The next person that I needed on board was a Graphic Artist and website designer. Note, a designer, not a coder. Ideally that person would be able to create a graphical look-and-feel, contribute to discussions about the central theme and any theme characters and, of course, produce all the required artwork. Very definitely a full-time job.

I come from a photography and CAD (computer aided drafting) background. Ask me to do a simple sketch and you’d think it was done by a two-year-old! I would be hopeless in that job! For years I have been valiantly trying to master Adobe Illustrator, but when the tutorial coolly says: “Draw a few strokes to represent a chin…” I just fall apart.

How I found the “perfect” Graphic Artist

But how to find the right person? I wanted someone good enough that they were already able to earn their living as a freelancer, but I would require them to be working nearly full time for me. Hmm, a seemingly impossible task… However, I belong to an internet interest-group of South African business people called Business Warriors. This is a group of several thousand business people who exchange help, advice and information with one another with the aim of strengthening each other as entrepreneurs. There is a master list where each member publicizes his/her field of expertise - sort of mini electronic yellow-pages. I looked up some of the graphic artists, visited their websites looked at their illustrative styles. I whittled down the numbers to two of them and Googled their names. One was fairly active on the Internet and one wasn’t. So, my candidate was chosen - let’s see if she would take the bait. I wrote her an e-mail explaining what I had in mind and asked if she would be interested and what her fees were.  I described a simple illustration that I wanted drawn and asked for a quote.

You learn a lot about someone from their response. She replied by sending me a whole bunch of links to examples of her work and I quote her response:

Now as to price - I can’t yet be very helpful until I know what style you need, but what I can do is work within your budget. If you want a pic to cost you only … to … then I can belt something out to suit that - see the zen chinese style for instance or the blobby style, mentioned above, both of which are quicker than most of the others. A very charming style I saw recently features in the excellent book “How to be Idle” by Tom Hodgkinson. Have a look next time you’re in a bookshop. The line drawings look quite unskilled at first and then you realize the style is very carefully judged, to look effortless, whimsical and unassuming. Very likeable… and conveys the subject matter v well. Line drawings btw are cheaper than colored-in or shaded pix, and as a very rough guide, work on … per talking head, … to … per full figure, and another … for a very complicated and detailed background. (Line drawings would be about 80% of that) It would probably be easier to take it subject by subject and picture by picture, but I thought I’d risk confusing you by sharing my system with you. I hope it’s somewhat helpful!

Hope I hear from you soon - it sounds like a job designed for me. My experience in educational illustration is vast and covers 20 years; there is little I haven’t drawn by now, as far as subject matter is concerned. What I like most about it, is that it aids people in uplifting themselves so it’s a worthwhile thing to do as a life’s work. That’s the Worthy Part. And I like working out creative ways to hook the subject matter in people’s heads to make it stick. That’s the fun part. Having educated myself with mindmaps using lots of cartoons, it’s something of a specialty in this corner.

As you can see from the above, what a delightful response.

What She Does

We haggled out a price for an initial test illustration and I was sufficiently impressed with what she produced that I looked no further. I arranged with her a minimum guaranteed monthly remuneration amount, which then gave my work priority over her other customers but not forcing her to drop them. She has been working for Fundisi ever since, where she designed every page in the site (supplying the finished artwork as Photoshop files and optimized slices to the programmer). In addition she has produced most of the stock artwork (Adobe Photoshop bitmaps and Adobe Illustrator vector drawings) for many of the courses. She has also produced a complete course on How to Draw (12 separately downloadable PDF’s).

So, a stroke of luck to find such a gem first time around. I must be on the right track…