Just spotted this cool series of playing cards put together by UK based art magazine, Ammo. The Poop Deck Project is a nautical themed set of illustrated playing cards featuring …]]>

Cursed Pirate Swab by Jordan Andrew Carter

Just spotted this cool series of playing cards put together by UK based art magazine, Ammo. The Poop Deck Project is a nautical themed set of illustrated playing cards featuring the work of 52 artists.

It’s cool that, unlike normal playing cards the suits in this pack include the Pirate Crew, Cursed Pirates, Royal Navy Officers and Mythical Sea Creatures. Each suit has it’s own colour scheme and icons.

Check out the website for artist profiles, card artwork and the option to purchase packs of cards or individual character prints.

Here are just a few of my favorites.

At the beginning of May we attended London’s latest design conference POINT. Boasting some big names from the design world including, Erik Spiekermann, Morag Myerscough, Jonathan Barnbrook and …]]>

David Hieatt talks about his new company Hiut Denim. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

At the beginning of May we attended London’s latest design conference POINT. Boasting some big names from the design world including, Erik Spiekermann, Morag Myerscough, Jonathan Barnbrook and video interviews from Alan Fletcher and Milton Glaser the bar was already being set pretty high. POINT took place over two days at Royal Institute of British Architects in London’s west end, the choice of venue (with it’s wooden panelled theatre walls, grand entrance stair cases and architectural-orientated bookshops) and list of speakers set an intellectual and academic tone to the conference.

With just one theatre for all the speakers there was a lot of speakers to get through in both days. For the most part this meant short 30 minute talks in order to stick to a tight formal schedule which kept talks concise and focused. Unfortunately this didn’t leave much time for questions both from the live audience or via Twitter. As both days progressed speakers towards the end of the day were given hour long slots which, for the like of Morag Myerscough and Matt Webb gave the audience a much deeper insight into their work.

POINT delegates enjoy the show. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

Every talk was chaired by one of a number of well known design commentators including Patrick Baglee and Patrick Burgoyne. Each chair did a great job of making the speakers feel welcomed and relaxed and providing the necessary background and tone prior to their talks.

The overarching theme of POINT was Authenticity which was responded to in varying degrees and styles. Speakers such as David Hieatt and Nick Couch that spoke quite directly and coherently about authenticity were most interesting and provided the most insight in comparison to those who spoke a little more ambiguously. The style of each talk reflected upon Authenticity and one clear theme that stood out amongst each speaker was the idea that being authentic is about doing what you love, following your soul or doing what you know is right. A poignant thought that had clearly helped many of the speakers make important career and life changing decisions and a point that resonated with us.

A lasting thought from Let’s Get Mullered and Dance. Photograph ©Gil Cocker 2013.

This was POINT’s first foray into the conference arena and although there were a couple of teething problems on the first day (with such a tightly packed speaker schedule and some A/V issues) these can only be expected of a conference in it’s infancy. By the end of the second day POINT felt much more like a polished and well rehearsed conference with big design hitters like Morag Myerscough and Jonathan Barnbrook wowing the crowd with insightful anecdotes and poignant opinions.

As we mentioned there was a definite air of academia about the two days (reflected in the refined POINT roundel) and the choice of descriptor, conference rather festival, definitely reflects the difference in tone in comparison to TYPO, OFFset and OFFF. This was also shown in the ticket price at £400/£180 (full price/concessions) — we’d have hoped to have seen another theatre room so there was a choice of talks to go to. Despite the higher ticket price POINT certainly seemed popular, completely selling out.

If you were at POINT this year we’d love to hear your thoughts and if you were unable to make it along there’s a wealth of information including some sneak peeks of Milton Glaser’s and Alan Fletcher’s prerecorded talks on the POINT site.

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Here are our highlights of the two day event.

Erik Spiekermann

Erik is a seasoned pro when it comes to talks, captivating the audience with his Germanic wit within minutes (even after being told to be quiet by fellow contributor Emma for talking when sitting in the audience… oops!). Erik talked about authenticity in relation to process and how his agency Eden Spiekermann has been adopting a new approach to their work called the Agile Method.

Erik Spiekermann talks about not working with arse holes. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

 Sean Rees & Nathan Webb

Definitely one of the highlights of the two days was fellow FFF contributor Sean Rees along with Purpose colleague Nathan Webb. An emotional but articulate and impeccably delivered presentation by Sean on the branding work they’ve recently done for the McGuire Programme – a speech therapy programme aiding people who stutter, which Sean himself is a member of. This one oozed authenticity in both content and delivery.

Sean Rees wins over the crowd with his challenging topic. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

Let’s Get Mullered and Dance

This is a collaboration between Robert Francis Müller and Jessica Dance, and their talk began with them announcing their more permanent partnership and formation of a new studio Let’s Get Mullered and Dance. Showcasing their colourful and whimsical work, Robert and Jessica gave the talk as a sort of directors commentary giving a genuine behind the scenes feel.

Robert and Jessica discuss the importance of doing what you love. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

Morag Myerscough

Although female speakers were in the minority at POINT (we counted 27 men to a paltry 5 women) Morag’s captivating talk partially made up for what lacked in quantity. Taking us on a journey through her wide variety of work and the family history that led to her love of colours, patterns and type. Given the honour of closing the event, with the help of the Highliners (fronted by Luke Morgan, also Morag’s collaborator on Supergroup London) she definitely went out with a rock-a-billy bang.

Well, we just love Morag Myerscough. Enough said. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

Nick Couch

Nick spoke very openly about following those ideas that you know feel right, taking a fresh approach to entrepreneurial ideas to be seen more as an investment in a hobby for a year rather than an investment in a new business. An simple but effective shift in framing the approach that has seen him leave his position as Creative Director of Figtree and now running the very successful Open Studio Club and Free Desk Here initiative.

Nick Couch talks about studios being more open to encourage multi-disciplinary collaboration. Photograph ©Gil Cocker 2013.

Code Club

Clare Sutcliffe presented her unlikely story of advertising creative turned educator. Setting up Code Club, an after school initiative to help teach kids to code with the help of developers which so far has been doing incredibly well with over 700 Code Clubs set up nationwide in just under 12 months.

Clare Sutcliffe makes programming exciting for the next generation of developers and hackers. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

Some of you may remember last month’s Steer feature, where we introduced the London-based team of developers and designers, who aimed to teach people to code. From scratch. In one week.

It was Steer’s one week commitment that most intrigued …]]>

Some of you may remember last month’s Steer feature, where we introduced the London-based team of developers and designers, who aimed to teach people to code. From scratch. In one week.

