A rebuild on the run
Field Notes from the Studio that treats sport as culture
In this post;
How to publish your work as calmly and rewardingly as possible
Doing doing really fiddly work after a great deal of work
Upcoming stuff from the studio
So it’s been a minute. Best intentions were to make this a regular thing and get posting in a way that feels manageable and regular.
But life happens, right?
A hugely productive and strange period
Lots of things in the planet right now feel like they are at a juncture. Big things are happening.
The studio itself has gone through an incredibly productive and creative period. There’s been a couple of big commissions and regular illustrations and articles for Cricket Et Al.
Getting pleasing results like this is awesome to stoke the creative fires and get the inspo flowing. Genuinely feels like what footballers call ‘running on top of the grass’. Weirdly, though, success in the creative game can create its own challenges.
The simple matter being that Fisher Classics has made a bunch of great stuff that its proud of but I can’t actually be sure if anybody has seen it. A lot of it sits in hard drives in the studio or on servers in the cloud.
The digital publicity monster needs feeding and all I’ve got is some poorly named and ordered .psd files.
After creating three large and unique projects I’m faced with the task of collating them into a way that helps others understand what sort of work the studio does.
I’m keen to share all this work, and to do it in a way that doesn’t feed Zuckerbergs greedy algorithm.
It’s as brutal and undignified as trade period happening days after the warm glow of a Grand Final. But its important to get the house in order to have another go.
A short sprint after a marathon
So, what happens next? What do we do here? Why am I actually doing this?
Following back to back projects the overwhelm is real;
Image sizes, INDD files, colour correction, DNS server and C-Names as well as lost logins…. GAH!
The key thing I’ve discovered from managing the studio is that my own thoughts need ordering. Creatively the synapses can start firing off but it can create its own thought storm that fires of strikes of randomised distraction.
‘I’m going to make a great an clever series about ‘x’
‘…and its going to have this type very clever feature’
‘everyone will think its really clever if I also include this’
That’s right; along with the overwhelm is a nasty and noisy perfectionist streak that can seriously get in the way.
How to cut through the noise
My thoughts need sorting. Journaling is key.
Shouldn’t need to advertise the benefits of the practice of writing things down but some of the best are Cam aka Struthless. His book Your Head is a Houseboat is a brilliant exploration of journaling practice and one that I can only recommend fully to those with a busy brain.
When I get my thoughts out onto a page it empowers the good and diminishes the useless.
There is something wild about looking at a thought that occupied your mind physically in front of you and seeing its power evaporate.
Conversely, it’s amazing to feel creativity flow once the hand starts moving on the page. The thought distillation process seemingly automated once you get going.
Studio Site
So after an overwhelming amount of fiddly work my portfolio site is finally ready for debut.
Well… not just yet I’ve got a bunch more things to add and it contains some stuff that’s not yet launched.
Should be ready in the next little while and looking forward to sharing here.
‘til then - Go Well.
Dan
Fisher Classics is a creative studio that treats sport as culture.
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And if you feel like a squiz, the work lives on the site.