Our fifth coffee morning was with the amazing Rebecca Pitt, Theatre key artwork designer!
We hope by reading this snapshot of our chat that you can learn something new to kick start your own journey in the arts. Sadly our tech failed us so this coffee morning didn't record properly but you can watch all our others over on our YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/yz69zKE6A3E)!
With that lets get into it...
Q: What was your first paid role in the arts?
A: Probably a drama teacher! I started doing some teaching for sort of exams, because I used to go. I went to sort of Drama Club for my whole childhood, really. And there was this amazing man called Matt, who ran a company called Berserk, which is a local, a local company, that he sort of started from scratch, and they ran loads of amazing youth drama groups so I had a job teaching drama.
Q: Can you tell us more about what you do and how you've got to be able to do it?
A: Of course, so when people ask me what I do, I never. I use different words all the time, because I'm not quite sure what sounds right. But I suppose, technically, I am a key art designer for theatre. Sometimes I just say I'm a poster designer. If I want to sound Posh, I say, I'm an art director. But basically, what I do is I design the artwork for theatre productions. So it's the the sort of the main image. The other sort of the key art, as you call it, which then turns into all sorts of things, like posters and flyers and social media and web images. But yes, the the concept art, I suppose, is my is my job.
I had a really good art teacher at school. I went to a state school that didn't actually have great facilities for art. But our teacher was really really good. It's one of those things I think you don't realise until you're an adult, and you talk to other people about their experiences at school. If you've had an amazing teacher, you think oh, he was really he was really great. He was better than the ones that everyone else had. So I got really into oil painting in my teens and I actually started doing portraits of children, sort of just commissioned portraits of little kids. I just found that it was something I was naturally good at, I could get a likeness, and I just knew how to work with paint, and I I enjoyed it.
So when I was at university I was still doing a lot of painting especially in the holidays. Just selling portraits, but I don't think I could have carried on doing portraiture my whole career, because your clients are sort of individual people, and that I think that's not quite what I wanted. I did want to work in theatre. When I was at Uni, I was very involved with the Drama Club and I was doing a play called The Fall of the House of Usher, which was being directed by a fantastic director called Marika, who is now, fully fledged real director in the real world. She knew that I painted, and she said to me, will you make a poster for our show? And I kind of thought I really don't know how to do that, but I had a fiddle with Photoshop, and I made a pretty awful poster. I look back at it now, and I think I had no idea what I was doing, but you know that's what that was, university was a testing ground, and you could, try out things and they didn't have to be fantastic.
So after doing that 1st one, I thought, I really like this. This is a cool thing to do and because there were so many shows on at Uni I just did loads and loads of posters and found that I really liked it. So I started doing a bit of research thinking, is this, is this a job in the real world? Turns out. It is a job in the real world and I identified the company's I wanted to work for and I always thoguht that I wanted to end up at Dewynters. I thought, that's what I want to do and that's gonna be the pinnacle of my career and then I and I ended up working there very quickly after after Uni, within a couple of months of graduating, which I sort of always thought would be, would be my dream.
Q: Amazing! And for those who don't know who are Dewynters and what do they do?
A: So they are an advertising agency for theatre, so they do everything there. There is a department which is full of designers. So they designed the posters and the artwork. But there were also, you know, there's a marketing department. There's a promotions department. There's media, there's press, there's all of those different things all in one company. So it's when I was working there. There are about a hundred employees, and I think 15 of us were designers. They sort of offer a full service advertising for the bigger shows. It was a lot of the West End musicals, and then things like the Royal Opera House, and that sort of thing.
Q: So what did you do there when you first started?
A: I was a marketing assistant, a very bad one for a lovely marketing team. Very nice people in that team, but I was not good at that. I did it about 2 months, and then they were quite happy for me to move to the studio, and the studio wanted somebody who could paint so it worked out well.
Q: Something that is a really interesting topic in terms of the industry at the minute is AI, and I was wondering how that's affected, what you do, because it sounds quite tactile most of the times in terms of getting people in for photo shoots, using spray paint, and has that kind of changed? Do you think it's going to change.
A: It has changed. It's it's a bit of an awkward subject to be honest, because amongst the designers we all have really quite different feelings on it. It's kind of difficult, I mean. I'm happy to talk about it, but it is, you know it is. It's a kind of a touchy subject. Sometimes. I mean, I actually I was. I wasn't really aware that it was the thing that could be used until one of my very best friends, who, as a designer, told me about it, and then suddenly I was hooked, and I thought, This is really cool. But, it doesn't replace you. It doesn't come up with ideas. You can't come up with a concept with it. I think the thing that it does in a lot of, and a lot of cases is replace the use of stock imagery. So sometimes, if you haven't got enough budget for a photo shoot or something thats impractical or impossible to photograph like a specific Italian landscape but no one you know lives in Italy, I can use Ai rather than stock imagery for that.
Or I use it alot for mock ups so if I'm going to have a photo shoot, but we need to show the ideas to the client first. That was always a really difficult thing, because it's difficult to get the client to commit to an idea and go ahead with a photo shoot without being really able to show them what it looks like but now, with AI I can do a relatively good mock up of how it might look. I mean the they can't act so the faces are always a bit weird but you know that doesn't matter, because it's just to show this is the sort of general idea, and then you and then you photograph it properly.
It is much more satisfying doing things for real. But you know, yeah, there are times when it's helpful. I'm trying to think of a recent one where it's actually been used in a final image.
Oh, there's there's one where there's like a sort of woodland backdrop, and the backdrop is is made using AI which previously it would have been a stock image. And and now it's it's using AI, I mean it. It takes longer because the process of using AI is very tricky you have to keep going keep going, and then replace little bits, so it's not just you write the thing, and then it gives you the image but its more bespoke as a result.
Q: To round off what woudl your biggest piece of advice be to someone who wants to start work in the industry?
A: My biggest piece of advice is to get involved in the community, because there are not many of us out there, but everybody is nice, and everyone will chat to you. Come and meet people that's your best way in. Because basically, there is so much work that we're all constantly turning down work and sometimes when you turn down work, you think, oh, who can I recommend that we'll be able to do this. If there's a new person it's great, because we can just say, well, try so and so. So it's not only a way of getting to meet people and feel like part of the community, but also it's probably good way of finding clients, because people will just send it your way.
So that's I think that's probably my number one piece of advice. I think when you're when you're freelance as well, community is really important. It's really important not to feel like you're in competition with other people. There's room for everyone, and everyone does something slightly different. Everyone has a different approach. If you can take joy in other people's work, and support each other that's so much nicer than being like a little person on your own trying to figure it out. There's too much too much work for for the number of designers there are. So yes, I think that would be my advice don't try and set yourself up in competition. Try and join in.
But also kind of practically, it's really practice. Just keep going like there's a couple of younger designers that have started up in the last couple of years, and just the quality has improved so much, just from practicing. They just got really good, really, quickly. And I think that's that's really about putting in that time, and keeping on learning things, keeping trying new things, keep looking at art.
That's another important thing, I think, is not to get stuck in your own world like, make sure you're looking at other art. Not just this. Its as simple as just make sure you're following lots of art on Instagram and make sure you're looking at lots of art every day. And looking as you go around your daily life as well, and looking at shapes and colours and textures and typography and noticing stuff. I think that's that all just builds up to your bank, of ideas in your head.
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Phew! Have you got any coffee left? We certainly haven't!
Do't forget to check out our upcoming coffee mornings and Open Office Hours to come along, chat, get advice and have fun!
We'll see you soon!
Team Flood x
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