Professional studies: Transferable skills

I have to start thinking about what i want to do when i leave university to help me gain future employment. I started to think about the different skills that i will learn from university as these skills might help me to gain a career.

• Communication skills
• team work or collaberation skills
• design skills 
• events planning (folio instalation)
•  Presentation skills 
• blogging skills
• networking skills
• essay and report writing skills
• pitching skills

There are lots of things other than art that i can take from being at university and hopefully this will work in my favour when i try to gain employment in the future.  

Professional studies: The consumer Childrens books statistics

After looking long and hard i eventually found some demographics on children's books. I wanted to do research into children's books because that's the part of the market that i am most interested in. 

 I decided to start with looking at who actually buys children's books. I found that around 78% of women buy children's books where as only 25% of men buy them. I also found out that the majority of people that purchase children's books are middle class people. they are also more likely to buy that book in a book shop as 75% of men and 77% of women would prefer to go to a shop to buy a book for a child.

 I then found that 61% of the children's books bought were by people aged between 18-44. The average age to have a child is 29 so there is a correlation between the two statistics as this age falls in between the ages of people that buy children's books. This is most likely because they will be buying books for their own children. 

After doing further research i found some information specifically about children and e- books here are the results that i found. Almost 40% of parents with children under 14 are planning to buy a new e-reading device for their children this christmas. This information came from a study of a new york based children's research firm, playScience and Digital Book World [1]

[1] J Greenfield, Parents Primed to Buy Devices and Ebooks for Their Kids This Holiday Season, New Study Finds, http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/parents-primed-to-buy-devices-and-ebooks-for-their-kids-this-holiday-season-new-study-finds/, accessed 13/02/2014

professional studies: The Consumer Genral statistics

I started off trying to research the demographics for children's books but there wasn't much information about it. the only statistic that i could find is there has been a 13% rise in sales in 2012. The lack in statistics is probably due to the fact that children cant buy their won books or fill in surveys.

After discovering that there was hardly any information on children's book demographics i decided to do a general search on book demographics. The survey that i found was answered by American people aged 13+. After looking at the article i found that 45% of books bought are paper back, 27% hard cover, 22% e books, 4% other and a surprisingly low 2% audio books. i also found that 42% of books were purchased on line compared to only 15% of books that were bought in chain stores. This shows that although the amount of hard copy books bought is still reasonably high it is quickly getting caught up by e books. The amount of books bought on line is also incredibly high compared to books bought in shops. This proves that the Internet is the best place for books to be discovered and advertised at this moment in time. 

Next I started to look at who is actually buying the books i found out that 60% of people that buy books are woman and the other 40% are men. When looking at the stats for e books i found that more younger people buy them as 60% of the consumers are under 45. I think that this statistic is because the Internet and e books are a pretty modern thing and the younger generation are usually more clued up on the current technology like computers, tablets and e books. Therefore they will know how to buy an e book are more likely to buy a digital book as it is a lot easier and often cheaper. 

From looking at these statistics it is clear to me that the Internet is changing the world of books but hard copy books are still going strong for the time being. In the future i think that the Internet will take over from paper backs and not many books will be printed. Personally i like to have a physical book to read as it feels nicer than looking at a screen to read. But who knows what the future for books will be. 

Professional Studies: Agencies

                      Advocate Art
Advocate art is an agency that has been going since 1992 . They supply illustrations to all different parts of the industry.
I decided to look at this agency because i like the style of art that they represent. Their style is mainly hand drawn more traditional looking. They usually supply art for Children's Illustrations, Seasonal, decorative, Art and Photo realistic drawings. I am not certain how many people this agency represents but they have around 15 staff that exhibit the work of their artists at shows around the world. They also own a Gallery that shows their artists work all year round.



Debut art
Debut art is a big agency owned by Andrew Coningsby. They represent some of the worlds top artists, illustrators, photographers and graphic designers. It is based in London but it also has offices in paris, New york and Edinbrough. They have a very modern contemporary style a lot of their artists work has the same aesthetic. They have gotten work from some of the biggest companies in the world such as Coca-Cola, nike, Livi's and many others. This agency also run a gallery that holds about 30 exhibitions a year.

Beehive Illustration
Beehive Illustration is an agency that specialises in children's books. I decided to look at a children's illustration agency because that is the part of the industry that i am most interested in. The agency was started in 1990 by Paul Beebee. The agency started small and is still ran by a small team of only 5 people, but it now represents over 100 of the top children's illustrators.  


Illustration LTD
Illustration LTD is an agency that represents over 150 of the top illustrators, animators and artists. They have a total of 17 staff working across the world including their director JulietteLott. Because this company has agents across the world they will have more contacts compared to an agency that is based in only one country. This agency has won a number of numerous awards from emmys to design week awards. 

Professional Studies: Publishing

Publishing company research

I decided to research children's book publishing because is the part of the industry that i am most interested in. I started off with looking at walker books, I remember loving all of the books from this publishing company when i was little so that seemed like a good place to start.



Walker books is a 30 year old book publishing house that creates children's books. It was created by Sebastian Walker in 1978. He sadly died 12 years later. The company started off small with only 18 books but has grew significantly since then and now publishes up to 200 books per year.

The chairman of walker books is David Lloyd. The people who work for Walker consists of a large group of writers and illustrators that all work on different books. Some work together and some create both  the story and the images.

To get a job working for walker books the usual route is to send in a CV and a portfolio of work but it is usually hard to get noticed this way because of the large quantities of people that send in their work each day. A better way to get noticed would be to network with people in and linked to the company. A good way to do this would be to add the company on a social networking site such as twitter and tag them in your illustration posts.