Illuminating letters: behind the scenes

A year in review, in February?

Dear reader,

It’s been a year since this newsletter started in earnest. Reflecting over my break, I realised there are things I’ve loved that I want to do more of and some improvements I can make too.

In the spirit of sharing as much of how this newsletter gets made with you, I wanted to do some of that planning and reflection in the open.

The first year of the newsletter included 13 comics or visual essays and 5 behind the scenes notes.

It also saw us grow from the original 190 people who had subscribed to my old newsletter to now over 320, which is lovely (thank you for being here!). But I’m trying not to focus too much on those statistics. There’s so much pressure to be “niching down” and promoting your work more to grow an audience for your work. I have no interest in growing this newsletter for the sake of growing it, it started as a place for me to practice and have an excuse to make things and that’s what it will remain as.

I love that I’ve been able to just follow the whim of what I’m interested in across the months, and that’s definitely what I continue to do over the next year. But you might see me starting to lean more into stories that play into creativity and weird and wonderful connections, because as I look back over the last 18 posts those are themes I can see emerging naturally.

As well as the digital version of this newsletter, I made 10 zines. These brought me a lot of joy over the year. I’m so glad I made the silly investment in a stamp to number them, because I really love folding and assembling. It’s definitely brought the joy back into making in a way I was hoping for.

I have found myself really leaning into the same formats, with accordion and poster fold outs being styles I reach for most often. This year I’m challenging myself to try out some new styles, and perhaps delve into other sizes or page layouts.

A huge thank you to everyone who bought one of those zines. With your support, I’ve been able to donate a total of £124.00 to a range of charities. It’s been lovely to feel like my work is doing a tiny bit of good in the world as a reason to keep printing.

I’ve now got a much better sense of how many zines to order, all runs this year will be editions of 11 (1 for me and 10 for sale). There are definitely zines I ordered too few of to get the best value (the reading zine) and too many of (service design). I’m also planning to donate all profits this year to the National Literacy Trust, rather than a range of charities to make a single bigger impact.

I wasn’t expecting the behind the scenes posts to be so popular, but I’m glad that they’ve found their people. I think having them in the back of my mind has made me more conscious of my process and I’m looking forward to making more this year on my favourite zine formats (coming soon!), favourite tools, my progress with colour and some of the work I’m doing to get better at this whole thing.

Personally, I’m most proud of the comics that tell a full story and/or have a clear visual hook to them. So I want to work more on those in the future. This year, I’m planning to write less autobiographically too, and tell more stories about things that have caught my eye.

I’m excited for what’s in store for this year, and seeing how my work develops over the next 12 months.

Okay and now back to our regularly scheduled letters.

Write/draw again soon,

Natalie