A journey to a career in illustration - with Coostie Design.
The second in our 'meet the maker' series, supported by our paid members
Hello and happy weekend 🎉
This is the second in a series of spotlight articles featuring our paid members. You can read our first one here. It has been such a brilliant experience opening up my inbox to creatives working across Northumberland and beyond! I have already met some wonderful people and it has been a pleasure hearing their stories and learning more about the work they are doing here in our small corner of the world. We hope you enjoy reading them too.
This week, I am handing over to Ali Edwards; an illustrator and designer based in Berwick Upon Tweed. It has been a joy getting to know Ali better and she has a brilliant career story as to how she has ended up where she is today.
You can find Ali online via her website, on Instagram and via the Folksy online shop.
Over to Ali from “Coostie” Illustration & Design…
I grew up in County Durham with primary school teacher parents who made just about everything a learning opportunity; walking holidays in the Lake District included lectures on the geology and history of the landscape and weekends were filled with outings to Hadrian’s Wall, Kilhope Lead Mining Centre, Beamish Museum, and a wealth of castles, churches and historic buildings. Small wonder then that I developed an abiding and deep love for the North of England as a place, as well as for history and the natural environment. As a child I also loved playing with art materials, but was encouraged to consider this as a hobby, not something that could become a 'real' career.
I ended up working at Beamish Museum for a year, before studying History at Durham University, followed by an MA in Art History and then a 15-year career working in communications and marketing in the South East for the university and charity sectors.
My family moved to Northumberland 6 years ago, looking for a reset. I was looking to move into a career that allowed me to be more creative on a daily basis and so I spent a lot of time drawing and painting and taking a variety of workshops and online courses (hello Covid-19 pandemic!) and last year launched my business – Coostie Illustration and Design. Whilst I sometimes think it is pretty nuts that I started my own illustration and design business in my early forties, having never studied art beyond GCSE, I think looking back that there were lots of clues that this was a direction I'd enjoy!
I’m too much of a magpie to pick one thing and settle to it – I’m always distracted by the next shiny thing – and I really love that running my own business allows me to incorporate all of my creative self, rather than having to just do one or two things.
I’m discovering I’m quite unusual in that I even enjoy things like marketing (but then, I’ve a lot of experience!) and managing my accounts (bit of a spreadsheet queen!)
I illustrate a range of subjects in ink and sometimes watercolour, including local wildlife, landmarks, the changing seasons and even my kitchen garden, for use on products, packaging, editorial, branding – you name it! Some of this work is self-initiated and ends up on my small eco-friendly product range, which I sell via my website, Folksy shop and a lovely local business (Puddles on West Street in Berwick). I also incorporate some of my work into surface pattern designs that I sell via print-on-demand, as well as licensing to companies to use on fabric, stationery, etc.
The rest of my work is driven by specific commissions. For example, last autumn I was approached by the Newcastle-based charity, Equal Arts, to be part of a collaboration with two other creatives working on the development of a singing Christmas card project. The project involved two groups (one in a care home and the other residents of assisted living accommodation) working with a musician to write their own special Christmas songs - the idea was that the groups would be filmed performing their songs as a ‘Singing’ Christmas card - and I was asked if I’d be interested in illustrating the two ‘card’ fronts. There’s a blog post on my website with more information and links to the finished ‘singing cards’ if you’d like to know more. This was such a fun project to work on!
NB In case you didn't know, 'Coostie' is a dialect word of north Northumberland meaning ‘good’ or ‘great’. I chose it as my business name because I wanted my creative business to be as ‘good’ as it can be in terms of environmental responsibility, working with ethical clients and suppliers, and including an element of support for my local community.
A percentage of my profits is always going to go to local charitable causes and for my first year of trading, I’ve decided to support the National Trust Northumberland Coast team, who look after huge swathes of our beautiful natural landscape in the county, as well as supporting Culture Northumberland as a paid member.
For 2024, I’d love to work on more commissions that involve collaboration with local charities or working with local businesses to provide illustrations for packaging, products, or branding projects. I’m also attending my first big event with my product range (Berwick Food and Beer Festival, August 16th – 18th) and I’m hoping to find some more Northumberland stockists for my range.
Thanks so much to our recent supporters here at Culture Northumberland:
Esmé Weijun Wang,Vanessa Priest, Lindsey Mclaren, Louise Mabbs, Hilary Elder, Republic Gallery, Dex Hannon, Dispel Develop, Alison Edwards, A Recumbent Prattler, Lyn Campbell - you’ll learn more about their work soon.