really like the availability of briefs and feel most drawn to the discussion on mental health and how we as designers can depict the acceptance and love needed to cope with these challenges in order to empower the audience. Considering the interests I have shown in my ‘Contextual Studies Module’ are based around the diversity and equality within children’s books I really resonate with the concept of building empowerment surrounding these topics which is why I am interested in this option.

The third competition is the ‘Macmillan Children’s Picture Book Prize’ where the entrant is free to design their own concept for a children’s book from scratch. Although I would need to create between 24-40 pages (including front and back end papers) which is a massive quantity of work and a rather large leap from what I am used to. Due to this I discussed with my tutor whether I could alter the number of pages within my Proposal and Treatment if necessary and not submit to the official competition which luckily they agreed would be fine as long as I justified my processes.

I am super keen to complete the ‘Macmillan Children’s Picture Book Prize’ as designing and publishing children’s books is the specialism I really want to work towards as I continue to grow and develop as an artist. I was also informed for this module I could create a continuation of my previous ‘Character Design’ module elements should I wish to continue my development on those existing characters and concepts, which I was extremely excited about as I really wished I could’ve explored my designing decisions more and fully flesh out a story line based on these designs. Due to this, the brief seemed perfect as it allowed me to focus entirely on the specialism I am wishing to grow into.

Although I feel it would be interesting to be able to compare my growth from a similar project a year ago, I will not be choosing this competition. I also really like the variety of subjects available by Creative Conscious and if I felt I had time I may have partaken in one of these themes too, however due to my decision to undertake the Macmillan competition, I want to ensure all of my focus remains on this competition so I can create the best quality finals I can. I feel the Creative Conscious brief although interesting, isn’t the brief I would find challenging as it would compose of working on pre-existing skills. Whereas the Macmillan brief is pushing me to create a much larger body of work under the same time frame, utilising a style I am still not 100% confident with.

Due to this I feel it is important to push myself to challenge my abilities and work on progressing with my artwork. I may decide in the future to return to these briefs and use them in a personal project though, as I feel they cover some very interesting and essential topics I would love to explore further. Considering the specialism I am wishing to enter of design and publication of my own series of children’s books I feel I have definitely made the right decision and look forward to the challenge.