'The Original Solid Egg': Since 2012 (and why we do it)

In 2012, a chance comment by a friend (Thanks Emma) triggered an idea: Easter eggs were always hollow, and as a child - as an adult, even - you still hankered after the fantasy that one day you'd pick one up and bite into it to find not more air, but more chocolate. A solid, filled, no-bubbles, not-in-chunks, not-full-of-truffles Solid Chocolate Egg.

So, as with many projects before and since, and knowing very little about Easter egg production, we went ahead and made it a reality. We had a history of creating chocolate products as giveaways, promotion and uprated business cards, so we commissioned 50 eggs from a local chocolatier, designed some robust, no-nonsense packaging and an appropriately working-class blocky logo for them, and sold the lot. To our delight, mates, colleagues and strangers alike thrust money at us in exchange for the childhood fantasy of this non-hollow egg.

We initially gave no thought to doing it again, but six years on, Solid Egg is not so much a product as an annual event. We're quite good at events - Leigh and I were putting on events within the first few weeks of meeting each other - so treating it as such feels more native than 'selling a product'. The planning starts before Christmas and the packaging is designed, the ads are plotted and the eggs made as close as feasibly possible to Easter sales time, in order to keep them as fresh as possible. Then with eggs inside packaging and the web shop stocked, we're off, on around six weeks of mentally and physically challenging work on top of whatever else we're working on in the run up to Easter. The Internet can make selling look easy, but it's bloody hard work bringing a hand-made, personalised product to market and even harder actually persuading people to part with their hard-earned cash.

But, with a cult following worldwide, the eggs sell out every year, and we've sold them as far afield as Manhattan, LA, Canada, Korea, Japan, and all over Europe. Every year we're surprised at their geographical reach. The only thing that's stayed the same since 2012 is the logo; the eggs have increased significantly in weight and quantity, the packaging is re-designed every year, advertising routes and looks change; we've designed our own, bespoke moulds.

We've consistently had the eggs made in the UK, with ingredients chosen for their flavour, ethics and origin. People buy our eggs for far-flung relatives as Easter gifts; as thank yous, as presents for themselves; they hide them from their children, buy them for their children, treat their work colleagues with them and keep them on shelves for months, chipping away at a bit of Easter all year round (their average shelf life is around 16 months).

Of course, what happens when you do something that's popular and appealing? It gets copied. There's a big blog coming up about that happening in a much wider context - copying and imitation has been a growing issue in the last 18 months - but, in the time since we've been doing this, another bloke's come along and set up a company selling what he describes as 'solid chocolate eggs', complete with a logo described, when we sought advice on it, as 'uncomfortably close' (you'll see what I mean if your Googling is terrier-like enough to find it!) His egg is, in reality, an egg shape made up of lots of little bits held together by its plastic packaging - so purely in terms of physics alone, not at all solid.
There's room for all styles of chocolate egg in the world of course, and we even laughed and looked the other way when we realised he'd nicked chunks of our copy too (our assistant wasn't so chill about it, she had to be talked down with a nice cup of hot chocolate) and even kept our heads when we noticed he'd dissed our actual egg on his website. But. As long as we keep reinventing and making our egg better and different every year, we're happy to let him have his corner of the chocolate egg world. We know our market, and we know where the motivation for making it comes from - and it's not from the desire to make a few extra quid on Amazon. (There's also no plastic in our egg. Thanks Blue Planet II!)

The other thing we've always done is made vegan eggs. Way ahead of the massive surge in vegan eating, we knew there was a market for a big greed-based hunk of chocolate for people who happen to avoid dairy, and 'inclusive chocolate' was a thing we both sought out and pursued with our own products. As vegans since the late 90s, it would have been insanity not to. Since then we've made a gluten and nut free one too.

