Dear Aspiring Designer,
Thank you so much for the excellent time we spent with you and your fiancé last week. We thoroughly enjoyed the hours spent talking about your work and looking at all your designs. Please thank your fiancé for the marvellous food he served. His dishes, recipes handed down from his great grandmother, would not disgrace him if served at some of London’s top restaurants. We wish him all the best in his venture with the three ex Goldman Sachs bankers. When he finally opens his own restaurant next year, we believe the guests will enjoy his Turkish inspired dishes just as we enjoyed specialities like his spinach and cheese pie and the dish you called Mevlubi. Let’s not forget desserts like his yummy Kanafeh and the deliciously sweet baklava with walnuts and pistachios that made us abandon our table manners….
We trust that life after graduating is going well and that each day brings you closer to accomplishing your vision and dreams. Having had the pleasure to spend time admiring your output, we’re determined to see that you earn from all that hard work. There’s no reason why you can’t leave your nanny job and devote more time to your design career. You have enough talent to enable you to make an excellent living, so should think seriously of handing in your notice. Lovely as the family are, their only interest is in how you cater to their offspring. We don’t wish to criticise them; we know they’re perfectly decent, but neither the husband or the wife made any attempt to see your show. Considering they live ten minutes away, we do find it odd. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, and say that they’re extremely busy; one wonders how busy they were if they could be at three or four social events in Central London, yet couldn’t find the time to see your degree show. Daunting as it may appear, handing in your notice isn’t a big deal if you weigh up what’s at stake. It’s just a case of you being bold and daring enough to sell your talents and abilities – not as a recently graduated student but as an expert and master of your various crafts. Your family and most of your friends agree with us.
Marketing yourself as a professional and master of your various crafts is not empty bragging or showing off; neither does it mean or imply that you know it all and have learnt everything there is to know in your chosen disciplines, i.e. creative theatre design, costume design and illustration. On the contrary, it shows that what you have learnt and mastered to date is good enough for you to earn a good living without needing to join a temping agency, serve as a waitress or work behind a bar.
Your designs are original and have a freshness that makes them desirable. They can be marketed individually as pieces of art: paintings, drawings, sculpture and installation art and sold to the public or private collectors. It is just a case of you viewing your designs not solely as art but also as products: postcards, greetings cards, posters, prints on garments, mugs, jigsaw puzzles, tote bags, umbrellas and much more.
There’s no reason why your current designs as well as future creations cannot be promoted and sold in the same way that the established art institutions sell facsimiles of the drawings, paintings and sculptors in their collection and exhibitions. Your best friend’s husband wants to support you in setting up a design company. A splendid idea. There are companies here and abroad who will pay premium for a licence to use your designs. The fortune that’s waiting to be made will have your name on the Sunday Times Rich List in a few years. Don’t think that we’re not supportive of your wish to start your own charity; we are. However, do you want to run a begging bowl charity, constantly rattling a box or holding jumble sales, or would you rather be a wealthy philanthropist bestowing endowments to your favourite causes? Look how your sister-in-law has been able to open a retirement farm for horses in South America. She couldn’t have done so if it hadn’t been for inheritance: a considerable sum of money and property left to her by her late uncle.
The following establishments: National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum, Wallace Collection, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Tate Modern and the Royal Academy of Arts shamelessly market and sell their various wares to visitors to their premises, and even those who are unable to set foot under their roof are still enticed online to whip out their debit or credit cards after filling up a basket of temptation in the form of merchandise of varying quality and price.
National Gallery Shop
National Portrait Gallery
Victoria & Albert Museum Shop
British Museum Shop
The Wallace Collection Shop
Dulwich Picture Gallery Shop
Tate Shop
Royal Academy
Is there any reason why you cannot emulate what these established art institutions have been doing unashamedly for years? There’s evidently money to be made in making (or having things made), then selling them as merchandise to visitors. No doubt, these establishments simply collaborate with suitable manufacturers, commissioning them to produce whatever is believed will sell well. The art institutions evidently understand what the punters want to take home with them to celebrate a visit to see the collection or a major exhibition. It’s a win win win situation, especially when one thinks of the size of their collection and the number of exhibitions – major and minor – held throughout the year.
You mentioned that when you were little you were crazy about Rubik Cubes and carried one wherever you went; your parents were constantly telling you off for playing with them at mealtimes. It’s funny to think that kids of your generation had their Xbox or PSB console confiscated if they misbehaved, whilst your punishment for annoying your parents was to be banned from playing with your Rubik Cube.
If you don’t know of Giovanni Contardi, we think you’ll love his mastery of the Rubik’s Cube. He’s working on an entirely different level from your average lightning cube solver. If he can make a living, then there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t do likewise with your beautiful designs.
Italian Rubik’s Cube artist Giovanni Contardi
Rubik’s Cube Pop Art Portaits by Giovanni Contardi
One of our client’s has a brother whose customers would love your work. We‘ve already shown him your website and he was impressed. He has your contact details, so expect a a call any day now. His customers have plenty to spend; they grace the Forbes Rich list annually, so don’t undersell yourself.
Are you free to meet next week?
All the best.
Yours sincerely,
Chuka Okonkwo & Dubem Okonkwo (The Tw↑ns)
Env↑ronMENTAL Training Agents
thetwinsenvironmentaltraining 