OUGD601 COP Essay - Interview with Nathan Evans

Nathan Evans - Illustrator & Muralist - Interview with Laura Taylor

1. Who do you think your target audience is when designing your lettering/signs?

It's important for me to say that I don't set out creating my work with a specific target audience in mind. I believe it's very important to create what you personally enjoy and sometimes this can be compromised if you think too hard about an audience. The only time I really consider an audience is when I'm producing client work. However, a client usually approaches me because they feel like my work/style speaks to their audience, which suggests they believe their audience is the same as the people who enjoy/follow my work.

If I was to try and identify anyone who I am trying to appeal to, then it would have to be potential clients. It's great to have followers and fans of your work, but I'm very interested in engaging with art directors and commissioners. However, this doesn't really have a direct influence on my physical work and impacts more on which jobs I take and how I market myself.

If you want a more measured and specific idea of my 'target audience' or the people who actually engage with my work, here are my figures from Instagram analytics:

Gender: 52% men and 48% women

Age Range: 25 - 34 (predominantly but also lots 18 - 24)

Countries: UK and USA (predominantly)

By not identifying a specific audience, I think I organically create work that people similar to myself will enjoy. Which means I can never really go too far wrong, because if I like it then in theory they should too!

2. Who mainly contacts you about lettering, what sort of people? Commerce etc? Why do you think these people are interested in getting hand lettering produced?

In my experience it's usually quite a mixed bunch. This ranges from small independent start-up businesses to international advertising agencies.

I believe the obvious common link with these commissioners is that they are usually within the creative sector and can see more value in hand lettering and 'analogue' crafts as a whole. I think people with creative backgrounds/interests often find it easier to appreciate the extra time and effort that goes into producing something by hand. The price for this kind of service is usually a little higher, but because they can identify the importance of that extra value and how it can grow their business, they are more than happy to commission a creative.

On the other hand of course, I would suggest that it is usually people who are less creatively inclined that struggle with commissioning a creative to produce something bespoke, because they often fail/struggle to see that additional value this can bring to a project. Which makes them question, why should they pay that little bit more?

With the digital age we have been experiencing over the past decade or so, there is a real danger of everything becoming too uniform, looking too similar and overly neat. There has been a huge resurgence in hand made over the past few years because people like to see a human side to everything. A quote that comes to mind is "there are no straight lines in nature". (Which I'm not sure is true or not...)

3. Do you believe a hand painted sign creates a different connection with an audience then a pre digital printed sign? For example your work for The Tetley way finding - do you think this would create a different atmosphere if recreated digitally?

It's funny you should use that particular commission as an example. After producing the hand-painted lettering signs to direct audiences of Light Night 2016, the person who commissioned me contacted and asked if I could also produce digital versions to be printed instead. It wasn't because they were not happy with the painted signs, it was the opposite. They liked the hand-painted signs so much that they were afraid of them getting damaged, so wanted to replace them with printed versions of less value and keep the valuable originals safe. This is a perfect example of someone really appreciating the value of the hand-made.

In terms of connection with an audience, I definitely feel like there is a distinct difference. Hand-made is a lot more personal and an audience can really relate to it, forming a stronger connection. You can see both the human emotion and movement in a brush stroke which you cannot recreate to perfection digitally. An audience also realises that this is a special thing. In a world full of duplications and replicas, something which exists nowhere else in the entire world has a beautiful and powerful quality about it. However, I am of course talking about an audience who are aware that something is made by hand. A lot of people are probably totally unaware of the difference between the two, until they are either told or see the process behind the work. Luckily that insight into process is a lot more common these days with social media etc. 

You will notice I'm using the word 'value' a lot and I think that is what it all boils down to. People always want to have something that will bring that extra value to their project/business, so if you can demonstrate that there is a demand for the value your work brings and show how it has been used successfully before, then people will buy into it.

In terms of other things, I can't really think of anyone else to speak to but here's a couple of resources that might be useful:

Sign Painters - Film available on iTunes (Never found it for free online!)

Beautiful Losers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zb6CYBRfAM

Nathan was very helpful and happy to engage with my questions/interview. Nathan has given a clear understanding a opinion to his responses which is refreshing, his answers are very concise and go in to great depth this should make it easier for me to reference him in my essay, by having more than one focal point.