Style is Commodification
Why Style Matters for Commercial Illustrators
What is the attraction to finding one’s style? It’s at the top of concerns for illustrators who want to work professionally. Finding our style is connected to our conception of what makes us unique. It has something to do with branding and identity in the marketplace, where we have a unique look that others will pay for. Certainly it is about confidence and self-expression. When we see the styles of other artists, we are attracted to both the work and the artist. There is something about the artist that seems more established than the average person. They have achieved something that few others seem capable of: having a marked, distinct visual identity. They appear to have achieved a synthesis of who they are and what they do, which is clear and recognizable to others.
Most of us spend our lives partially hidden behind a cloud of vagueness. We do many things, a few of them well, but no one thing seems to define us on the outside. As artists, one of our primary, irrational drives, is to be seen and heard. We have a hunger for attention that perhaps exceeds that of the average person (I speak for myself). I think another drive we have is to be known. It is lonely to feel that we are not understood or recognized for something we are good at. When an artist has an established style, which is so clear and recognizable to us, we on the outside believe we know the artist better. We have a clear conception of who they are. They do not suffer in a cloud of vagueness as we do. We see them, so we believe they must feel seen.
When we see the styles of other artists, we are attracted to both the work and the artist.
Of all the reasons that make the pursuit of one’s style so compelling, these are quite existential. Today, I feel less qualified to dig further into this aspect. What I feel more certain about is that to find one’s style solves a more practical problem, that of efficiency of expression.
One of the fears of artists who have not yet found a singular style is that they will feel locked in. By working with the same shapes, colours, lines, tools, etc, they fear they will not feel like they are exploring enough. They fear their creativity will die. Perhaps this fear is linked to the misconception (it is a misconception) that one’s style is tantamount to their identity as a human. How can we tie ourselves to a style we do not fully identify with, which we believe fully expresses who we are as artists? Isn’t the finding of one’s style the arrival at some ultimate expression of true identity? Of course not. When put this way, we can see how unreasonable it would be to believe this.
I do believe that finding one’s style is a thing, and that at its best, it can truly become a tool for expression, both of ideas and of identity. And I believe there are some who enjoy this discovery at much deeper levels than others. But to those who are still struggling to find their style, perhaps you will take comfort in knowing that choosing a style does not mean choosing who you are as a human. Your style is not the total expression of you as a human or even an artist. Your style is an expression, not the expression. In this sense, you can have multiple styles and they can all point back to you in some way. The key is for you to find how and why these relate to you, and ultimately, be in control of how they are expressed in your work.
How can we tie ourselves to a style we do not fully identify with, which we believe fully expresses who we are as artists? Isn’t the finding of one’s style the arrival at some ultimate expression of true identity?
From a purely commercial standpoint, the true advantage of finding your style is in efficiency of expression. A style is a visual shorthand, a language of recurring motifs, shapes, colours, textures, and other technical and symbolic approaches. This does not make finding your style an easier task, but it might make you more comfortable with it. Having a style is a business decision, not a marriage. If you had all the time in the world, or if you are not doing this for a living, you might be able to get away with constant newness and exploration in your work. But as professionals who who need to be creative on demand and turn out art on a deadline, we need something that helps us do this repeatedly and reliably. The overarching idea here is to have a regular process that we can enter into with the confidence that we will emerge having done our job. Style is really just a subset of this process. It is through our process (whatever that looks like) that our consistent style is achieved. Our process is designed to result in images that express ideas in a certain way, i.e. our style. And our style is designed to work within our process. As we step through a visual problem, our style helps us more efficiently and reliably come to a solution.
