3x3 Named One of the Top 100 Visual Magazines Worldwide

For the third straight year the Belvedere Festival is including 3x3 Magazine in its exhibit of the top 100 visual magazines worldwide. This year’s exhibit will be held in Rome’s Museum of Contemporary Art  (MARCO), Casa delle Letterature and the Istitutio Europeo di Design (IED) headquarters.

Belevedere is an international visual magazine festival sponsored by the IED. The artistic director of the Festival, Luigi Vernieri announced that this year’s selection will be the first time visual magazines have been exhibited in a contemporary art museum.

3x3 Illustration Directory Goes to Press

In these final hours before Thanksgiving we’re uploading the final files for the 2013 3x3 Illustration Directory. With over 250 illustrators from all over the world covering 388 pages—plus the cover—we once again have a strong showing of talent.

Unlike other directories, ours is curated, you must be invited to be in and unlike other directories our per page fee is in the low-hundreds not thousands of dollars. And our list of 6,000 art directors and art buyers is pre-sorted pinpointing those who are most likely to commission illustration. And this year the Directory will be available in both print and digital form with a free app. And for the first time we’ll be adding to our list with selected art directors and art buyers abroad.

Our compact size is a big hit with our audience, they also like the fact that we divide our Directory into categories and only permit one image per page. We continue to hear from both illustrators and art directors about the success of the Directory.

We’re always looking for new talent so be sure to add us to your mailing list and enter our shows, these are the two prime ways we are introduced to illustrators.

Sorry, the Directory is only available free of charge to those who commission illustration.

Cover illustration by Aad Goudappel, The Netherlands

3x3 in Print Regional Design Annual

We are again humbled by being included in the New York section of the Print Regional Design Annual. While it’s tough to get into any regional section the competition in New York is especially fierce so it’s doubly good to be featured with so many key design studios and agencies from New York. And...we lead off the section, what better place to put illustration!

Our hope by entering shows like this is to expose more art directors and designers to the incredible talent that is out there. We look at it as advertising not only our magazine but also affording judges to see some of the best illustrators around. By seeing entries such as Shout’s cover for 3x3 they will inevitably gain more respect for what illustrators can bring to the party. And hopefully they can see how much fun it is working with illustrators.

Congratulations to Alessandro for his cover and to all the illustrators who continue to support our efforts.

Society Announces 3x3 Winners

 We just heard from the Society of Illustrators that two of our entries will be in Illustrators 55: The cover image by Michael Slack for Issue 18 and the opening image for Phil Wrigglesworth’s article in Issue 19. Congratulations Michael and Phil!

Michael’s cover image incorporated the issue number eighteen within the art and was the last cover we did with that direction. Beginning with Issue 9 we commissioned covers incorporating the issue number by one of our featured illustrators in each issue. And quite a number of these covers have been recognized by the Society or other leading illustration and design competitions. Starting with Issue 19 we are now asking each of our featured illustrators to incorporate their feature number as a part of their opening spread. This allows us to showcase all three featured artists with original images specifically done for their article. And the number doesn’t have to be all that obvious—Phil’s number was 55 so if you count them there are 55 dogs acting up within his “Doggie Dystopia”!

Open Studio Fridays: Portfolio Reviews in December

We're continuing our complimentary Portfolio Reviews with two additional dates in December. 

The sessions are held in our Brooklyn studio on Friday, Dec. 7th and Friday, Dec. 14th between 2pm to 5pm. Each session will be a maximum of 30 minutes. Our portfolio reviews are open to all illustrators, you can be a college student, recent graduate or been in the field for years, we're happy to give you honest feedback on your book.

Portfolio reviews will be conducted by the founder, editor and design director of 3x3 Magazine, Charles Hively.  Our studio is located 45-minutes from midtown Manhattan on the F or G line. You'll receive complete directions once you've signed up.

