I recently worked the the Cheshire and Wirral Partnership, a department of the NHS that helps autistic people access healthcare. For this project, I animated two stories, those of Robbie and Helen, capturing their experiences in illustration and animation (motion graphics).
Chatting with Robbie, Helen and the team, I listened to their stories and put together visuals to add movement to, I guess you could say I took on the role of art director. Working in subdued colours and subtle image transitions, It was a deliberate choice to make the vocals the primary focus, letting the story of lived experience inform the flow and tone of the visuals. I'm really proud of this work.
Both videos had slightly different considerations. The audio has been edited, to keep the videos short for social media, while keeping the message of the story clear.
Massive thanks to Robbie, Helen, Sharon, Lesley and team. This was a great project to collaborate on. While the illustration, video and animation are all my work, this never felt like a solo project, and that's the mark of a great client.
Looking for animated explainer videos for your project?
More animation and motion graphics
'People watching' is a bunch of faces, drawn at various events I attended last year, including the Edinburgh Festival and Wigan market. Super quick inked sketches of people as they walk by.
They are based on the speed portrait work I do at events, trying to capture real people quickly. In this case, it's folks who walk past, interesting characters in real places just going about their business. Once they've walked past, I'm left with what I saw and my sense of humour.
It's a fun exercise and I'm really glad I made the effort to enter this year. You can see the Home Open exhibition until the end of March 2024
Updated Jan 2024
Discuss your project goals: Start with the end in mind and work backwards. By explaining the purpose of your project we can look at the best way to achieve it.
Are you looking for ideas, or do you know exactly what you need? Both are fine. More information is good if you’re on a tight budget, though if you have some flexibility, that makes room to explore more visual styles and value-adds to get the most out of the end result.
Request a portfolio review. You can always ask or look at my existing work to help you find a jumping-off point for what you need to achieve your vision.
Timelines and deadlines: In my experience timelines are often really short or really long. The sooner you ask for sketches, the sooner we can get a feel for how long the overall project will take. Deadlines, even if they are long ones, always help push a project forward to completion
Don't be afraid to give feedback or ask for suggestions. A good illustrator/designer can be proud without being precious. It’s often good to understand why design decisions are made so they can provide valuable insights and enhance your project.
These are just a few suggestions to get you started. Each project is unique, so feel free to ask any questions. Reach out via the contact form.
Manchester and Camden Fringe illustration and brand design
Live art / Graphic recording
Here's the illustration of the pigeon mascots for Camden Fringe, which opened its applications this week.
I came in and did the refresh on the header illustration, they user different artist every year, and some work on the website helping with their SEO (search engine optimization) so more people can find them, and in turn see my work. That's a win-win.
Search engine optimisation is good at bringing eyes to your product or service, illustration is a good way of keeping them there once they've arrived, so actually there's not that much difference between the two they are just different ways of marketing.
Comparing illustration to SEO is like looking at how pictures and websites get noticed. An illustration is a visual story that catches eyeballs with its colour and shapes. Similarly, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is like the behind-the-scenes work that helps websites show up when you search online.
In illustrations, every part, like the colors and lines, makes the whole picture interesting. In SEO, things like keywords and links make a website more likely to be found on the internet. It's like using the right colours in a picture – they help it stand out.
Both illustrations and SEO need a mix of creativity and technical know-how. A cool illustration can grab attention, just like good SEO helps a website get noticed by people searching for things online. To put it simply, while illustrations tell stories with pictures, SEO tells the digital world why a website is important, making sure it doesn't get lost online.
It's a new community of creative professionals from all different arts, design and crafts backgrounds, with years of skill under their collective belts.
This is where clients can come and chat about live art, illustration, design, motion graphics, websites and all the things I do, and also soak up the creative vibes. It's early days at the moment but I can already feel the buzz, with creatives joining and setting up their spaces.
Located in the Great Northern building, just off Deansgate, the studio is based upstairs in the old Barclays Bank RISE business incubator suite where I taught workshops many years ago!
This is the second GRIT, the first one being a very popular space in nearby Stockport. Big thanks to John and Sophie at People with Grit for making it happen.
It's not forever. As John Macauley said when I went to take a look at the space, "it’s not your forever space, but it is your forever community.” The whole building will be redeveloped at some point in the future, and that's fine. In the creative industries, change is an inevitable part of the process.
