I was looking through another interview with Chris Haughton, in this one he talks more about his journey and how he got his first book published. He also goes into detail about the fair trade work he does and how it has become part of his practice.
"It was always my dream to make a picture book, but I didnt have any confidence in my writing until that point. That was about 6 years ago and I took some time off, came up with a few ideas and just tried my luck by visiting the Bologna book fair and showing my ideas to publishers. I was particularly drawn to the foreign publishers actually as their books stalls seemed to be very creative and visual compared to the English language section. I emailed thirty publishers with my idea, in the end it was a Korean publisher who was most enthusiastic and published my first book (Little Owl Lost). I actually moved to Seoul for 6 months and finished it there. For 18 months the book was only in Korean, in fact even my name was written in korean characters and when i showed it to friends and family they didn’t believe that I had made it! I was worried that it would not be translated into English at all as it had been to the fairs twice without getting picked up, it is the fate of most Korean books even though they are so many fantastic ones. Eventually I found Walker/Candlewick when I came back to London and took it to them myself and have been working with them ever since. I am still working in fair trade and looking for more and more ways to bring the books and fair trade work together."
It is interesting to hear about his first book not being picked up at first and him thinking it would never be translated into English. His books have done really well and its easy to assume that it was just an easy process fro him to get them published. It shows that you need to have confidence in your work and your ideas and that you have to be persistent. I am working on a book at the moment and when I am happy with it I think I should take it to some book fairs, even if it just to try and get some feedback.
"Yes, I have been working as a designer for fair trade for the last ten years, mainly for the company People Tree and mainly as a voluntary thing. I just used to just help out when I could and send them some drawings and ideas from time to time. The work that came back was so beautifully hand-made that it gave me the idea to some day go over and somehow work directly with the makers out there and see what else we could develop. In 2010, I finished my first children’s book (little owl lost) and had some time and a little money so I moved to India and Nepal and ended up staying there for 8 months (you might be able to spot a pattern here!). I worked with four different groups in Nepal, mainly through People Tree. I made little cotton toys in a womens shelter project called Mahaguthi.I developed other toys for people tree with another group called Dhukuti. People Tree introduced me to Kumbeshwar and when i saw their rugs being made I was totally hooked. They are so beautifully made. Not only that but KTS has such an inspiring history, it was set up as a non-profit by a family from the lowest caste who owned a successful business and wanted to help the rest of their caste out of poverty. It seemed like an amazing thing to team up with so I set up a social business called madebynode.com. We invited lots of artists last year to create rugs for the design museum in london. Oliver Jeffers, Jon Klassen, Geoff McFetridge and lots of really great artists got involved and it was a lot of fun."
Working with these non profit groups is obviously very import to Chris Haughton and makes him more enthusiastic about creating work, knowing that it is for a good cause and will help people in need. This seems to be a lesson in seeing where your work leads you, follow a path through to the end, get involved with projects that you think are good. From the illustrators I have looked at they all have one moment that changed their practice but they all have very different paths. I think it would be easy to form an idea of how the industry works and then not be willing to move from that path to embrace new possibilities and ideas. It is tricky because you need to have a clear idea of what you want to do but at the same time need to be open to find new paths and embrace new ideas.
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