BookMachine Success Story: John Pettigrew (entrepreneur)

John Pettigrew

Here is a short interview with John Pettigrew, founder of  Futureproofs, as part of the ‘BookMachine Success’ series.

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1. How did BookMachine help Futureproofs?

We were launching a new company blog for which I planned to post every two weeks. As part of the design, I wanted to have a strong graphic to accompany every article. The aim was to provide a strong visual element to the design, as well as to have something with a slightly lighter or humorous tone to counterpoint what I expected to be moderately serious, business-related content.

I used BookMachine Connect to find illustrators. Being able to search by skills and location was very useful, and let me rapidly draw up a shortlist of likely people. The portfolio section was especially useful because I could easily see which of them had a style that fit with what i was looking for.

BookMachine Connect also helped me to make easy contact with the artists so I could set up meeting and talk to the artists, and thus decide which artist I would work with.

Overall, it was quicker and more effective than using Google, because I knew I was searching people and not just web pages.

2. What difference did that make to your business?

We commissioned new artworks for each post on our blog for the first three months. They gave our posts a distinctive visual identity that gave us confidence promoting our content. The process of getting the artworks drawn was also straightforward and painless, which was great.

3. What advice would you give to anyone looking to find new people to work with?

Get a sample of their work or permission to talk to previous clients. It’s obvious but you need to be confident they can do the job you want done.
And meet them personally, either face-to-face or via Skype/Hangouts. It’s easy to do these days and really helps you work out if you’ll be able to work with them.

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