Connect, create and embrace this amazing opportunity as it's happening, right now.
Updated for 2024
Festivals are crowded markets so it's important to get a design that communicates quickly and looks professional. It's often the first thing a potential audience member will see, and the reaction you need is "That looks good" not "What is it?". Get in touch.
Good posters are crucial part of persuading potential audience members to come and see your show.
Poster design for events, campaigns and promotions. We work a lot with the live events industry where design needs to be high impact. We provide posters alongside branding and social media packages.
Links:
There have been a few long hours and late nights, but I can feel creative boundaries being pushed in the finished work going out the door (FYI, It makes an excited 'whooshing' sound).
Last 2 years I've been super focused. To step up, be seen, and keep it fresh. At the beginning of the year I rebranded, changing 'John Cooper Design' into Rocket Steps, Creative Studio ( reckon that's where the 'whooshing' sound came from).
It's helped me clarify my ethos. I don't outsource, I work directly with clients and the best ideas win.
I don't think I'd have had the confidence 10 years ago to be as bold with ideas as I am now. Also, I'm experienced enough to be humble when the client's idea is great, and I just need to execute it with style.
What Rocket Steps does;
I work directly with clients end-to-end. From ideas sessions to final delivery, to get the most from their budget and suggest ways to make the most of what they need.
I'm used by agencies and events companies for illustration and live art, when my style suits their needs. Being a solo studio means I can be super flexible on times, places and deadlines.
You can book me by the day or by the project. I can help you pin down a brief (a description of the work you need doing) and suggestions the best ways to tell your story and get your message across.
You can book me by the hour or the day. Never used an illustrator before, or have questions that's fine too. Whether you have a clear idea of what you want, or would you benefit from a handful of quick sketches to get the ball rolling.
Other builders have arrived like Webflow and Squarespace (which seems to sponsor every Youtube video I watch!) but WordPress still surprises me with its flexibility and adaptation.
At the moment I'm looking at the trend of storytelling or 'scrolly-telling' pages, that use video and animation to engage as the user scrolls down the page. No need to make a new website, as WordPress templates can handle this comfortably. Anyway, this blog isn't intended as a humblebrag, just an update and knowledge share.
Important if you're keeping track of visitors and traffic on your website.
At the end of July 2023 google stopped tracking traffic on websites that use early versions of Google Analytics. If you're tracking your stats, you should upgrade.
The good news is there's a plug-in called Site Kit which pulls Google stats directly into WordPress, making it easier to see traffic and visitor numbers.
WordPress 6 has a tool called Patterns. It's not that new, but it's now much easier to use. Selecting a pattern gives you a pre-made design block. Just change the text and images as you need to make your pages more visually interesting.
If you've used an app like Hootsuite you'll know it's a great time saver for posting to your social media channels with one click. You can also do this through your website with jetpack integrations. Connecting your social media accounts means that when you publish s new blog, it'll automatically share to your socials.
You may have a 'related news' feature on your website. A block at the bottom of the page that pulls in links to other blogs. Well, now you can add this feature anywhere on a page, automatically creating links to other blogs without having to search or create manual links.
The 'query loop' block uses categories and tags and is a great way to guide users to older blogs they might have missed. It's my favourite recent feature.
I try to keep my WordPress blogs as easy to digest as possible, avoiding as jargon and technical terms. After all, WordPress was designed to be used by non-technical users. If you're looking to upgrade your site, freshen it up with a new design, or get a new one from scratch, I can help. Your website should be easy and - dare I say it- fun to use, so you don't have to worry about technical issues, and can focus on creating good (human) content.
Rough and ready quick drawings getting ideas down on paper. A lot of my output involves making scamp artwork. For my own projects and collaborations with other creative agencies who need to generate visuals quickly.
Scamps are very similar to storyboards or mock-ups. They help frame an idea, giving an art director or advertiser something to see that can help 'proof' a good idea, pushing it to the next stage, or decide if they aren't quite working, to help find the right direction.
They're an important early part of the creative process where speed and clarity are more important than the quality of the image.
Scamp artwork examples
These examples are from various projects I've worked on (some unused, that I can show). From TV adverts to product design, it's often about facilitation, taking other people's ideas and converting them into images without being precious.
I've worked under NDA (non-disclosure agreements) with leading creative production houses around the UK. As you'll see in these examples, even at the early stage colour can be introduced a little, which often helps align with branding when presenting to clients.