So it's all good, and we're quite proud of keeping this project running for all this time. But people still ask us why we do it, since it's hard work and a risky thing to do - after all, what if you don't sell through? There are only so many chocolate eggs you can eat*. The supermarkets are awash with less costly, pretty, or fancy, or character-led, decorated eggs; vegan eggs are even in Aldi now, and for the amount you spend on one of our eggs, you could go mental in Lidl's Easter aisle and still have change for a treat from the 'Seasonal Clothing Bargains' section.

We've come to think it's because people trust us, and the product, and our reasons for doing it. We're not quietly building up an egg-shaped retirement stash - a nest egg, if you will - but we do make a modest profit which is fed into other projects. We don't claim to make the biggest egg, or the fanciest, or the cheapest - it's what it says on the tin (and yes this year, the eggs are coming to you in tins!) - just a solid block of beautiful-tasting no-nonsense chocolate made with love and care. And heavy enough to break a window, or replace your favourite kettlebell.

You can keep track of this year's Solid Egg on Eggstagram, Twitter (chicks, baby hens innit) and Facebook.

*Theory yet to be tested.

And, you can buy them at solidegg.co.uk

The Life & Death of The Ace of Shades

Where possible, once a book cover is finished, I like to unite the original art with the author whose words inspired it. I've been collecting these stories at 'Where it Went' on my main website, but I'm adding them here too.

Now, I can't always share 'Where It Went' posts right away as I have to wait some months between finishing a cover and that cover's 'Reveal'. Sometimes this can be as long as a year.

But...my cover for Amanda Foody's new novel 'Ace of Shades' is an exception, as after several months' work on it, the completed cover was signed off then, at the last minute, swapped for a photomontage and font.

Now, this happens. It once happened after 9 months' work producing 47 - yes, 47 - different cover designs for a particular book of adult female fiction. 'Chick Lit' as it was (and probably still is) called - one of the hardest genres to get a cover approved for, due to its mass-market nature. The art director was happy, the author was happy, I was happy, sales were happy...the supermarkets weren't. You can't really get upset when this happens, because ultimately, your job as cover designer/illustrator is to help make a book sell, and if the Sales team at the publishers, or the buyers at the supermarkets - sellers of huge quantities of books - don't like a cover, no matter how beautiful or hard-grafted or loved by everyone else it is, it's not going to get through.

So, here was my completed cover for 'Ace of Shades', and below it, the one that the book went out with.

Along the way to the original version, there were many pencil sketches, revisions and two full size 'final' pencil renderings, before ink even touched paper. 

I always start a book cover with thumbnails, like these, to get my ideas down quickly and record them all, to weed out the weak ones from the possibles. And I do include the ones I suspect might be rubbish - because you never know where an idea will lead. I do this in my floppy Moleskine Journal - thin paper, lots of pages, I can carry it about, make a mess and abuse it a bit along the way, glue things into it and rip pages out - it's what a sketchbook's for! Here are a couple of thumbnail pages:

These'll often go to the client 'as-is'. Early on in my career I started to get a reputation for working up ideas too well - ie: making them rather too finished - and sending too many of those at once. Although it often impressed and delighted a client, this approach actually made their job harder, as it was more difficult for them to feed in to an idea, and to isolate one that wasn't working from one that was, because near-finished artwork can be very seductive, and can disguise the weaknesses in an idea or a layout. Plus, they'd have trouble choosing from the sometimes as many as 20 ideas I'd send in.

I still do that from time to time, but nowadays try to keep the number down to about 6 or 7 ideas, and resist the temptation to take the artwork too far before getting an opinion on it. Tough to do when you're really into a job and enjoying the process! (Having 47 options scrapped for a stock photo + font was definitely a turning point! That art director and I still work together, btw...and our record remains unbroken.)

So the ideas the client liked are then developed into large, A3  sketches - on paper, for this one, since this is the look and process I'd planned from the start. Not ALL my covers are paper-and-ink based - I've done all-digital ones - but most are:

From here, a final direction's agreed on, and a final pencil rendering is made. Tweaks might happen along the way - but with a good, fine pencil-stick Papermate Tuff Stuff eraser, this is no issue at all!

