IT MAY BE EASY BEING GREEN, BUT IS IT CHEAP ENOUGH?

The sun may have set on the Cancun Green Summit, but the green debate remains very much alive in the business travel industry. As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, the Business Travel & Meetings Show is also doing its bit for keeping green on the agenda by confirming sustainability expert Niclas Svenningsen to speak at our conference in February.

Niclas is head of Sustainable United Nations (SUN) at the United Nations Environment Programme and he‘ll be contributing to the opening industry round table at midday on Tuesday 8 February. The round table’s called ‘Cost-Cutting VS Carbon Cutting - assessing the practical and economic considerations for making greener travel choices.’ During and following the recession the pressure to cut costs and stay in business certainly seemed to (naturally) take precedent over being green and doing the right thing for many organisations. It will be interesting to hear from Niclas – and his fellow panellists consultant Jon Green and Environmental Journalist of the Year, Jenny Southan from Business Traveller – whether this has now passed and money is once again being channelled into being environmentally friendly.

They will assess how cost cutting is effecting traveller behaviour and the utilisation of less traditional transport options; what the industry can do to make less expensive forms of business transport greener; the potential for a European framework for ensuring greener transport options; and whether the recent cost-cutting climate has prevented travel managers from making green travel choices.   

I genuinely think this will be a timely, interesting and popular session at BTMS and I will certainly be taking a seat for it. If you fancy joining me (and do forgive me the blatant plug) simply register www.businesstravelshow.com.

Posted by David Chapple, event director of Business Travel & Meetings Show

Everybody Dance

18 x 24 Final Poster

Do-do-do, clap your hands, clap your hands - Chic

For those of you who have been following my blog, you will likely remember my 70's themed posts from a few weeks ago titled 'Oh So 70's' and 'Disco In Repeat'. They were all done in preparation for our final Joe Denaro poster project. When I was searching through my multitude of references, I fell in love with this image of a beautiful woman and her gigantic hair. It became the foundation of my poster design and the afro turned into my disco ball dance scene.

I love how the color took to the paper. It gives off that smokey studio 54 vibe I was desperately trying to achieve. I thought I would share that this was the first painting in a long while where I actually stopped and savoured how much I love doing what I'm doing. Sometimes the pressure of delivering completely erodes my innate passion for producing art. But being able to share this with all of you has brought new meaning to my work. I'm reminded that there is room for all of us. Enjoy!!

Fashion Anatomy

The Embryo Pose

Making Yoga Fashionable

The amazing Russell Simmons (as in co-founder of Def Jam, creator of Phat Farm, and passionate philanthropist) asked my anatomy professor, Karen Santry, an intriguing question. 'Would our FIT fashion illustration block be willing to draw fashionable yoga figures, for an awareness fundraiser he hosted at his home this past weekend?'

As I'm sure you can pretty well guess, our group answered with a collective YES!!!! Russell is a yoga enthusiast involved quite extensively with the Integral Yoga Institute here in New York. While our block is anxiously awaiting our individual certificates of participation, I wanted to post my embryo pose drawn for the party. I'm so pleased to say that, according to Karen, he just loved it. Namaste everyone and enjoy!!

Mermaid Jane

Jane Aldridge and her Sea of (Fish) Shoes

Color Rough

Pencil Rough

Concept Thumbnails

I owe the lovely Miss Jane Aldridge from Sea of Shoes a BIG thank-you. On September 28th, 2010 she called out to her readers for their artistic interpretations of their favorite Spring 2011 look. When I read this, my heart stopped. I submitted my entry on October 2nd and within hours my blog jumped from obscurity to the number one up-and-coming art blog on bloglovin. Surely this is a testimony to just how influential Madam Aldridge is. Later that week, when the brilliant Bil Donovan asked us to choose our favorite style icon for a conceptual portrait project, naturally I chose Jane.

Capturing Jane in a conceptual portrait proved to be no easy feat!! For one, some of the most incredible illustrators have already drawn her ie. Danny Roberts of Igor & Andre. I just really wanted to do something different. My first thought was to turn Jane into a shoe. After several attempts (as my classmates will attest) the shoe idea was just not coming together. Alas it was put to rest. I decided instead to explore the concept of Jane as a mermaid with her own sea of (fish) shoes. She has such a fresh, ethereal quality to her that lent itself perfectly to an underwater mermaid theme.

Nearly two months of preparation, ten color roughs, and one nervously painted final later, I'm relieved to say it's finished. More than anything I hope it stands as a token of my deepest gratitude to Jane. 5,200 people have viewed my entry to date and there is no telling the opportunities that can come from said exposure. I think it takes someone of amazing character to offer their readers a platform such as this. Jane, if you're reading, thank-you again for giving your readers such a wonderful opportunity to showcase their talents. I just really hope you like it. Enjoy!!