It was Steer’s one week commitment that most intrigued us, so we sent FFF’er Jack Daly – a complete coding novice – to check out the course and report back.

Find out how he got on…

Day 1

After a 3.30AM rise to make the Glasgow to London sleepless train I had been a little worried that a lack of Z’s might leave me a off the pace for the day ahead – those fears were only compounded when the train ground to a standstill for an hour, meaning I wouldn’t make the 10am class start.

I needn’t have worried.

Even turning up a full hour after the class began, the Steer team made sure I didn’t miss out. Rik went through the various lessons at a pace everyone could keep up with, and even though i’d missed the start Tim was straight on hand with one-on-one tuition to cover everything i’d previously missed. By lunch I was fully up to speed.

On the first day – and throughout the week – everyone was well fed and watered, with a variety of fresh fruit, pastries and nibbles available, before a lunch of salad’s, wraps and sandwiches. There was also a steady flow of tea and coffee.

The first morning was spent going through the basics of HTML or “the bones of the internet”. We learnt how to structure basic content, into head and body, while bringing hierarchy to our typography with headers, paragraphs and a variety of listing code, before introducing links, images and video content. Finally dealing with meta tags to ensure our sites links would be best represented in Google, Facebook and Twitter.

The afternoon was spent learning how to apply the CSS flesh to the bones of our HTML fundamentals. We learned how to style the various elements of our HTML, while #id and .classes gave us greater control over the appearance of our content.

At various points different members of the class would get stuck, however Tim or Calum were always on hand to talk through and clarify any queries, making sure the course ran smoothly.

We finished the day by creating a simple blog, based on a design of Calum’s, featuring imagery, video and a variety of CSS techniques.

Overall, it was a great first impression and although I knew lessons would become more complicated, I was left feeling pretty confident about the rest of the week.

Day 2

Day two saw the introduction of a variety of new techniques and the pace increased notably. Among the more challenging items were the introductions of floats and clears, which proved quite confusing. Thankfully Tim and Calum were again on hand to answer any questions and keep things ticking over smoothly.

In addition to the coding lessons, Tim also gave the first of two crash courses in Photoshop. They were primarily aimed at complete novices and although I consider myself proficient across most of Creative Suite, there were some best practice tips which even I found useful – particularly pixel hinting and the importance of the pixel grid in order to create crisp, pixel perfect site designs.

Day 3

Day 3 was excellent and one of my favourites of the week, we were introduced to grid systems and structuring content, which as a designer is something I felt was particularly useful and easily grasped. The lessons of the previous day had also begun to sink in and the introduction of powerful resources such as Skeleton and Twitter Bootstrap really helped provide a clear framework from which to build our designs.

In the afternoon we looked at CSS3 media queries and how they can be used to detect the size of browser windows and mobile devices in order to create responsive sites.

At the end of the third day, the class were beginning to know how to build, style and structure a website and, I’ll be honest, I started to feel pretty confident; HTML and CSS had been surprisingly easy to grasp – what more did I need to know?

Day 4

Reality check. Jquery. Holly molly.

For non-coders, if HTML creates the structure of a site and CSS is the style, then Jquery is the interactivity. It’s what makes sites function and as it turns out interactivity is actually a pretty important part of the internet. Who knew.

We covered hover states, click and mouse moves, sliders and Isotope. It’s safe to say Jquery was definitely the part of the course I found most challenging.

Part of being involved in such an intensive one week course is being introduced to a lot of new concepts one after the other, just as one thing begins to click, Rik’s introducing a new seemingly bigger and more complex concept. The good thing about this swift learning curve is that it helps put everything else you’ve learned into perspective; what seemed daunting on day 1 and 2 start to appear much clearer by day 4.

I’ll be honest, by the end of day 4 Jquery wasn’t clicking for me – I felt a bit like this guy. While I could copy Rik’s code and get it to work (most of the time), exactly why it was working was still a mystery. I wasn’t ruling out witchcraft.

As always, Rik, Tim and Calum were good at trying to break it down for the newbies, but there’s just some things I can’t absorb in an afternoon.

That’s one of the reasons Code Academy is great. Part of Steer’s recommended reading list, it’s an online step by step learning resource, which allows users to work through a wide array of courses such as HTML, CSS and Jquery at their own pace. Spending some extra curricular time on the Jquery course really helped me get a better grasp of the material.

Day 5

On the final day Rik ramped things up once again introducing us to a range of features. We created a Twitter search with AJAX using Twitter API, before learning how to incorporate bespoke Google Maps featuring custom icons.

Later during an introduction to Parallax, Rik mentioned we might remember some of the rules from High School trigonometry – unfortunately I didn’t remember high school trig when I was still at high school – however despite my rusty maths we achieved some pretty good results.

The week came to a close with a selection of London beer and ale being cracked in the classroom, before Rik, Amelia and the team took everyone for drink at the Silicon Drinkabout. As well as a relaxing wind-down to the week and a great chance to socialise with the rest of the class, Silicon Drinkabout was also expected to be an good networking opportunity, both for the aspiring entrepreneurs of the class as well as the designers looking to make contact with studios.

Unfortunately, just I was the last one to arrive, I also had to be the first one to leave, saying my goodbyes early and making a dash to catch the train back to Glasgow.

Thanks to Steer I feel like i’ve taken with me the solid foundations of front end development.

I’m under no illusions that more hard work and time will be involved in getting to a working professional standard, but that now seems like a fairly straightforward path, whereas just a week ago I wouldn’t have even known where to start.

For anyone interested in doing the course themselves, the next Front End Developer course begins on March 17. Check out this link to find out about the other courses Steer offer. Booking through FFF also offers a 10% saving on future Steer courses.

Update from Amsterdam based Another Something & Company.

Strong art direction and typography.

If you’re looking to get your work infront of agencies, journalists and other designers, having your work featured on a design blog can really boost your profile.

The big question is what’s the best way of making that happen?

I can’t speak …]]>

If you’re looking to get your work infront of agencies, journalists and other designers, having your work featured on a design blog can really boost your profile.

The big question is what’s the best way of making that happen?

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can shed some light on what we look out for at FormFiftyFive. There are a variety of ways that we find content for FFF. Here’s how you can stand out…

Email

We get around 30-50 daily submissions from all over the globe. Going through these isn’t an easy task, we all have a day job and can’t read and especially answer every single email. So make your submission count!

Keep it short, send a concise email with basic information on you or the project, a link to the work and 2-3 jpegs.