It is true that a style must have some transcendent quality to it in order to be appealing. Having a style is not just a matter of sitting down for a day and hammering out a bunch of shapes and symbols, choosing a colour palette, and deciding on a combination of stylistic elements and then committing to using these forever more. The reality is that it takes time to become familiar enough with the tools, techniques and formal qualities that you feel at home with. And it also takes some mysterious combination of taste, intuition and skill to truly create a transcendent style. But at the same time, there does come a time when you have to take stock of what your raw stylistic materials are and start putting them to use. There is no singular eureka moment when you find your style. There’s just the slow development of a visual identity, a mode of visual expression, through discipline and commitment. You start with a few things you know you are good at, perhaps the way you draw from observation with a favourite pencil. And you develop your technique by applying it to the expression of ideas and observations over and over again. Practice, practice, practice.
Your style is not the total expression of you as a human or even an artist. Your style is an expression, not the expression.
If there’s one thing that being an illustrator and designer for the past 15 years has shown me, it’s that clarity emerges through effort. Things become clearer as we work them out on paper, or in words. When Winnie the Pooh needed to solve a problem, he would just sit in his thinking spot and concentrate really hard, but that has never worked for me. Thoughts and ideas float past and slip through my fingers unless I pin them down onto a physical surface. Then I can more closely examine and find relationships between them. So if you’re hoping to find your style, you start where you are with what you have, but most importantly, play with them on paper. Find some small set of tools and techniques and start drawing. Look for patterns that emerge in your marks and motifs.
For me, my style is a commodification of my art, something I can use to reliably and repeatedly produce images for my clients. My style helps me visualize ideas in a familiar way. I have developed a way of representing ideas and things with consistency in form, colour, texture, and all the other visual ways. In giving my ideas a sense of play and personality, I allow myself to do things a little bit (or sometimes a lot) wrong. I embrace how I draw things in weird ways; I also embrace how I can’t remember how to draw certain things realistically or very representationally at all. I distill my intuitive (and sometimes “wrong”) ways of doing these things into repeatable gestures. So much of what I do goes beyond the visual, beyond my art, but at the end of the day, I’m making images that others must relate to. And in working out my style, I have made deliberate decisions as to the building blocks of my images. I have identified certain proclivities (things I am prone to do and enjoy) and abilities (things I am good at), and commodified them for the marketplace.
When a client comes to me, I want them to have a pretty good idea of what I am about before they hire me … I want my clients to be my fans.
If through my style I have given others a sense of clarity in who I am, if it seems that I do not hide in a cloud of obscurity, I declare my style a success. If my style exudes confidence and a strong sense of identity, it’s only because I have been able to identify a combination of visual tools that work. Most importantly, I have been able to commit to them for long enough for it to manifest as a style. I’ve given them a chance. They don’t express who I am, they don’t signify the entirety of my identity, but by being faithful to them, they become more strongly linked to who I am.
Ultimately, it’s not the self-expressive function of my style that makes it successful. It’s not what I feel helps me most as an artist for a living. It’s the externalization of forms and motifs, the commodification of my techniques and symbols. There is enough to think about with each job; figuring out what style to work in, which colours to use, which tools for which effects, whose taste to appeal to … these things can compound to make each job unbearable. Instead, I have chosen to stick with a stylistic approach that I like, which over time have proven to be liked by others, and of course, which functions well toward their intended purpose. When a client comes to me, I want them to have a pretty good idea of what I am about before they hire me. I want them to already like what I make, and for the question of style and mannerism to be taken for granted. I want my clients to be my fans. From that place, I can pour all of myself into a project more readily, since I know that it will be accepted. The worst place to be in a commercial job is pouring in mass amounts of effort while not knowing whether it’s going to be accepted. Every now and then this will happen, but for it to happen regularly would destroy me. A style is a safeguard against such failure. It preemptively filters out people who aren’t my fans (because they don’t like my style), and it gives me a stronger defence of my work during the process (I can always point to my other work to remind a client of what they signed up for).
To some, commodification might be a dirty word. But to those who are searching for their commercial illustration style, it’s really the only objective for the pursuit.
Want to go deeper into finding your style? I explore these ideas and much more in my Skillshare class, The Style Class: Work Out Your Style in a Daily Project.
