Professional practice: December 2018

I finally received the answers back from DIY YOUTH along with a few images to compliment the text. During this long conversation of attaining these answers, I learnt a lot about dealing with others professionally which will help me in the future when dealing with clients for instance. During a previous talk with some of my peers in level 6, they stated the best way to come across in the emails is polite, complimentary and to the point. Practicing this helped me come across quite professional to the designers I emailed which I believe is the reasons I got such a wealthy reply from them. One thing they stated was that the images of the work in they sent wasn't theirs, it was the work of others obtained by them during a collaborative project. This means I would have to give them full credit for the work in the publication practising skills of ethics in design. Here is DIY YOUTH's response below.

DIY YOUTH Questions

What’s your name, where are you from and what do you do?

We are Michaela and Jack, we’re both from the North East of England but we’re now based in Leeds, and we run / are trying a small independent publishing business called DIY YOUTH - with us dedicating what little spare time we have whilst we both work full time in the joyful photography retail sector (woo!!). DIY YOUTH was initially created whilst me at Jack met studying Photography at Leeds Arts, and our intentions for the business was to help promote work made by young creatives and artists, who we feel often go dismissed within the bigger mainstream publishing world.

I (Michaela) launched DIY YOUTH originally as an online publishing platform, writing and posting interviews / zine reviews mainly with course mates that were struggling to find any publishers/platforms that would even consider posting their work. I didn’t take it too seriously during the time I was at University, but a following started to grow and I soon received messages from a younger generation of creatives internationally that wanted us to feature their work - which was and still continues to be incredibly exciting. After graduating with Jack from university this year, he joined DIY YOUTH to help ease the workload and bring a fresh set of eyes and a new way of thinking to the business. Over the course of the past year and a half, we’ve published about 70 interviews/zine reviews, put out 2 open calls/publication, hosted an arts fair and launched our distro at Bound Art Book Fair in Manchester - but we’d like to do much more in the upcoming year.

What do you practice and how do you translate your ideas through your work?

Even though the main aims of DIY YOUTH revolve around promoting other young practitioners, we both still find it important and necessary to continue our own practice alongside working and doing DIY YOUTH.

We’re both photographers and we both enjoy using photography to comment on a range of matters with a social/political/cultural intention, often more than creating arts for arts sake. Jack’s got a keen and practical eye for designing too which I think definitely helps us out as a business, and he’s got a very creative way of thinking which helps us to grow a bit more as a business. Whilst I seem to like the writing side a bit more, though i’m not terribly good at it I like to create content and hope that people find it interesting.

I think with us both coming from an arts background, it has definitely benefited us to continually rethink and grow DIY YOUTH, whilst we continue to practice and grow as young practitioners ourselves ; which overalls helps us to translate the issues that we and peers/graduates/other young artists face, creating solutions to the problems - rather than moaning about it because it’s easier to do just that. DIY YOUTH for as long as we run it will continue to strive to benefit the community of talented young artists that seek for a platform to showcase and share their work, or instead to find inspiration.

I am aware you have been involved in several collaborative projects such as the Appropriation zine. What was it like communicating with such a large amount collaborators?

Honestly, the Appropriation collaboration started off well and a publication came from it that we were happy with, but sometimes as collaborations sometimes go, the process of the entire thing went completely tits up - but being respectful to our other collaborator, we’d rather not go too into detail about that. But we definitely learned a lot throughout the whole process, both good and bad lessons were learned and we were over the moon that we managed to actually release a zine from it. We were and are extremely proud to publish such a variation of young artists through the Appropriation zine that were disciplined in a whole range of different art forms.

In the future I think for our next publication we’ll be sure to just put it out ourselves. Naturally though as we’re a young publishing company, we still of course have the majority of the publications sitting nicely in the wardrobe, and if anyone fancies one we’re selling them via our website for a fiver.

However, back to the answering the original question - communicating with such a large number of collaborators in terms of the artists that submitted to our open call couldn’t have been achieved without depending on having conversations online over email/Instagram. Many of the artists that we published within the Appropriation zine were based not only in the UK but also internationally, so it was easier to communicate continually back and forth over email. The key to communicating effectively with collaborating artists is to be as open, trustworthy and as honest as possible, being respectful of their wishes as artists and being easy to contact regularly. Though that’s easier said than done whilst we work a lot ourselves, it’s something we’re hoping to get better at through a restructure in the new year.