From here, the ink is added - my favourite black drawing ink on my favourite Japanese nib, helped by a handful of different sizes of gel pen - Mujis, and Mitsubishi Unipin Fine Liners:

...till myself and the art director agree it's finished and ready to have its colour added!

which is a process of very careful scanning with a very high-end professional scanner (worth the eye-watering investment) and adding layers of colour and texture created with ink on paper, sometimes combined with digital colour. This usually takes a few versions to get right - my initial 'vision' might not work when it's actually in front of me, or doesn't work when put through the 'Amazon Test' - which is where you reduce the cover to the size of an Amazon store icon, and check it for legibility, impact and muddiness!

Here are a couple of those colour tests (there were quite a few!):

and the final result you've seen posted at the top!

I wrote to Amanda to tell her about how much I'd enjoyed working on the cover, and that I had the original art - would she like it? She'd liked the first version of her cover, and wasn't sure of the reasons for going in a different direction but, like me, knows that these decisions are sometimes out of our hands. I posted her the original art, but kept these images as a record of the life and death of this particular favourite, so that it can live forever in blogland, as the one that was not to be.

Having assistants is great!

Lisa wasn't officially an assistant, but this is what assistants are supposed to look like, efficient and cool and in control

...in my head, anyway

Since the late 90s, I've had assistants. The first one was my best mate Jules; the second who worked next to her was my other mate, another Sara, and the third, my sister's best mate Michelle. At one point all three of them worked together alongside me, doing different shifts, helping me run the wedding stationery business which ran alongside my illustration and lecturing work - you can see why I needed extra hands! - and later I employed a family member to run the accounts (who's still here).

'Staff' Christmas Party, 2003 - Sarah, Jules, Michelle.

This is Jules 7 years later, sitting in judgment with later assistant Drew, who LOVED stamping things.
And assessing the suitability of my clothing on arrival at work. 

We often get emails asking whether we currently have an opening for an assistant or intern. I've almost always said no - and not because we don't need one, but because we already have one. And we make an important distinction between Interns and Assistants - traditionally, and especially of late, Interns aren't paid; they're meant to be getting 'work experience' on the job, something companies can easily take advantage of. They're often expected to be grateful for the opportunity, and do it for free. We don't buy into that however; if you're working with and for us, yes, you'll most definitely be getting experience in the form of Illustration Boot Camp, (just ask our former assistant Brook), but we'll also be gaining from your input, knowledge, skills, your third pair of hands, eyes and your brain. So it benefits both parties, and for that, we pay very fairly, and handsomely over the minimum wage.

Lily was invited to rifle through my entire archive of original work, and put up an exhibition of what she liked - followed by the curation of a show of her own work, and a blog written about the process of doing both. 

Graham Robson did a similar thing in his first week - put up his own show of work, which included two murals, one of which Sarah is sitting in front of at one of our pop-up Secret Sunday Breakfasts! (I'm eating off my collection of Inkymole press)

If you come and work with us you'll be expected to work. Not watch. Anyone can make tea, and I'll probably make as much tea as you do. If you do make the tea, however, you'll be shown the right way to do it (bag in first, milk only after it's brewed). But you'll also be asked to undertake a sometimes bewildering variety of tasks which engage the brain and call for initiative.

For example, our successive assistants have:

- been our 'eye in the sky' back home as we travel through Europe checking out an exhibition venue, looking out for logistics, watching email, helping to order passes and other legalities

- helped paint a 15m mural in a half-completed building without power or light - on breeze block, the bastard of all substrates

- helped painted a restored pub, powered by chips

- made an oversized silicone penis door stop, from scratch

- worked out the basics of copper etching and assisted in etching album cover art

- completed entire illustrations in a style to complement mine

- built an archive

- been a waitress in our pop-up restaurant

- edited and subtitled a film

- went on a solo mission to London, twice, to find a suitable exhibition venue

- set up an image tagging system

- set up a server

- been indispensable right-hand (wo)man during the publicising, set-up and installation of a two-week exhibition - twice

