Mosaic Science Editorial Commission - Reflections

Back in September I was emailed about the opportunity to do 6 editorial illustrations for Mosaic Science (Wellcome Trust) for an article about trypophobia. I noticed that Matt had done some work for them so I emailed him and asked if I could have a chat about it because I was pretty nervous. Him and Ben gave me lots of good advice and told me to maybe email the art director asking for her to send me over any pieces of work of mine that she was after the same kinda feel.

This was my first editorial commission and first time working with an art director. They were really lovely and helped ease my worries and made everything go smoother. It was a nice first editorial commission to have in the fact that there were 3 interim deadlines where I would send over ideas for feedback before the final images.

It was a difficult article to illustrate because it was about a fear of holes / clusters but obviously I wasn't allowed to draw any holes / clusters incase it was triggering to potential readers. Juggling this commission alongside COP was very difficult and I took on too much and I was pretty stressed and miserable in those few months before Christmas.

I think the problem I had was that I was trying to be something I'm not. I worried that I was not good enough to be doing a commission for this high profile client and so I ended up creating a set of images that I don't recognise myself in. I think they function fine, but I'm not proud of them which is a shame. I'm pleased that I got through the job and managed to juggle my time, but I wish I could do it all again. I ended up making these images all digitally on a tablet, which definitely isn't my practice, I think I worried I wasn't professional enough and ended up changing my whole process, but for what? I should have trusted myself and made work that felt like me and then maybe I wouldn't be writing such a debbie downer reflection about this.

I'm so grateful for the trust of the art director and how lovely and supportive they were throughout this process, but I'm pretty embarrassed by the outcomes and worried that I may have come across as stressed or unprofessional? But I'm probably just overthinking it all.

I would really like to do editorial work in the future, I just think I need to get more confident and try and push imposter syndrome down and not try and juggle too much at once.

here's 2 of the images from the 5 I created for the article.