Do I fit in with spot illustration?

[Griffin McPherson]

I’ve been wanting to try to get work with magazines doing spot illustrations but everything I see in magazines is that sort of generic spot illustration style that’s everywhere. I’ve heard it referred to as "corporate art". It looks nice and all but it isn’t my style and one thing I’ve heard many times is not to pitch to someone when you know they don’t have a use for your art. That’s where I feel like I’m at right now.

So do I even bother with contacting magazines or should I just keep searching for a market I fit into better?

[Coreyartus]

@griffin I personally get the impression there's so much of that type of editorial generic spot art out there that competing with it takes a very brave corporate art director to buck the trend... It's sold in bulk clip art vector packs that are too easy for their designers to just plug and play. It's almost a given that the "corporate look" requires flat generic shape language with tightly coordinated and limited color palettes, simple line art with suggestions of facial features that aren't too specific (if they even want them at all), and universally applicable gestures that can be relevant to any number of things.

But there are magazines out there that don't do that type of art. You just need to keep looking. More specific, niche magazines are more dependent on the needs/wants of their readership, I'd guess, and might have less use for the "Corporate Memphis" style, as it's called.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/corporate-memphis-design-tech

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

I agree with @coreyartus. You need to find mgazines who use the kind of art that you do and focus your attention there. All the best!

[B-rex]

I’ve noticed the same thing as someone who is interested in eventually getting into editorial work. If you haven’t already I would suggest looking at artists you admire that do editorial work and see what publications they’ve been published in. That way it’s not as risky since you know they’ve already published work that isn’t the generic “ corporate art”. For example, one of the illustrators I love is Yuko Shimizu and she does a lot of editorial work, her style is def not corporate. Good luck!