P.S. Just heard from her and she was thrilled!! Yay so happy to hear :)

All In The Frame

Bil Donovan introduced the novel concept of drawing a series of boxes on our sketch paper for class in order to strengthen our compositional skills. At first it felt so constricting. He was making us think, really think, hard about where the figures were best suited in the frame. On top of that he wanted us working in brush and ink only!! But by golly, did his little frames work.

So much so that by the end of the semester, I was still drawing them on the paper. When he told me I no longer had to, I insisted that my results were better with them. So here are a few brush and ink's in the frame. Just goes to show you that sometimes being pushed out of your comfort zone forces you to grow even greater within yourself. Happy Sunday everyone and enjoy!!

Are you a SME? Are you losing £50,000 a year buying travel badly?

Picture this, you have to travel to Denver on business in four weeks and you’ve never travelled there before. You don’t know which carriers fly there, where to stay or even what part of town the meeting is in. What do you do? Call your travel agent and get them to sort everything; or put the kettle on and spend the morning searching online? After all, you book the family holidays just fine, right – how hard can it be?

I’m guessing the latter, but whether this is you or not, the truth is it happens. And it happens too often in SMEs where business travel is, understandably, an after-thought. By adopting such an unstructured and chaotic approach to buying business travel, travellers are almost certainly wasting the company unnecessary time. And time, of course, means money. Let’s assume the guy travelling to Denver, for example, earns £60,000. That morning’s searching just cost £128. Now let’s say there are 20 travellers in the office making 20 trips a year, all booking independently. That’s the equivalent of over £51,000 of billable hours wasted.

So what’s the alternative for SMEs operating in a price-driven environment? They may not have the buying power to negotiate discounts, but they can certainly buy smarter, save the company time and effort, and enjoy increased benefits and rewards from suppliers. For more tips, read on:

1          Get your house in order. Appoint a member of your management support team to take responsibility for buying business travel and work with them to introduce a company-wide travel policy to control spending and reporting.  

2          Avoid online leisure travel agents. They eat up time and charge hidden fees. If you know what you want to book, go direct – you’ll get better service and equally good prices. Otherwise...

3          ... ask the experts. If the majority of your business travel is domestic, use rail and hotel booking agents. They will save you time, and HBAs don’t even charge. They also have access to a much wider choice of accommodation to suit all budgets. If you buy flights, use a local business travel agent like Advantage Business Travel or Uniglobe to deal with the more complex itineraries. For a small fee, they will save you hours.

3         Book ahead. Planning ahead can help you buy quality services for less.  Fly mid- week or out of season, purchase a multi-city ticket rather than a round trip fare, bundle your flights and accommodation, buy a restricted ticket and stick to your plan rather than fork out for a fully flexible fare! And for rail travel – never buy tickets at the station, it will cost you 30-40 per cent more.

5         Be brand loyal. Price is always king, but if you can be loyal it pays. By signing up for programmes that reward companies AND travellers, you can use kickbacks – such as free upgrades – to get more for your money. Most major airlines and hotel groups operate reward schemes and the good news is that, thanks to the recession, they are on the rise.

6         Look at the complete picture. Booking the cheapest but not the nearest hotel room, for example, may end up costing you more when you factor in extras such as cab fares, parking fees, airport transfers, internet charges and the time and hassle it takes to get to your meeting.

               

7         Seeing is believing: If you’d like to see how much money you could be saving by  using specialist business travel supplier and implementing a travel policy check out the travel savings calculator in the Visitor Zone of www.businesstravelshow.com and see if that can persuade you to stop doing it yourself!

Posted by David Chapple, event director BTMS

Redesigning Vogue

Illustrated Cover Above

Fall Shoes Pencil Rough

Spring Sandals Pencil Rough

Vogue Cover 1946

Our absolute, grand finale, last project ever ever ever in Adobe Illustrator was to redesign American Vogue's November issue. Obviously we had great big shoes to fill with this one. We were asked to reference as many former covers as possible in order to understand the evolution of the magazine. Naturally, I fell in love with the old illustrated covers from the 40's, 50's, and 60's. I took the above cover from 1946 as my inspiration point of departure. It coincided perfectly with Vogue's article on Giuseppe Zanotti's repurposed flat for Spring.

I really admired how this particular cover used one single accessory, yet achieved so much dynamism in the illustration. If the focus is strong in a design, the end result reflects that, so I wanted to be very specific about my cover's direction. In order to stay true to the November issue's text, every shoe I illustrated was from Zanotti's Fall 2010 collection. Even though the article referenced the Spring collection, I illustrated Fall given the season. Thank goodness for all these flats. After injuring my ankle in tennis yesterday, I won't be wearing heels for a long while. Enjoy!!