You've Got to Know When to Fold Them

Even for those of us whose ambition dial is stuck somewhere around 6 (I'm not sure where the top of the scale is, possibly 10, possibly 100) it's always worth trying to think of ways of getting your work in front of people. Getting a picture into an actual exhibition is probably the most prestigious but also the least cost-effective way. By the time you've factored in the price of framing and transport, an exhibited picture that fails to sell or attract significant attention is not so much a "loss leader", in the marketing jargon, as a loss loser. Even more prestigious, of course, is to be given a solo exhibition, but that, when all the associated costs are factored in, could easily represent a dent in your bank balance of several thousand pounds. If the gallery will foot those costs then fine, but otherwise it truly ain't worth it, unless the sale of just one work will cover the lot.

So I like to think of cheap but effective ways of getting my stuff out there (other than on the internet), ideally something that looks a bit classy, but costs pence to produce. The sort of thing you can pop in an envelope and post to people, safe in the knowledge that if they choose to bin it the loss is theirs – ignorant fools! – not yours. Which is what I had in mind when I bought a box of A2 paper pre-cut (by Marrutt) into strips 30cm and 12cm wide. A thin card of 230gsm is perfect for folding into "concertina" booklets of around four to six postcard sized pages. These could either be separate images, or – as in the two examples here – a panoramic image spread over several panels. If the chosen paper stock is suitably rigid, then the outer pages will function as a cover; if not, it's not exactly a daunting task to fashion something out of a thicker paper or card. [1]

In a rare glimpse into the workings of the Atelier Idiotic Hat in Southampton, here is an example of what one looks like in its folded state, standing on top of a printed 30cm x 59.4cm sheet awaiting trimming and folding:

 Of course, if one wanted to go completely nuts, three such folders could be put onto a single A2 sheet, and printed as, say, a small batch of posters by Vistaprint at around £3.50, but I like to keep things in-house as far as possible, not least because I like to be able to tweak the design (I keep changing my mind about the colour and content of that last panel in the "pike" folder, for example). Besides, I simply don't have that many people I could send the things to...

1. Actually, I have come up with a damned cunning method of manufacturing top-quality covers for booklets, which I won't reveal yet. It's genius! Although, like my "packaging" idea, no doubt everyone with an ounce of imagination is doing it, too...