Review of the Year 2015: illustrator Michael Driver

Review of the Year 2015: illustrator Michael Driver Share In partnership with Squarespace provides creatives and entrepreneurs with the tools they need to bring their ideas to life, online. Using their design-driven platform, you can build a website, claim a domain, sell online, and market your brand. In our seventh review of the year article we catch up with Michael Driver who, fresh out of university, has had a year to remember. In July we chose Michael Driver as one of our 2015 Graduates and since leaving Kingston University the London-based illustrator has had a whirlwind year going from one commission to the next. His textural and brightly-hued work, full of long-limbed characters is a joy to look at. Their crispness and clarity suits print wonderfully but his use of both digital and analogue techniques keeps things interesting. Michael’s client list is long and illustrious having been commissioned by The Guardian , The Sunday Times , Wired , AnOther and The Wall Street Journal among a whole load more. The trust Michael has already built with his clients is a testament to his ability to continually deliver great work and it’s impressive to see this amount of commissioned work coming from someone so soon out of university. As well as commissions, Michael has shown his work at various exhibitions throughout the year. He was also awarded a wood pencil at the 2015 D&AD Awards with his entry for the D&AD WeTransfer brief, a piece of work that depicted the illustrator ten years into the future, crammed into an Eames chair and hunched over a desk. We asked Michael to tell us about his year and how he’s managed to overcome the challenges of going freelance straight out of university. What was your creative highlight of 2015? It’s a tough one to call but I think out of all of the stuff I’ve achieved in the last year the creative highlight was probably the chance opportunity to illustrate live at the launch of the second issue of the Eighty Eight journal, which was put on at the Design Museum during London Design Festival. The journal commissioned a lot of illustration for their second issue and almost all of it was way better than the stuff I did for the issue, so it was really surprising to be picked out from everybody to illustrate live at the launch by Kate who art directs the magazine. I think the Design Museum technician working that night had kind of clocked that nobody was really too fussed about me drawing, so at the end of the evening he managed to persuade the staff to project the image I’d drawn on the side of the Design Museum which was really kind of nuts, I’m forever thankful for that technician and if you see this, drop me a email and I’ll buy you a pint. It’s my highlight for two reasons, one being that The Design Museum is such a reputable institution and a museum that I really love, and the other because it was something I’d never imagine doing after graduating. What was your lowlight of 2015? I’ve been really lucky these last five months with work, I’ve had a steady flow of continuous work up until about three weeks ago when I dropped off the radar a little bit. Luckily I’ve picked back up again and things seem to be a lot less stressful – as this is my only source of income when things go quiet I tense up a bit. All in all I’ve worked on a good 50+ projects this side of the year and this isn’t including exhibitions and bits that I’ve done for free for smaller publications and projects. Most of my work has existed in a editorial setting, which is great, this is where I like being most, art directors working in this field are very open to ideas and experimentation and seem to get me, or at the least the ones I’ve worked with have. Among all the editorial work I’ve done in the last few months I have also pitched on a couple big budget advertising and branding jobs, none of which I landed in the end. I understand now that the advertising side of stuff comes once in a blue moon and sometimes things just don’t happen, ad clients are gambling a lot of money and if their wavering on whether you’re the right guy to take the work on it makes complete sense if you don’t make it past pitch level. Some of those larger jobs I pitched on were for clients I really like so one of the lowest points was being told by one of those brands that they didn’t think my work was really suitable for them. What do you think are the markers of a good year creatively? I think a good creative year is an amalgamation of a few things including; crossing names off the long list of people I want to work with, taking part in group shows, seeing things in print, having a continuing working relationship with old clients, meeting new people, pushing myself to say “yes” to things that make me feel uncomfortable, feeling like I’m still learning from every job I’ve done, pushing my craft, experimenting and leaving time to continue to stay inspired. Most of this is pretty much a given, however I think it’s really important for me to s