Hello everyone,

I am at Sydney airport waiting for my flight back to Melbourne, having finished up a few days of work here.

The biggest part of what I did in Sydney was host the inaugural Overprint Art Book Fair, an event I co-founded with Ruby Powell-Hughes, someone who has rapidly become my most important collaborator over this year.

Overprint is something we started for a few reasons:

a) Sydney was really lacking a consistent book fair

b) We both have developed, through experience, ideas about what makes a good event that we wanted to put into practice

c) As book makers we have a vested interest in increasing the opportunities for buyers, sellers and new folks to find things they love and purchase

d) We enjoy working together

When developing the event, we thought a lot about what a good vendor experience could be, knowing that if vendors are excited and supported, they become awesome partners in bringing audiences to the event.

Ruby also created just gorgeous branding - innovative, unique, playful, unforgettable. This marketing is essential for bringing people to an event and signalling to potential audiences that this is professional and a must-see.

There’s been months of work put into a single day, from the aforementioned branding to finding venues, booking chairs/tables, selecting participants, marketing, partnerships, supporting an exhibition of artists living with disability, etc, etc, etc.

…and at the end of months of work there’s an 10 hour period of setting up, selling, packing down and saying goodbye.

I think, by any criteria, today was one of the most successful arts events I’ve ever had a hand in.

Firstly, and most importantly, I sold a lot of books. I was hoping to see $2000 of sales, had a stretch of $2500 and, when the dust settled, sold $3500 of books, merch and art.

Secondly, the other vendors sold a lot. Almost everyone I talked to was stoked with their sales. This shows we brought the right vendors and the right audience (and I think it also shows Sydney is keen for this stuff).

Thirdly, our attendance expectations were smashed. We weren’t sure how many people to expect, but we thought between 500-1000. We have 1222 attendees over the day. That was so good.

Finally, everyone I worked with I’d work with again. The reality we all face in collaborating is sometimes you get to the end of a project and think ‘I really don’t want to work with that person again’, but that’s not the case here. I really enjoyed working with Ruby, with the vendors, with the audience, with everyone. It was truly a pleasure.

It’s rare, so rare, that this newsletter is about a win with no caveats. It’s rare I get to say ‘holy moly it all happened so well’, though I think that’s increasing. More often I talk through why something was close, but not quite there, so please forgive me for basking in a ‘holy shit it fucking flew’ moment.

Onwards and upwards. Back to the work of making things for next year, including more Overprints.