Supply your images ready to publish and take time to find the preferred image dimensions of the blog you are writing to. Provide a download link with further material and a press release with soundbites, quotable comments and ‘behind the scenes’ or production info.

Do your research! Read the blog you are writing to and find out who they are, what they write about and if your work will fit. Never start your email with ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ or ‘To whom it may concern’ (it really happens). Within the first 2 seconds of reading an email I can tell if you actually read FFF or not!

Try seeking out the contributor who’s posts you most enjoy or who’s work is most like your own as there’s probably a good chance they’ll feature you.

Twitter

Consider spreading news about your project or portfolio through Twitter’s design community. Bloggers might stumble over a link to your work or you could ask a blog directly to check out your work.

The advantage of Twitter is that it requires you to be concise and this helps you focus your message, meaning that you can catch the attention of busy bloggers.

Never tweet multiple blogs at the same time to check out your work though, its just rude and impersonal.

Other blogs

Our contributors keep an eye on a variety of other design blogs for work that instantly stands out for it’s idea or execution. So, if you get featured by one blog you’ll usually notice your work spreading quite quickly. The more effort you put into finding the right blog to suit your material, the more likely it is your work with gain momentum.

The main thing is to carefully consider what and how often you share. Writing to blogs about single projects every couple of weeks isn’t going to get you far, unless the project is mind-blowing of course! A portfolio update with multiple new projects on the other hand is more likely to get you featured.

So to recap

Do your research, keep it short & direct, make it easy to publish and don’t over-do it! Send us your very best work to submissions@formfiftyfive.com

Illustration by Parko Polo

New York-based designer and illustrator Tim Lahan is our feature artist of the week and has also created our masthead illustration. Since 2008, Tim has worked with folks like The New Yorker, Jack Spade, McSweeney’s, GOOD, AOL, Nike, The …]]>

New York-based designer and illustrator Tim Lahan is our feature artist of the week and has also created our masthead illustration. Since 2008, Tim has worked with folks like The New Yorker, Jack Spade, McSweeney’s, GOOD, AOL, Nike, The New York Times, and others. The goal has always been to communicate visually in a simple and direct aesthetic. Tim was recently awarded as a Young Gun by the Art Director’s Club,was recently signed by the ever-growing Agent Pekka and wins the price for best favicon of 2013!

If you’re a fan of Tim’s work you have to follow his Tumblr packed with hilarious sketches and thoughts!

When Mr Bingo flippantly announced on his twitter feed that he’d send an abusive message and drawing via the medium of vintage postcard for just £10, he was bombarded with requests. …]]>

When Mr Bingo flippantly announced on his twitter feed that he’d send an abusive message and drawing via the medium of vintage postcard for just £10, he was bombarded with requests. ‘Hate Mail‘ was born, a fluent stream of sharp, witty, and often silly abuse was sent to the recipient (and no doubt, the postman’s) amusement.

We caught up with the ‘Justin Bieber of drawing’ himself at his studio to chat about the launch of his book ‘Hate Mail‘.

What lead you to become an illustrator?

I think it was just something that I felt that I had to do, I felt like it was the only thing I could do. I always liked drawing, studied Graphic Design at University, specialised in Illustration, mainly because I couldn’t work out how to do Graphic Design, so I kind of defaulted to Illustration, ended up really getting into it and turning it into a career.

Right now you seem to really have a distinctive style and a voice of your own – how did you get to this stage?

A combination of being influenced by other illustrators such as Paul Davis, Andrew Rae and The Peep Show Collective, and comedy that I like, like Chris Morris, Monty Python and various other things and being influenced by them all, but finding my own thing. Which has taken years to work out, but I’d say the main thing that goes on in my illustrations that makes them mine is the personality and the humour, not really the style – you can sort of see that it looks like my work but it’s more of a feeling or a vibe, hopefully, when people see my work it makes them smirk or laugh or think – he’s fucking done that again hasn’t he…

You’ve worked with some really big names, such as The New York Times, the Guardian, Orange and Microsoft, etc… How does your having such a strong and distinctive voice work with bigger clients? Do you find that they come to you because of your alternative approach?

I think at first you need to make your voice known, and it takes clients a while to work out who you are, and what you could be good to do for them, and when you’ve gotten to a certain level I guess where you’ve become known for doing a certain thing and having such a strong voice – that’s the point that I’m at now, which is great, where clients will come to me. And that’s great cause I’m much more in charge than I was when I started out so I get to pull the strings a lot more and make more decisions, cause they know that this is the thing that I do. The best clients will come to you and say ‘do what you do, and we won’t try to change it too much, or influence or steer it too much’ – they’ll always get the best job out of you that way… Unless they’ve chosen the wrong person to begin with, which happens a lot as well! I have to be careful to say no to a lot of jobs, otherwise I know it’s going to end up being wrong.

Is there anyone who you would turn down?

There’s not many people I wouldn’t work for to be honest, I consider myself a fairly decent person in society, but I wouldn’t go so far as not working for banks or something like that – and if I did I’d want to rinse them for as much money as possible, I’d make sure that happens! [he laughs]

Maybe I wouldn’t work for cigarette advertising… If there was a company that was really known for fucking over a third world company I guess I would have to say no. The problem is I’m not really that much aware of current affairs and the news to know who’s been naughty and bad! I’m kind of wrapped up in a world of my own – I might end up working for a bad company by mistake! I think the main reason I turn down work isn’t for moral reasons, it’s because I don’t think I’m going to enjoy it.

We love your new project, Hate Mail. How did you come up with the idea?

It’s really simple – I was in my old studio one night, I was drunk, I went on twitter and said ‘the first person to reply to this tweet, I’ll send them an offensive message on a the back of a post card’. And straight away there was loads and loads of responses, a guy called Jonathan Hopkins won (it said fuck you Jonathan and fuck your shit legs) – sent him a post card, lots of people talked about it, so I thought I might as well do something with this, opened it as a service which was so cheap – £5, you send your name and address and I send you some hate mail.

It literally started as a joke, I didn’t ever think it was going to become the thing that it has. I thought, this is funny, and if anyone wants to pay to be insulted that’s fucking brilliant and that’s why I did it – to amuse myself.

Do you ever get any Hate Mail yourself? And if so, what is the best one you’ve received?

Yes I have. I’ve received a few things, one of them was from Oliver Jeffers, who was an integral part of me turning this into a book actually – he’s a famous children’s book illustrator who lives in Brooklyn and I was showing him some pictures on my phone in a pub, where all good thins happen, and he said – ‘this should be a book’ and put me in touch with people who ended up turning it into a book! Oliver Jeffers sent me some love mail, he did an illustration of some puppies in a basket and said ‘why do you have no love for anything?’ or something, that was funny.

