To Niche or Not to Niche: Finding the Balance with Headless Greg
Is it better to focus in one area of illustration or stay open to all opportunities? Should you learn as many creative skills as possible or stick to what you do best? Fingers in many pies or eggs in one basket? Jack off all trades or master of one? To niche or not to niche?
The topic of ‘niching down’ is thrown around a lot in the design community. As ‘Pickle’ we now define ourselves as illustrators and public artists after deciding we enjoy both illustrating on ipads and walls. Our experience with niching has been varied. We stopped producing greeting cards and focused less on the online shop in 2020. Since then, we’ve also stopped taking on soley graphic design jobs and focused on broadening the work we do as public artists.
Our good friend Greg McIndoe - also known as Headless Greg - might be seen as an anti-nicher as he works as a freelance illustrator, designer and writer whilst also holding down a part-time role as editor at Make Bank. However, while he loves creating content in all different formats, other aspects of his work have become more narrowly focused over time.
Current 2022 Pickle- Out and about completing Public Art and Mural projects
We have thoughts, Greg has thoughts and today we are going to share them! But first, in case you came her for the cold hard facts without the waffle, here is a list of pros and cons:
To Niche
Here are three reasons you may want to niche:
It’s easier to explain what you do.
Explaining what exactly it is that you do is a big part of running a creative business so having a succinct answer will make it easier for people to know what to hire you for.
The more focused you are, the quicker you progress.
You’ll get better at your chosen specialism faster if your attention isn’t divided. If becoming an ‘expert in your field’ is the dream, niching is probably for you.
You know what direction you are travelling.
Instead of being pulled in all different directions, you know which way you want to go with your career path and have an end goal in sight.
Not to Niche
And here three reasons you might not want to:
Being multi-skilled is more financially stable.
The more skills you have, the more things you can be hired to do. If work dries up in one area, you always have a fall back.
You’re less likely to get bored of your job.
What if you dedicate your entire working life to one specific craft and then one day you fall out of love with it? Having more than one passion makes this less likely to happen.
Different skills inform one another.
Creative skills often aren’t as different as you might think; they can end up helping each other develop without you even noticing.
Also 2022 Pickle- Working at the desk on print and digital projects.
Natural Niching & Finding a ‘Style’
Pickle: We definitely feel some aspects of Pickle have niched naturally. We both lean towards certain colour palettes and enjoy drawing characters so these make their way into our ‘creative voice’. People seem to be able to pick out our work as ours so there must be a certain ‘something’ that is inherent to how we work.
All artists have some form of niche in the way you draw, what you enjoy drawing and the colours you are drawn to. Students often struggle with finding a ‘style’ (us included at university) but this comes with practice.
Greg: I worried about not having a ‘style’ when I was at art school too. Looking back though, it was there long before I realised. I always had a love for geometric shapes and clean lines that shone through my work; it has just become increasingly refined as time has gone on. I think you are sometimes too close to your own work to see what is unique about it.
Past editorial work we did at the start of Pickle when we were trying to fin the right clients and style for us.
Niching as a Business
Pickles: We have often felt pressured to pick a ‘niche’ as a creative business. Are we muralists? Editorial illustrators? Installation artists? Ultimately, what work you share with the world is the work you attract and, over the past three years, we have been gradually refining our portfolio and client list to just to work we enjoy doing. We recently developed a checklist to refer to when choosing jobs as we went through a process of identifying why our favourite jobs were our favourite jobs. Blog post on that here.
Greg: I used to keep Headless Greg strictly as a pseudonym I used for my illustration work. I wanted my style to be recognisable and associated with that name, and I worried including other aspects of my work might confuse things.
Over the past year or so, however, I have brought all of the different aspects of my freelance work together under the Headless Greg umbrella. My website now has portfolios for my writing and design work while keeping illustration as the primary focus. I decided to make this change so it would be simpler for me to share all the different things I was working on. Just because someone is hiring you for design, doesn’t mean they won’t need writing work in the future so showing off everything I do in the one place makes sense from a business perspective too.
I am forever tweaking all things Headless Greg (especially my website) and there will probably be big changes in future, but for now I am happy.
'Headless Type' is a project from the new 'Design' section of Greg's website
Future Niching Plans
Pickle: We’ve come to the decision that, at this moment, we wouldn’t want to stop doing any part of Pickle. We love the combination of digital work at the desk but then also going out and painting utility boxes on the high street. The shop works for us being just prints and we think our portfolio has more of a voice which is BOUND to happen the more work you do. You are naturally niching all the time and we have no plans to intentionally change how we do things.
Greg: I can’t imagine niching too much with the kind of work I take on either - I love the variety too! One way in which I can feel myself naturally narrowing down though is the subject matter I am covering. I am becoming increasingly interested in looking into socially-driven design and exploring how creativity can be used for good.
With my role at Make Bank I get to delve into topics like diversity and accessibility, and my favourite illustration work has been inspired by mental health. Using my creative skills to add to important conversations and tell meaningful stories is where I see Headless Greg going - and I am keen to continue pushing things in this direction.
We still sell our prints in our online shop and at the occasional market that takes our fancy!
Our Conclusion: Is Niching For You?
Pickle: We’ve always been told that ‘niching’ is good for business. Being an expert in one area will equal more business as you will be the go-to person for that work. Sounds backwards but we believe it works. However, we enjoy variety. The combination of working outside and inside, on digital and physical and with businesses or charities makes everyday different.
Greg: I have also heard advice saying that it makes more sense not to niche. I agree with you and love getting to work with words as much as I do pictures. I don’t think we were made to niche but others are.
It depends on the individual. If you have one clear passion and can’t imagine doing anything else for a living, then go for it. If you have several interests which you’d like to pursue all at once and see where they take you, that’s great too. Trust your guy and let it lead the way.