How long did it take you to complete such a large briefs like these?

About two/three months, from launching the open call for a month, communicating with artists, to then giving time to decide and edit work we’d publish, sequence the visuals, design the zine, proofread it and then finally test printing - whilst sending emails back and forth to all collaborating creatives, tweaking and printing it. Again, following a timetable is extremely important and having realistic timeframes is essential, whilst accounting in extra time in the original structure of the plan just in case things go wrong - which sometimes they often do, but that’s part of the whole fun and games in publishing!

Did you ever come across any misconception with some of the collaborators about the publication during these projects?

Course. If a whole collaboration goes too smoothly it’s natural to be suspicious. Though it is right to say we weren’t completely innocent too in the collaborative process we’ve had in the past, it’s hard to keep everyone in the whole collaborative process entirely happy, and compromises therefore have to be made to suit the needs of everyone. But creating solutions to the issues of a bad collaboration helps you to understand and avoid future mistakes that could hinder the whole process of creating a project. I think the most important thing we learned was to aim to be on top of things and not to let any part of the process weaken/slide or take a backseat by instead taking responsibility and the initiative to create realistic aims within the process, continuing the mindset of completing a project with the intention of celebrating young artists, rather than to abandon it immaturely.

It’s important to note that even running a business with two people is not always easy too. Me and Jack work amazingly together, but there’s been times that we’ve wanted to kill each other. Excellent and regularly communication, a lot of patience and ultimately overall the willingness to work together structures a well built collab - as well as having a bit of a laugh to get through the hectic times.

Have you stumbled upon any other challenges during the collaborative process?

Absolutely, who hasn’t! Lack of trust and especially communication creates a bad collaboration, it’s simple. Trying to be open and honest, but being respectful and understanding whilst working incredibly hard to complete a job can truly be difficult, but aiming to do so makes the whole process so much easier. Working with friends can sometimes be difficult too, as upholding a more professional obligation to the collaborative process can affect a friendship negatively - so if you work with mates, please make sure you actually try and be as respectful and as honest, but fair as possible. Being on the same page and listening, discussing and articulating your points openly is I think the best way of achieving a positive collaborating; keeping in mind and focusing on upholding the positive intentions and outcomes that can come from a collaboration.

How specific do you get with the briefs you create when involving such a large amount of people?

We try and get specific with a theme of an open call for example, but we try to keep the whole process quite open and not too specific, though I think it’s incredibly necessary that a collaboration should follow time constraints sensibility to create a healthier collaboration, and that a structure should be set and attempted to be strictly followed. Being specific by re-evaluating the process is extremely important too, as it allows ideas to be created with the aim of enhancing the project need to be considered on both ends by the artists and the publishers.

Any advice for young creatives who are collaborating with someone who’s practice they are not used to?

Be understanding and open to listen and learn from them, but hold your ground too and trust yourself.

Are you working on anything right now? And if so what is it?

We’re juggling the classic work/life balance right now as graduates fighting to live and survive and Myself and Jack are currently working on a huge restructure of DIY YOUTH to help sustain the publishing company, taking into account that we sadly and annoyingly have to compromise a lot of our time to earn money (how boring), and we’ve struggled to reliably focus on improving DIY YOUTH since we stopped being students - but we’re hoping to change that as we’ve gotten settled into a routine of knowing how to focus on developing DIY YOUTH. Some aspects of how we run as a business are getting scrapped as they’re un-achievable for us to continue, however, newer and more exciting prospects are going to be announced soon in the New Year, so watch this space.

However despite any constraints we’re still kicking and we continue to live on and continue to strive to dedicate time to the cause of helping young and often struggling artists. The new year is something to keep an eye out for too. Some cool things have been planned.

Finally, given the fact I’ve focused a lot on collaboration, I was wondering if you wanted to have any input on how this creative report should look or this interview should translate?

We’re incredibly excited to see it and we’re over the moon to be featured within creative report! Thanks a lot to you Ruben for approaching and interviewing us as we hugely enjoyed it and incredibly appreciated it. We wish you the very best for the future studying and practicing Graphic Design!