I had something from some girls in Israel that said ‘go global you wanker’ on the back of an s-club 7 post-card, because I only offered the service in the UK, because I was lazy [he laughs]. The best thing I’ve received was a Swiss roll, with the word ‘fucker’ written on it, in a tube.

What was the process like speaking with Penguin about getting it published? Some of that work is pretty close to the bone… Was it a difficult sell, or was it easy?

It’s really really amazing, it’s like the last thing I ever expected to happen you know, I would have thought if anyone would have made this into a book it wouldn’t have been Penguin it would have been a small, indie / edgy publishing company with no resources or money who’d have thought ‘fuck it, let’s just put this out’, but to have Penguin who are one of the biggest publishers in the world to actually back this, believe in it and make it, to put it out on their label without worrying about it ruining their reputation – I guess this work has a lot more commercial appeal than I realised when I first started doing this. I consider this an art book, but for Penguin it’s a ‘humour’ title, they see it as a book that everyone can appreciate, which is I guess what I always want for all of my work really, I don’t want to just appeal to the small art crowed, I want to appeal to everyone. It’s much nicer.

So yeah, Penguin wanted to meet me, I went along with my agent, Paul, and met them, chatted to them about it, they seemed really positive. Then I sent all the people in the meeting hate mail, so I said ‘meeting you was a waste of time’,‘93% of the staff at Penguin think you’re a twat’. ‘Your crisps were insulting’ cause they had some crisps in a bowl on the table… I thought, if they get this, then they get the book, it was a risk that had to be taken. And then they came back a few weeks later and we had a book deal, so it was amazing. Apparently things don’t normally work that quickly, so they must have seen something in it worth going ahead with. It’s really hard to tell how easy it was, I think I’m quite a hard working person, I guess I don’t show that with my nonchalant tweets and stuff, but there’s a lot of work behind the scenes to make things happen.

So what inspires your hatred? What’s been your inspiration for the hate mail?

Most of it’s just trying to be funny, lots of people think that I’m really dark, I don’t mean dark skinned [he laughs], people think I’ve got this ‘hatred’… I don’t have this hatred inside me that I need to express and get out. Really it’s just for fun, you know, it’s fucking funny to send a stranger a post card with “if you were a supermarket you’d be a Lidl”. It’s basically like any other illustration job where you’ve got to come up with creative ideas – it’s just another problem solving exercise. So you’re sitting there, you’ve got a blank post card in front of you, and you think ‘what can I say to someone that’s gonna’ really hurt them. Or how can you really put someone down. I think about it all the time, so I guess I became addicted to these things and so even when I’m not doing them I’m thinking about it and constantly emailing myself ideas for hate mail. The next person might get that one, and a lot of them are made them up on the spot. They can go from the simple, just the word ‘prick’ written in massive letters, cause I think, that’s funny because of how it looks, to something more complicated like ‘you are another generic drone wandering around waiting for the weekend’. And that’s more of a heart-felt one where I suppose that is more of my ‘inner thoughts’ where I walk around looking at people and thinking, ‘yeah you’re pathetic’. Some of that comes out in it…

If you could send some hate mail to anybody, who would it be, and what would you say?

[Pauses for a while, and says with a smile] Has to be, a guy called Martin Olley, who wrote a letter to a magazine in 2003 saying that he hated my work, so I’ve kind of had it in for him ever since, in a jokey way. I’ve put him in loads of bits of work and also like to slip the odd ‘FUCK MARTIN OLLEY’ slide into a talk. I don’t tell people what it means, I just leave it on the screen for a few seconds, just long enough to make feel awkward and slightly uncomfortable.

The response to your hate mail has been incredible, what do you think it is about hate mail that people find so appealing?

I guess the main thing is that it’s just funny, it’s different, and not many people do stuff like this. Life is quite boring for many people, I think, this book and this project is very silly, and people really need silliness in their lives. It’s like escapism, you know. I guess reading my book is like watching Hollyoaks Omnibus or X-Factor, you know, it’s just a stupid escape from the trappings of modern sad life.

You’re one of the more prolific and entertaining illustrators out there on twitter. What is it about twitter that you enjoy the most?

The thing I love about twitter is that perfect connection with people and strangers that you didn’t really have before, or would have had to made a lot of effort before to keep up. It’s so direct, people can just contact you so quickly, it’s so easy and so fluid as well. It’s really good for me, it’s perfect.

Like Hate Mail, that was born from a tweet?

Exactly, I couldn’t do any of this stuff without twitter, you know. Twitter’s created it, it sells it, cause it tells people there’s a book, it then tells people there’s a launch at Camden Brewery… Everything starts on twitter now basically, I need it to survive basically, and do the things I do.

Is there anything out there that you haven’t done yet that you’d love to do?

Um… I don’t know, I feel really lucky at the moment, I feel like I’m at the peak of my career or something. I’ve got a book published by Penguin, I’ve got my own beer with Camden Brewery… Everything seems to be going ok, I’m expecting to get run over now. I don’t really know, I just tend to take care of what’s going on each day, I couldn’t really give you an answer to that… I know that’s a bit annoying, but I almost feel like I’ve got everything at the moment, and I’m sure that in six months time I’ll be hungry for something else, and I’ll forget about this position I’m in now and I’ll be looking for the next thing…

I think the main thing I want to do, is to move away from being a commercial illustrator and move slightly more towards becoming an artist, which seems to be what’s happened naturally. By mistake. I find the best way to live is to not plan anything, because stuff just sort of happens, I feel like stuff is just meant to happen, if you just do what you want ‘follow your heart’ [Bingo says with a grin and a comedy voice] you know, if you just do what you really enjoy, things end up turning out, and people end up coming to you, and opportunities turn up. I don’t think there’s any end goal for me, just to be able to do the stuff I’m doing now, forever, and if it pays for me to live then that’s really cool.

So when can we get the book?

I’m doing a big book launch on October 25th at Camden Brewery, and it’s an open invite for anyone and everyone. So I want people to come along, bring their friends, family, whatever, and Byron Hamburgers are going to be there, my hate beer is going to be there. There’ll be a big stack of books where people can buy a book and get it signed with an individual insult. You can take the beer away as well. If you like the sound of that come along on October 25th!