- pitched in with drawing hundreds of mathematical formulae for a 72ft high Manhattan billboard

- been the Fourth Man in setting up the technicals of hosting an online and FM radio station over a 72-hour shift (including doing 2 live DJ slots)

- built 3 websites

- helped build a web shop

- solved endless technical challenges

- solved brain-crunching iTunes issues

- turned a Mac into a PC to run broadcast software

- installed a Firewall

- done photoshoots

- accompanied us to agency dos

- built an iPad folio system

and that's by no means an exhaustive list. These jobs of course are all alongside the day to day tasks like simply giving a second opinion, brainstorming, researching and ordering supplies and equipment,  making lunch and dinner for everyone in the studio, and stamping hundreds of mailings and Christmas promotions.

Graham adding a hand-painted postbox to the office front door.

Brook Valentine with Leigh in her show-hosting costume/shoes!

...and seeing if your name's down on the list.

So you're kind of in at the deep end if you come here, but part of that challenge is accepting that there will be days when there is simply nothing for you to do. The single most quoted obstacle to having an assistant which I hear illustrators talk about is 'but what will I give them to do'? And that's why our assistants have to have spades of initiative, for precisely those days when you need to either fend for yourself, or work out what WE need you to do - because often, when you're really busy, you can't actually see what needs doing, or where you need help, till someone else points it out to you. When your assistant starts to spot what needs doing before you do, you know you're onto a winner, and all those slightly awkward days early on in the arrangement have all paid off.

Sarah Jinks constructing a piece from almost 2500 Swarovski crystals for our 2006 'If A Girl Writes Off The World' show

Graham helping with the etching

As well as the obvious joy of having a pair of helping hands, there is the changed dynamic of a studio with another person in it who isn't you or your partner. As we've got older, our assistants have, as a matter of chronological fact, become younger than us - and this is a GOOD THING. Millennials come in for a shit load of stick, but they're great - they're interesting, they think in a different way, their skillsets are not the same as ours, neither is their experience of the world, and their energy is refreshing. I don't actually even like the word Millennials - there's something very 'other-ing' about it - but there is most definitely an energising effect to having one bounce into your studio with their slightly askew, quick humour, ideas, opinions and musical choices (we will check the contents of your iPod before we say yes - there's no point you spending your days hating what we're playing, and vice versa - because some days, we'll put you in charge of the tunes!)

The second reason I've heard people give for not having an assistant - including me, definitely, from time to time - is 'but having an assistant is just going to create extra work for me'.

Well, yes, it is. It can be hard work in the early days having someone in your space that you don't know, and you can't just bury your head in your work and pretend they're not there. You have to make sure the bathroom's tidy. You need to make sure you've plenty of tea bags. That they've got somewhere comfortable and well lit to work in. That they know how you like to have your phone  answered, that you've set up their own email address from your studio; that hey feel comfortable around you and they have plenty to do - bearing in mind, 'plenty to do' when you first start in a job, especially compared to your own workload, can actually be about a third of what you yourself would consider 'plenty to do'. But when the ball's rolling nicely, and you've all got to know each other's ropes, it's wonderful.

Graham 'at the wall' - the 15 metre, bastard breezeblock wall

If you think you're getting bit overwhelmed from time to time, you work by yourself or feel like an injection of energy is needed, I heartily recommend an assistant. It took me a long time to get used to the idea of a helper beyond giving roles to my mates and family, as I too used to worry about what they'd do, feeling that I might bore them to death, or their presence would be extra work for me. They don't have to be five days a week - ours have never been, except in REALLY busy times - as the likelihood is they'll have their own shit to crack on with. But maybe try it. The benefits are mutual, long-lasting and good for our brains, careers and creativity. You'll very likely help them on their way, via them helping you on yours.

And who knows, you might even have FUN.