After Midnight
Today, a man named Paul Kell, who owns a business named After Midnight Gifts, came in today to discuss how we, as illustrators, could potentially fit into his business.
After Midnight is a company which creates gift items, such as candles, mugs, snow globes etc. These items have a 'viral' nature to them, meaning when people do receive the items, they do tend to be shared quite a lot around social media, the company has even been featured on popular pages like LadsBible. What makes these items so shareable, is the fact that the company always stays within the current trends on social media, creating pieces that are relevant and inspired by pop culture, tv shows, cult movies, etc. They have created a breaking bad snow globe, a unicorn candle (which has rainbows dripping from its eyes as it melts), dragon head mugs, which I assume have been inspired from Game of Thrones. They have sold their products on Firebox.com, Think Geek, Live Nation, Truffle Shuffle and Asos.Paul had come in with tasks for us to complete. The first was to get into a group, then discuss what we believed would be the next big trends. He started us off by talking about how past eras usually come back into trend, for instance, the 80's have been slowly coming back, but the trend is possibly transitioning to the 90's now, so he wanted us to explore things that we may have loved when we were younger, which would have been from the 90's to early 2000's. As we are his target market, he was wanting to use our own personal nostalgia, so that he could use it as research, so that he could inevitably reproduce some of our points, and sell the items on to people of our own generation.
So with this task, my group had created a mindmap, exploring potential future trends, and we basically just had a conversation about every toy, tv show, game or even music that we could remember from when we were younger. A few examples from our mindmap would be, Tamagotchis, Ed, Edd and Eddy, Rugrats, Spice Girls, Scrubs, Friends and the list goes on. I don't necessarily know what After Midnight could create from these suggestions, but it would be fun to see what they could come up with.In the second task, he would split us into groups again, give us a topic/theme that we had already discussed, then he would also give us a specific room of the house, and with the two, he would tell us to draw out an object that would fit both the room and the topic he had given us.
We have not yet completed this task, as I believe he is coming back on a separate date to do this with us. I am excited about this task, as it is something new and I believe it would give me free reign to be as imaginative and creative as I can be.
Paul did discuss the influence of illustrators within the company, and used a previous student from this course as an example, as she has quite a big role within the company. She creates illustrations for the packaging of the specific products but also creates turnarounds of the item, which are then sent off to China to be produced.
I think I would love to do this job because as I said, I believe it would allow me to be as imaginative or as creative as possible. Also, I would not be so confident if I had to create the items myself, as I do struggle with 3D mediums, but as I would just be able to sketch and refine turnarounds of the items, I feel it would be such a good experience to see your drawings come to life, and to be able to hold it in your hands.
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