—

*** Camden Hate Ale ***

Can you tell us about your beer?
Camden Brewery were really interested in the book and were fans of my work, and said why don’t we sponsor your book launch, and do a beer with you? And I was like, that sounds amazing! I like their beers, and them as a company, a small newish, micro-brewery who are doing well, have a nice simple philosophy – no bull shit just this is what we are… So they said you can do your own beer, and I said I’ll only do my own beer with you if I can have complete control over the bottle-label and I can do whatever I like – they said ‘yep, we like your work, we respect it, so you do whatever you want and we’re not going to put any rules on it. So I was like great! I came up with a few ideas at first which I thought were a bit weak, we had a bit of a back-and-forth, and then suddenly it struck me one day that what we needed was something that what we needed was something completely like hate mail, because that’s the reason for the beer. So I thought the beer needs to be like a hate mail directed to Camden Brewery, on their own bottle, and then it ties in with the book and it’s like this perfect thing. So I sent them this email one night saying, I think this would be a good idea, it just depends if you’ve got the balls to do it or not, and sent them this rough of ‘Camden is full of cunts’.

I kind of expected them to come back and say ‘no, this is too stupid, at the end of the day we’re paying for this to be made, and you’re taking the piss too much’ and to my surprise they said ‘yep, let’s do it. This is perfect, this is exactly what is should be.’ And since then I have so much respect for them to do that. It shows how much they get it as a company, how much conviction they’ve got to push these ideas forward.

So I then spent quite a few days working on the bottle, I took their original bottle design and then re-drew everything by hand, changed every single word and logo and bit of type, expect their own logo, everything else is completely changed. It reminded me of when I used to be at school, or when I was like twelve, you used to get a letter sent to your parents and you’d change all the words… So like, instead of ‘you’re invited to a parents evening’ it would say ‘you’re invited to a cock evening’ or something like that. So it was just completely taking over the bottle and de-facing it. I basically hi-jacked the bottle of beer.
I think it’s great, and it ties in with the launch as a funny, collectors item as well.

This week Build celebrate 11 years of graphic design splendour with a poster exhibition, auction and catalogue. We caught up with founder Michael C Place at their rather delightful Walthamstow studio, to find out more about how …]]>

This week Build celebrate 11 years of graphic design splendour with a poster exhibition, auction and catalogue. We caught up with founder Michael C Place at their rather delightful Walthamstow studio, to find out more about how they’ve grown, and what the show means to them.

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Can you tell us a little about the team behind Build?

It was started by myself 11 years ago, and Nicky joined about five years later. Before we moved to London where she worked for a games company called Psygnosis, we met when I was at the Designers Republic (tDR) doing Wipeout; Nicky was the lead artist on Wipeout and we were the graphic designers for it. Joe is our designer, a Brighton graduate he’s been with us for just over a year. He’s a very talented designer, who did a placement with us for about six months and we ended up taking him on. He was our first full time employee, which was scary but brilliant. And now there’s Sophie, our studio assistant, who’s been with us 10 months. We have people come in so we can scale up and down but the core is just the four of us. We like it quite small, a tight little unit.

Could you sum up what you do in a few words?

To distil it, we’re a design studio that does well-crafted, modern, forward thinking graphic design. Always with a nod to the future, always thinking forwards, always in our own style.

The title of the show is Blood, Sweat & 11 Years. Is that an accurate reflection of your journey?

Absolutely, 100%. We put a lot of ourselves into the work. As designers and as a studio we work incredibly hard to do the kind of design we do. A lot of it is quite labour intensive, so there’s a lot of sweat, there has been blood and a lot of tears, it’s not always been an easy journey. We’ve had scary times but we’ve always said to ourselves that as much as we’re always proud of the work we produce, we’re also proud of the way that we approach work in a very honest way. The personal journey is a really interesting point, it’s not a flippant title. There’s bravado around a lot of studios; everything’s always rosy and brilliant, but it’s not always brilliant and it’s not always rosy. It’s the culmination of 11 years hard work, good times and bad, so I think the title’s really fitting. I’m glad we didn’t do a 10 years show. We thought about doing it late last year, but didn’t realise how much time it would take to create an exhibition. It’s really nice that the private view is on the actual anniversary of the studio starting, and 11 years is a bit more odd and unconventional. We’re also lucky to be part of the London Design Festival which is great, and interesting in that there aren’t that many graphic design shows as part of the Design Festival – it’s a really nice opportunity for us to be part of that, and hopefully more people will see the show.

Also I really enjoy maths and 23, which is 11 in the 24 hour clock, is a really significant number, look it (23) up. I always think 11 is a lovely number and we live at number 23 which is even more amazing.

How does it feel reflecting on your achievements of the last 11 years?

I think like most designers, I get bored with things quite quickly. And even my own stuff I get bored with. I always like to keep going forward, not looking back. I’m surprised myself that, some of the stuff from 11 years ago I thought would be horrific, but the majority of it I still really like. A birthday is always a great thing to celebrate, but being in business still is a real achievement as well. With the economic climate and all that, 2007 was particularly tough, when it really hit. So it’s actually lovely to look back at it. From a design perspective it’s really enjoyable and I’m looking forward to seeing it all in one space. It’s quite interesting remembering stories, how we did things, or what happened on certain projects which is really nice. And a lot of the people we did stuff with, or for will be around to celebrate. Without a lot of people we’d be in a much different place so it’s a really nice opportunity to say thank you. It’ll be interesting to see how it all looks together and if there are any threads that go through the work and seeing what people think. I’m really looking forward to it.

How did you decide what pieces made it into the show?

We wanted to do it chronologically so the show has a journey and it’s quite important to see how we started off, compared to how we are now. I can see the real journey in terms of my design and how I approached something when I started to my approach now. We wanted at least one piece from each year, and we had to fit the work in around the space, which is quite stark and very open. Some years were harder than others. 2010 perhaps like a fine wine was a good year, and we had loads to choose from, but then going to 2002 we could hardly find anything. Some were hard choices, some quite easy. Lots of things that I would have liked to put in we couldn’t, we didn’t have the space for it all but the catalogue is broader. We wanted to do posters as I think it’s a really interesting form of expression for graphic designers, and because everyone loves a poster and we’ve done a lot of them. And so in some ways it’s great that it’s chronological as that narrowed it down, and then it was deciding which I am still happy for people to look at! So my tastes were a big part but Nicky and everyone in the studio looked at it to see if it’s balanced, it’s a good balance of very busy stuff from the start going to more simple as we go forwards.

Have you got a favourite piece in the show?

Yes I have. It’s a Not For Commercial Use (NFCU) piece. When the show finishes on Sunday 16 September, we’re doing a charity auction of those posters. NFCU is an ethos we’ve stuck by as we never sold them to anybody ever. It was a really nice project to do; we got to do lots of very sexy print, but also we did a little short film, a photoshoot with Rick Guest, a time-lapse in New York with Timothy Saccenti so it was a really nice collaboration. It cemented our relationship with Scrub from Generation Press. We’re talking about doing NFCU 2. It was a good fun project with great results.