Scamps happen at the very beginning of the process, and can on occasion stressful when they are created alongside conversations - that can go in different directions, but they don't have to be.
I have a background in comic art, and studied sequential art and communication design as a student. Learning the shorthand for storytelling and attention-grabbing that comics use so often really helps when it comes to composing images. Scamps can get messy quickly, and less is often more when it comes to choosing images for a presentation.
Get in touch for more info and rates.
Links:
Here's a recent book cover illustration for 'Football's Tallest Tales' by Bryan Gibson.
Getting the cover right is important, nailing the humour and tone the author is after. Illustration is problem solving too. You'll see in this artwork in the background, on one side is the crowd is cheering, while the other is fed up as the ball whistles past the distracted keeper.
We could have had the fans in colour but after discussion, it was decided to keep them in shades of grey. Why? Well, imagine if one side was red and the other blue. It's important to make the book appealing to everyone, so if one colour was the losing team, that could put off a potential reader who supports a team that wears that colour. Make sense? These are the things I consider when doing illustration work.
For this book, I created illustrations for the cover and inside panels - but to see those you'll need to get the book!
Available from Waterside press
Do you need illustration, or looking for new ideas? Get in touch for a chat;
I think it's just in the terminology, perhaps more folk have heard of the word 'explainer video' than say 'motion graphics' or 'storytelling video'. There are loads of ways of telling a story in a video, and explainer style is just one.
He's an example I did recently for NHS North West. You'll notice no sound or voiceover in this version. That's because in the initial meeting, we looked at what the team needed the video for, and where it would be seen. From there I could Then plan the best formats, so they got maximum value from the result.
There were separate illustrations for print, a PowerPoint slideshow someone could talk over to an audience, and a version with text overlayered, to play out on a big screen in a conference room to engage an audience before an event began.
Having the end goal in mind helped the format. Identifying where and how the content would appear, meant I could lean into detail with the illustrations to engage the audience in my signature style. A great project to work on and cheers to the team for giving me creative freedom on it.
Question: Come on then Turbine fella, how would you describe an explainer video?
Woof, an explainer video is a short and engaging video that explains a complex or tricky-to-understand subject in a simple and accessible way. It can be created using different styles such as hand-drawn animation or clean and technical data animation.
What could I use it for?
They can be used for a variety of purposes. They are great for simplifying complex ideas, introducing a new product or service, showcasing a brand or company, educating customers or employees, and promoting a cause or idea.
How long should an explainer video be?
the ideal length of an explainer video depends on the complexity of the subject matter and the attention span of your target audience. Generally, most explainer videos range from 60 to 90 seconds. This is because attention spans are short, and you want to get your message across quickly and effectively. However, if the subject matter is more complex, the video can be longer, up to 2-3 minutes.
Useful links:
A busy few weeks in the sunshine making live art for events, it's good to be in demand! Here are some pics from Stockport's secret street party and Salfords we invented the weekend Festival. In the coming weeks, I'm at Overdrawn, Manchester Art Battle, and a couple of conferences too.
If you work in events and you're looking for a live artist to create graphic recordings, visual minutes, live scribing or whatever else it's currently being called, all and portraits two. Get in touch here.
Previous events:
Links;
What Turbine says:
Woof, hello there! Graphic recording is a form of graphic art created live during an event, such as conferences and summits. It involves capturing opinions, stories, and light bulb moments through images and words, which are then remembered by attendees long after the event has passed. John is quite good at graphic recording.
Question: Are there other names for graphic recording?
yes there are! Graphic recording is also known as live scribing, live drawing, visual scribing, and graphic facilitation.
Question: How detailed can a graphic recording be?
The level of detail in graphic recording can vary depending on the needs of the event and the preferences of the client. Generally, graphic recording captures the key ideas and themes of the event, as well as important quotes and insights from speakers and attendees. The artwork created during the event is then sent to attendees as a visual summary of what was covered. John is quite good at finding the right balance between words and pictures to create engaging and memorable graphic recordings. You can see examples of his work
Question: Do I get to keep the artwork?
Woof, that depends on the agreement between you and the graphic recorder. (Yes you do - John) In most cases, the artwork created during an event belongs to the client who commissioned it. This means that you would be able to keep the artwork and use it as you wish. However, it's always a good idea to confirm this with the graphic recorder beforehand. John is quite good at communicating with clients and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.