"It haunts you in your sleep and forcefully steals valuable nutriants from your body.Your energy then becomes lines,shapes,textures and colours"
Johnny Hardstaff
If I see a piece of design and I think.
"Wow.I wish I did that" THATS what graphic design is to me.
When introduced to graphic design I was unaware of any designers.I was a young naive graphics student who thought making a cartoon character with fancy "hip" type could count as graphics .The first designer i was shown was Johnny Hardstaff.
And his final pieces were beautiful and I thought.WOW.I was just overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of his work.It was only when I saw his notebooks that i was able to appreciate the craft and process of his work which gave his work reason.Sketchbook after sketchbook ideas and his personal journey towards the final product.
It seems that he has a very distinct set of personal obsessions that he fuses into all of his commercial work.He adds his own personal touches, some of them of childhood memories which makes every piece his own.
I think he's work proves that the journey is better then the destination.
Svetoslav Simov
I fell in love with Simovs work during the end of my ND course.Its really playful and as you can already tell,this guy loves playing with his designed typefaces and giving them contexts.Simov isn't particularly well known and proves that looking at commercial graphics is just scraping the surface of what real design is.Beautiful design could be done in a dingy little shed at the end of a garden.It doesn't need to be designed in studios kitted out with up to date macs.
Wim Crouwel.
I love.Neh.ADORE this typeface.It was a theoretical exercise which is what i love most about it.Graphics to me involves improving on something that doesn't work.Even if its to the point of illegibility.I love how it
doesn't matter whether it's readable or not.The morphology of the typefaces is what actually matters.Design involves creative freedom and if that means ditching curves of letterforms then so be it.
Wims typeface has been used for Joy Divisions album;Substance.But as you can see it has been altered abit to make it more legible for the market.
TALKING OF JOY DIVISION
LETS MOVE ON TO
PETER SAVILLE
Need I say more?
Okay,maybe bit more.This is my favourite piece of design.I don't know if its got something to do with my obsession for factory records and their story or Saville himself.All I know is that everytime I look at this.I go WOW!
Fac 1 poster for the Factory Night at Russell
The simple shapes,flat colours,found imagry.This piece just screams Saville.
Before my ND course I would never have thought graphics and music be so tightly linked until i saw his work.The iconic black and yellow have been "lended" many times and is instantly recognisable.It's been said that he loves the sound of deadlines wooshing by,although this is not like me (I HATE THAT SOUND) this makes him more human and more like us.We all have this perception that graphic designers get given their breif and they work like slaves to get it done on time.We think of them as almost machine-like.But this "deadline welcoming" approach adds a human quality to the industry.
Unknown Pleasures 1979
This has become one of Savilles most iconic sleeves.
Showing merly a diagram recording the radio pulses from a neutron star and nothing else
Shunning conventional track listings and band name was a brave move.
Whilst researching this sleeve it came to my attention that Saville was originally told to make the sleeve black on white,but he changed it to white on black at the last minute.Most likely to represent the dark emptiness of space.
Here,Saville talks through his inspirations and his way of working
Si Scott
I am very familiar with si scotts work due to research done in my ND.
As mentioned previously.
Graphic design to me is about creative individuality and freedom.
Si Scott is a perfect example of this. With his trademark swirls and a style thats unique to him and just looking at his work you can appreciate the craftsmanship of each of his pieces.Unlike so many final prints we see today,perfectly crisp thanks to the age of technology, SI SCOTTS work is all hand drawn.His work screams elegance and has an almost feminine quality to it.
Love Will tear us apart