How important have your relationships with people like printers and photographers been?

Really important, on both sides. Scrub & Generation Press has been a thread that’s been with us from the early days of Build up until now. And that became a very good friendship that’s really important and really nice. In terms of Scrub’s input, he will always suggest doing something in a different way that adds to the project and probably makes it a lot cheaper. He always gets it and it’s a really fruitful relationship. Then there’s Timothy Saccenti a friend of ours in New York, a photographer who we got to know and started to do his identity and promotional stuff, he then got us in to do certain jobs. So there’s a certain set of people through the journey who we’ve got to know and have been consistent collaborators. It’s those kind of relationships that are brilliant because you’re helping each other out. Like with Generation Press; we’ll do his identity and he prints something for us. It’s like an old barter system, which is great and I always think we get the best deal anyway! And again part of the show is to celebrate and say thanks, and have a laugh and a good time with all these people we’ve worked with, and showing their stuff. It’s really important to have good people around you. We always try and work with the best or the most interesting people in their respective fields.

You’ve stated previously that your vision for Build was good work, good people, good times. Has that come to fruition, or has it evolved?

I think it’s evolving. The good work thing’s hopefully still there! It is still true for a lot of the people that we work for. We’ve never been asked to do anything by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, companies that people perceive to be evil or some other people that everybody hates. I think we’re probably too nice in how we approach business, but it’s that thing of treating others how you’d like to be treated yourself. For instance, we always pay people within the terms of their invoice (30 days or whatever). We always do. Always. Because cash flow’s an important thing for businesses, and especially small businesses. So it goes from that to the work we produce. It’s evolved because we’re doing bigger things for bigger people now, and it’s not always possible to become friends with those clients. But we’re proud of the good work, good people, good times thing. I’ve always said that I’ve got the best job in the world, and we’ve had a lot of amazing times and that’s important if you work hard. If you don’t get anything out of it I don’t see the point in doing it. So a good time might be being flown to New Zealand to do a talk. I get to design things for people, I then get paid for doing it, and I then get to keep the things that I design, which is just amazing, I love it! And some people actually pay for me to travel and meet more people through doing talks, which is incredible. It’s quite a privileged position to be in, that people like you enough to pay for you to go and talk to a bunch of strangers in a room. I think it’s brilliant, really nice. Design has allowed me to do that, it’s very humbling.

What spurred you to start your own agency and how did you make the leap?

I was working in Sheffield at tDR. I loved my job there, genuinely, but I’d been there for nine years and it’s quite typical and natural for people to want to start their own thing. I was frustrated by the fact that if I’d done all my work I still had to come into the studio every day. Even when I left I still loved it because I really liked what I was doing, but it was that thing of just not being in control. Ian (Ian Anderson, founder of tDR) was the mouth of the studio, and is known for that, and we were the team behind him, but we never really got into the client process. Ian met them and we, along with Ian, did the work, but I thought that was such an important part of the whole process. It’s nice to go through everything from brief, to work, to end and pay. Also I thought to myself at some stage down the line I’ll become surplus to requirements, with talented young designers coming up through the ranks. So I thought if I had my own studio I can prolong that day. I genuinely can’t imagine doing anything other than graphic design. For some reason I’m good at this thing, my brain works in this way. I love graphic design and I’d like to play a part in its history. I read about all these other incredibly famous brilliant graphic designers and because that’s the only thing I can do, I want to have a small part in such a beautiful industry. So I think that by having my own studio and doing it, hopefully I will contribute to that. Just contribute to design and hopefully stay in it for as long as I can. Before somebody chucks me out!

How did working with Trevor Jackson and the Designers Republic influence your work and the way you run your own studio?

Trevor was just f’ing mental. He was such a character. That was my first job straight out of college and it was very very scary but brilliant. A real no-nonsense London geezer. Very talented but quite intimidating especially for someone straight out of college. Then going to tDR, Ian is not quite as intimidating but he is a big character. It’s the people that are characters and have something to say that are often the best designers. Ian and Trevor were full of themselves and needed to be (I’ve got no problem with that), but hopefully I’m not that person, not intimidating, not full of myself. Working with Trevor was an amazing experience and it taught me to be self-sufficient because I got left on my own a fair bit. But when something went wrong it was horrific, he was very fiery. It was interesting how he dealt with people.

Ian had more impact on me because I was there for longer. It’s really interesting to be in a studio that had fans, even non-designer fans, and I’d never ever seen that before. When you’re inside something like that you don’t really realise it, you’re just doing the work, but when I removed myself from it, it was interesting seeing how people perceive the company. I think it’s an interesting dynamic that the people you meet as fans could one day potentially turn into someone who could commission you in future. The lesson being, be nice to people.

Ian is the king of self-promotion, he really is. He’s got that crown firmly on his ginger head. It was interesting seeing how he ran the business. I think he ran the studio like a band, so you’ve got your manager and perhaps we were the drummer and the guitarist or whatever and he was the singer, even though I’d hate to hear him singing, as we did regularly in the studio! I found it really quite weird, seeing structures of other design studios, when at tDR, there was no such thing as junior, midweight, senior, account manager etc. You did everything yourself and it was a non-traditional framework. I approached our studio originally like that, though now we are more traditionally tiered. Watching Ian was really fascinating, how much he put of himself in it. When you’re working for someone it’s very easy to just think of them as the boss. Usually the boss is the bad guy, and when they leave the room everyone has a good time, and now you’re the boss you realise that it’s really hard. Ian always treated us incredibly well, I think we’ve taken that approach – really look after the people you work with and when you find someone good, like Joe, try and hang onto them, because they’re like gold dust. There were probably times when Ian wasn’t so great but we were in the middle of an amazing studio doing incredible work so all those little idiosyncrasies you can forget about because you’re designing sleeves for Warp records or LFO. Overall I think being a character is a really valuable asset.

You spoke there about having fans at tDR. How does it feel having fans of Build? Because there are some out there…

I think it’s really nice, it’s amazing that people commission us, but also we have a few people –  one guy in particular is amazing, anything we do he buys, but I think that’s a real compliment, and having been from tDR where they had shitloads of fans, it’s something I never take lightly. You know it’s a very nice feeling, like any compliment, it’s incredible. It’s great. Anybody that shows interest in my work I’m over the moon with and then having people that buy our work is brilliant.