About Charles Hively 

Charles started his career as an illustrator, has founded two award-winning advertising agencies and has worked for major international advertising agencies during his illustrious career. During his career he has commissioned both illustrators and photographers for local, regional and national campaigns. As founder, editor and design director of 3x3 Magazine he is constantly engaged with the world of contemporary illustration and combined with his experience as an former art director and creative director he provides a unique perspective on the field than few can match. He has lectured at important industry events and universities here in the US as well as Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany and has taught senior-level graphic design courses at Parsons The New School for Design. In addition, he is the author of Nuts & Bolts: A Blueprint for a Successful Illustration Career and is currently working on his second book.

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Standing Room Only

We hosted a group of illustration students from Stockport College in the United Kingdom on Wednesday. We managed to fit all 26 students plus their two professors, Joanna and Gary Spicer in a space that’s usually limited to a max of 21 students, so unfortunately several had to stand for the almost 2-hour talk.

It’s always wonderful to get in front of the next generation of illustrators and hopefully offer some guidance about entering the field once they graduate. As always there were questions about promotion, web sites and the general market for illustrators and what it takes to succeed. When the fact that only one in eighty graduates continue as illustrators after their first year out of school and only .0001 percent are actively working right out of school, graduates must plan their future carefully. Defining success means pursing something you love and being able to make a living doing it. Which of course is not limited to illustration, it could be fine art, art direction, design which offer opportunities for all graduates.

One thing I missed passing along is the importance of getting a second job once they graduate, it is so difficult to break into the field of illustration that a part-time or full-time paying-job takes a lot of the pressure off meeting financial obligations. This second job should be in a related field i.e. book publishing, advertising or editorial and at the very least someplace where they are able to interact with people even if it’s a menial job in retail. As young graduates they have the abundant energy needed to work at a job and still pursue their true love of illustration. It takes discipline and long hours but a good many successful illustrators have taken this path before they made their name known and many still do today. What I don’t recommend is to take a job teaching right out of school, even if it’s after a master’s degree. I’ve seen too many drained by the pressures of academia, too many are swallowed up by the dedication to be good teacher and too many never fully realize their potential as illustrators. It all comes down to making choices, hopefully the right choices.

Photo courtesy of Joanna Spicer

Ode to Creativity

While I’m not a huge fan of Behance I did really enjoy this little short film about creativity. We need more of this type of approach that promotes the creative mind and spirit, not just among ourselves but to those who commission our work. If you’re a New Yorker you should notice some local landmarks and famous faces.

New Website Launches

Despite Sandy all the efforts of my partner Sarah Munt have paid off. Just click this link to take a look at our brand new website.

You’ve probably seen our redesigned magazine, now it’s time for our web site to compliment our new look. This isn’t our first website redesign, but it’s the only one to see the light of day. Ten years ago one of my graphic design students at Parsons designed the website that we’ve been using up until this moment. Throughout the years there have many rough sketches done for a new website and discarded and one full-blown redesign that sat awhile and was trashed—I find it’s very hard to do something for yourself. But with the magazine redesign everything started to fall into place and I think you’ll see how the site ties into the magazine.

The new site allows us to show more art on every page with a banner that showcases features in our current issues along with offerings of our books and annuals. Our splash page will change with each issue, this one features Aaron Meshon’s Williamsburg map from Issue 19. The page quickly dissolves to our welcome page with links to our complete site.

And it is now easier to order from us. We’ve adapted an outside source for our shopping cart where you can now log-in and create an account if you wish. And when you order a digital copy of one of our magazines, books or annuals it will be an automatic download—up until now we did each order manually. We’ve run a beta test and everything looks to be working fine, if you encounter any problems please let us know.

And our new site will read better on any mobile device, something our old site didn’t do.

I can’t thank Sarah enough, there’s nothing I can’t ask her to do that she doesn’t dig in, learn what needs to be learned and take a direction and run with it making it better all the while. Thank you Sarah.

Now take it for a spin and let us know what you think. Oh, you might have to refresh your browser if you’ve been on our site recently.