When you made the move from working at home to getting a studio, you stayed in Walthamstow. What influence do you think location has on a studio’s output?

We’ve grown very organically. We’ve never tried to over-stretch ourselves. We started out in a basement flat in Camden on a table in the front room, to Fulham and a slightly bigger table, to Clapham and having a spare room so the studio became something I could escape from and shut the door on, which is very important. Then to Walthamstow where we bought a flat and had a bigger spare room, to being in a small studio that was outside of home.

Working from home, it’s incredibly awkward when someone says ‘can I come round to you’. I always used to say ‘no it’s fine, I’ll come to you, it’s good to get out of the studio’. Clients genuinely love coming to design studios, and it was slightly awkward and embarrassing, always try to project Build to feel bigger than it was. I wouldn’t want people coming round to my house for a meeting, it’s a bit weird and I think they’d think it’s weird. But then we were doing more and more work and spending more time and not being able to shut it off. When we were in the flat I felt a lack of input from the outside world, seeing something that creates a spark. Having the space at home was a bit restrictive creatively. It’s really important to chat with colleagues because that has its benefits. I had the cats and they are great conversationalists but I can’t understand them! Having the studio here was fantastic because people could come in, it feels more professional, your head’s in a different space. Having the studio I’m more efficient, not that I’d sit around watching daytime television, but it’s just good to have your day where you go out to work then go home again.

The location of Walthamstow is perfect. I love it. Working in Sheffield was different because all the design agencies were in London and that’s where you were supposed to be, but we liked that independent spirit. Ian loved forcing record labels to get out of London and come to Sheffield. We chose Walthamstow because we could afford to buy here, but it’s great. There’s quite a thriving arts scene, it was also the home of William Morris, which is amazing. There’s a big artisan and arts community, and we’re not amongst all the design companies in Soho, Shoreditch or whatever and that we really enjoy. I think there’s a slightly mischievous spirit to being here. I can walk to work and logistically speaking it’s dead easy to get everywhere, we probably couldn’t afford this space in town, it’s amazing. It’s a bit of a cultural wasteland in certain areas, but things seem to be happening now which is nice. You do rapidly get bored of the same things –  I think we’ve had every single thing on the menu of the local sandwich shop! We were over the moon when we got a Subway! So it’s quite weird, but good. I really love it.

If you could go back in time 11 years what advice would you give yourself?

Pay more attention to accounts and money definitely. I had no idea whatsoever. As uncreative an answer as that sounds, I was really lucky that Nicky had a very good job, that allowed me to build up the client list and a reputation. Also try and get in a studio quicker, because I think that’s really important, but you can only do that when you can afford it.

Do you think if you’d done that would it have affected the sort of work/clients you did early on?

No, but I think we would have got to this point quicker. I was very idealistic with a sort of ‘sod it let’s just do some great stuff’ attitude and we still want to do that but it’s very naïve to just forget about being paid. Because I much prefer to get paid well for the work that we do, and we work very hard for that money. If you can sort your finances out it allows you to do all the beautiful stuff that you can’t do if you’ve got no money. There’s nothing wrong in wanting to be paid fairly for the work that you produce. A lot of designers forget that a little bit, or people’s perception of commissioning design, is almost like it just comes out of thin air and ‘it only costs 50p to do that’, and then when you say it’s a pound they are genuinely shocked. I’d like to say that I’d pick up that Sports Almanac or win loads of money on the lottery, but really, just pay more attention to running the studio a bit smarter.

Is there anything you haven’t done yet that you’d like to?

An airline identity.

That’s the classic graphic designer answer!

I’ve been fascinated by aeroplanes and things that go fast for a long time, maybe it’s a boys thing as well as a graphic designer thing, but planes are fascinating to me so to see my work on a plane flying through the sky would be ace. Maybe even designing something for NASA would be amazing. It’s something that’s seen regularly by a lot of people. Everybody likes their work being seen by people, it’s a real buzz. I like to do things that I’ve never tried before, like I’d never designed longboard graphics, so when someone asked me to do that I was like yeah, that’s ace. Record sleeves was the thing I always wanted to do. I still find record sleeves really good, and we do a small amount of them, but the most interesting stuff is corporate identity, creating a world for somebody. So the airline thing for me is about having something huge on a plane but also down to designing a small thing on a bit of cutlery. Most graphic designer’s wet dream is Munich ‘72 and you see that what he (Otl Aicher) and his team designed, from pictograms to uniforms, it’s amazing. Having an impact on people’s lives, whether that’s just purely visual or whether it actually helps you get through your day differently or better is really good and fascinating.

At one time I wanted to do something for a big pop bad, the closest I got to that was Dannii Minogue, which I did years ago at tDR. It’d be really good to do something mainstream, for Rihanna or someone, mainly for the challenge, more than millions of people seeing it. It’d be quite interesting. From Munich to Rihanna!

What made you decide to work together with your wife Nicky, rather than another designer or business partner?

Obviously we’re husband and wife and we trust each other. In the first instance, it was to sort myself out and stop me going bankrupt, but the trust thing is really important. It’s quite hard working together sometimes and other times it’s amazing. I know we’re always there for each other, if things go bad and for celebrating the good times. She wanted to leave her job at Sony PlayStation, and things were starting to get quite good with what I was doing, and we saw that as an opportunity for her to join. Nicky’s brilliant in that she’s the Business Director but she’s incredibly creative, so I can trust her opinion. Where somebody might think ‘that’s shit’ and not say it to you, she’ll just go ‘that’s shit’. And that makes you reassess yourself which is brilliant. We get on really well which is an advantage. It’s having someone you can trust who you can really rely on. Why not another designer? Maybe I’d find that quite hard because I want to do everything myself, I’m quite impatient. It seemed natural for us to do. It just works. It’s good.

Do you have any advice for someone starting up their own studio?

Pay attention to financial things. Definitely believe in what you do. When I was at college in Newcastle the course was supposed to be fantastic, I was really over the moon when I got in, but it turned out to be a much more commercial course than I expected. I rapidly discovered Vaughan Oliver and decided I wanted to do record sleeves and that was it. Do things that are in the direction that you want to go in. But here’s the big one: before you start a studio, work in a studio. That’s fundamental. So you get to hone your craft without pressures of paying the studio rent. It’s so important to figure things out and watch people, how the boss works, how they do business. I think that’s just so important.

What to do you love about working at Build?

It feels good to be doing interesting work and people still allowing us to do interesting work. It’s brilliant to come into the space, it’s really lovely. It feels like an achievement, walking up the stairs, it feels like we’ve built up to this. And we’ve got shutters on our windows, which I get really excited by of a morning and of a night. It’s like being in a shop, it’s ace.

What’s in store for the next 11 years?

That’s a hard one. We’re never going to be a studio of 20 people. Maybe getting one or two more people would be nice. Hopefully that airline job! Just continuing doing good work. Hopefully bigger things. That’s the way we seem to be going which is nice. It’d be nice to have a book about us, a retrospective at a reputable museum, maybe in 22 years? Still producing good work, for good people and having a good time doing it. It’ll always be graphic design, I genuinely enjoy it, it’s an exciting industry to be in. And my brain’s just wired that way.

And still in Walthamstow.

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Blood, Sweat & 11 Years will be showing at Dray Walk Gallery, The Old Truman Brewery, London from Wednesday 12 – Sunday 16 September. The private view is on Tuesday 11 September by invitation only.

The Not For Commercial Use charity auction will take place at 4:00pm on Sunday 16 September, and is your chance to get your hands on an incredibly rare, sought-after and stunning piece of graphic design history. They have never been sold before and never will again. All proceeds will go to three charities close to Nicky & Michael’s hearts: Impact India, Guide Dogs for the Blind and Sightsavers. Register to be able to bid, or get more info on Build’s blog.

***Update****

The Not For Commercial Use charity auction is now taking place online here. All proceeds still go to the above mentioned charities ^ , and it means you don’t have be in London to get your mitts on them! Get in.

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A few of the FFF team headed along to check out this years New …]]> First off, apologies for the slight delay in the post – the show finished yesterday – but we think old news is still better than no news!

A few of the FFF team headed along to check out this years New Blood and, as expected, there was some excellent work on show from the class of 12.

In no particular order, we’ve put together a short selection of the work and designers who particularly made an impression.

Rick Jones (University of Huddersfield)
This work really stood out, with a meticulous attention to detail running through every project. Rick also cut a selection of his own typefaces, which were used to great effect. My particular favourite was the inline, rounded Neben Pro.

Jordan O’Brien (Stockport College)
Jordan has a beautiful hand painted style, which helped to light-heartedly personify a series of mundane everyday objects.

Brendan Bennett (Glasgow School of Art)
I was really drawn into Brendan’s Digital Planets piece which “considers the idea of a digital ecosystem that will operate in a posthumous universe.”. Really intriguing idea, beautifully realised.

Sebastian Koseda (Middlesex University)
Middlesex had a very strong batch of graduates this year, with Sebastian among the best. A mixture of well considered design and strong concepts (such 20th Sonic advertising), created a really accomplished body of work.

Naomi Wilkinson (University of West of England)
Bristol-based Naomi’s work is “heavily influenced by Vintage children’s book’s, Mid century graphics and eccentric pursuits.” Beautiful.

Peter Smart (The Arts University College at Bournemouth)
Peter enjoyed the enviable position of having created one of the most high profile pieces of work on display. His 50 Problems in 50 Days Online Experience set about the ambitious task of solving 50 problems in 50 days using design. It was a journey which saw Peter interview a series of top agencies worldwide, before winning a Best of New Blood award.

Melissa Preston (Edinburgh Napier University)
Melissa’s back to basics typographic poster really stood out, while being an appropriate medium for her Something of Value project – a campaign to promote traditional values as a foundation to solve contemporary cultural problems.

Overall there was a huge amount of talent on show, and while there isn’t the time to fit all of it in todays post, look out for other talented graduates making an appearance on our Twitter over the next few days.

Congratulations and goodluck, Class of 2012!

And the winner of our ‘SHE’ best image-caption competition is…

“In the year 2375, a traditionally dressed Prince Harry MXII represents Earths best hope in the first inter-planetary bean polo championship.” — Matthew Burvill

Congratulations Matt, you win a copy of …]]>

And the winner of our ‘SHE’ best image-caption competition is…

“In the year 2375, a traditionally dressed Prince Harry MXII represents Earths best hope in the first inter-planetary bean polo championship.” — Matthew Burvill

Congratulations Matt, you win a copy of Brosmind’s new, exclusive two-part comic SHE, packed full of bonkers drawings and a crazy narrative.

Joshua Davis is no stranger to the OFFF Festival series. This year incredibly being the tenth occasion he has taken to the stage. Little wonder then that he was invited to live draw (shown above) an …]]>

Joshua Davis is no stranger to the OFFF Festival series. This year incredibly being the tenth occasion he has taken to the stage. Little wonder then that he was invited to live draw (shown above) an artwork in front of the 3,500 visitors over the event’s three days.

If you don’t know him, Davis rose to prominence in the late 90s under the Praystation moniker and was a pioneer of programmatic, generative design, created mainly in Flash.

Before his talk, having not seen much of him since those days, I questioned whether his work was really still relevant, but I had him pegged wrong.

Despite not being a huge fan of his aesthetic, from the first moment of his talk, ‘Beyond Play’ I couldn’t help but be won over — his enthusiasm for what he does is boundless and pulls you on side.

He’s very much an experimental artist — mixing digital and analogue techniques to produce works based on things he encounters in nature and the world around him.

He talked a lot of his fascination for feedback loops — drawing on paper and in software and feeding these drawings back into programs to see what comes out. Ultimately, he does this stuff for fun. There is no distinction between his work and play.

And that was the take away message of his talk — it’s a simple one but it’s still resonating with me —

“Make the kind of work that you want to get hired to do.”

Or to paraphrase — publish the personal, self-initiated work you love and you might just get hired to do it for money.

Not a bad idea eh?

Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese illustrator who now resides in New York.

It was nice to go to her OFFF talk without any preconceptions, having not seen her work before. She put her illustration work in context …]]>

Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese illustrator who now resides in New York.

It was nice to go to her OFFF talk without any preconceptions, having not seen her work before. She put her illustration work in context through an honest and very human account of her life.

She grew up in a traditional Japanese family, always held back from pursuing a path in art as it was just ‘not an option’ there.

As a result, much of her work is concerned with a coming to terms with her ‘Japanese-ness’, the American perception of Japan and themes of sex and female empowerment.

She has a comic illustrative style with strong bold colours and lines, but also married with echoes of Japanese traditional painting.

What’s amazing is that she didn’t start a career in illustration until she was 34!

She is a great example of it never being too late to start on a new path and believes artists can’t help but embrace change and move forward.

“You are never too old to do ____”

In showing her process, it was brilliantly refreshing that she also showed work she was embarrassed by, her personal failures. (Not that I can find any of them since the talk!).

Take a look at Yuko Shimizu’s portfolio over here.