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The Disciples of Design Q&A

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Q You have been lecturing at Preston for a while now. How’s it all going?
OK… however it has just dawned on me that I have been lecturing for 10 years now, plus it’s also nearly 20 years since I graduated. Which means my current 1st year students were either foetal or still a twinkle in their mothers eye as I was embarking on my design career.

Q Did you do a placement year? If so how was it?
Yes. I was lucky enough to do my placement at The Chase in Manchester. The Chase had only been going for about 4 years and I just remember it being real good fun and an adventure. I was the only student in my year working in Manchester, most of my year went to London, therefore I spent most of my weekends traveling down and getting smashed with them in the White Horse, just off Carnaby St, in Soho. Then a very popular watering hole, especially for young designers working in the city centre, it was heaving inside and out on a Friday night.

Q. How and where did you secure your first job?
Straight after graduating I was lucky enough to be taken on by The Chase, so I must have made an impression at some point.

Q. Do you think being a Preston student has benefited you in any way?
Most definitely, the course was very vibrant at that time and there was a great communal spirit across all 4 years. Everyone drank in the same pub, went to the same parties and slept with the same people. It already had a great reputation and network of ex graduates out in industry (most of them on a Friday night, smashed outside The White Horse, just off Carnaby Street, Soho). Also the fact that everyone went out on work experience in their 3rd year ment that when we entered our final year we were really close as a group. It was still competitive but always with a friendly edge.

Q What would you have done differently at University knowing what you know now?
Yes….studied Law. No, not really just fancy the salary.

Q What/or who inspires you?
Nature and people, in all their varied forms, art, in all its varied forms, music, film, words, food, etc… in all their varied forms. Everything really. What doesn’t inspire me tends to depress me, so I try to look for something positive in most things.

Q You’ve described lecturing as your most challenging job. What’s the best and worst thing? Why do you lecture?
The best thing about being a lecturer in the art & design field is the contact with young creative people and discussing ideas free from the constraints of the ‘real world’. As a student having the freedom and time (3/4 years) in which to experiment, take risks and express yourself is such a valuable thing. The challenge, I have found is getting the average student to understand and realise this.

It would appear to me that students are now coming into higher education earlier and are a little too pre-conditioned and also too pre-occupied. There are numerous reasons for this but now is not the place or time to delve any deeper. However I do find it very depressing when I get students asking me:- “What do I have to do to pass”? “Have I done enough to pass”? “Will this get a good mark”? “What mark have I got”? “Sorry I’m late, couldn’t find anywhere to park my car”. “Have you got a pencil I could borrow”?

Q How do you come up with ideas? Is it a collaborative process or do you prefer to think alone?
Now that is a hard one. I can only speak for myself here but I have found ideas/concepts/thoughts can emerge anywhere and at any time. The first thing is to understand and absorbed the problem at hand, then carry it with you thereafter. Look hard, look long and try to make connections, is also a good rule of thumb.

I have had a lot of success when I have been asleep/semi-conscious, also in the shower (a constant flow of water on the cranium seems to work). Being around certain people, that synergy has worked well before now. Alcohol can work, but you need to check again in the cold light of day. Wide open spaces are good for gathering ones thoughts. Being put under pressure tends to collect your thoughts as well. However I would say this is not ideal but it’s probably the most common way designers work or are forced to work on a daily basis.
I do know one thing though. If you don’t look for them, then you’ll never find them.

Q. Jonathan Ellery, Stefan Sagmeister and Peter Saville – amongst many others – have all produced work that is considered ‘art’ during their careers. What compelled you to focus more on fine art?
First and foremost I would consider myself to be an artist. My route through the educational system was on the art side. I studied art at school, had a talent/ inherent ability to draw. In my formative years I was a voracious drawer & painter. I also studied and practiced pottery/ceramics at an early age. Carried this on through my school 6th form and onto an Art & Design foundation year in Carlisle (Cumbria). Finally landing up in Preston in 1987 as a student on the Graphics course.

Visual communications, Graphic imagery & typography and creative problem solving had always held an allure and I was pretty sure I wanted to go into that field, plus it seemed there was also more of a chance of making some money out of it. After all Graphic design is the grandchild of what was once coined ‘commercial art’. I worked at ‘the coal face’ for eight years as a practicing designer before I landed up in Higher Education.

Over the years I have begun to develop my ideas & conceptual thinking a little further and from more of a personal perspective, returning to the fine art fold more. Working in Higher Education gives me more scope to develop these ideas/concepts, however I am still not as prolific as I would like to be but that’s because I lecture full time. As always it’s a balancing act.

Does that answer the question? Or is the simple answer self expression?

Q Is there any similarity with design in your experience?
I see more similarities than I do differences. Put it that way. Ideas are the common currency in my view, it’s what you do with them and how you manifest them that tends to define you.

Henri -Toulouse Latrect, Cassandra, Piet Zwart, the De stijl movement, Aleksander Rodchenko, El Lissitsky, the Bauhaus, Maholy-Nagy, Eric Gill, MacKnight Kauffer, Richard Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Kurt Schwitters, Peter Blake, Andy Warhol, Damian Hirst, Mark Wallinger – artists or designers? You tell me.

Q What would you say has been the key to your success so far?
The honest answer is that I don’t really consider myself to have been successful so far. Still working on that one. Will keep you informed of my progress.

Q. Any advice for students entering the industry?
Advice? Well here are some ‘pearls of wisdom’ that have been passed on to me over the years and I think in the main most of them have proved prophetic – ‘son, you make your own luck in life’, you’ll find that ‘the more you practice the luckier you will get’ and ‘it’s not just what you know, sometimes it can be who you know’.

Remember ‘you’re only as good as your last job’ so ‘work hard and play hard’, because ‘you’re a long time dead’ and after all ‘if you’re not living on the edge then you’re taking up too much room’.

It is important to understand that everything in life is connected so keep an open mind and if you are going to fail, which you surely will then ‘fail early and fail often’.

And never forget that your imagination is your only limitation.
Good luck.

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Profile

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Label – Kwik Save Baked Beans – 1996
I still struggle with this piece of design. I’m still unsure if it’s the best thing that I ever did (as a designer) or the worst. My Zenith or Nadir?

At the time I do remember thinking ‘brilliant, I’m designing one of the most ubiquitous tinned products ever’. However the limitations on what we could do were stiflingly. The copy was provided (in fact they finally cut the words baked out), the shot was churned out with limited art direction and we were directed to emulate the brand leader. Naturally I chose a colour that was close to Heinz, unfortunately too close and it had to be pulled off the shelves pretty sharpish at the request of the Heinz lawyers.

It was while working on this account that I finally decided to take time out and travel the world. In fact it was the rejection of one of my proposed Battenberg designs by the client that finally pushed me over the edge and to the other side of the world.

I went to Australia to forget.

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Consume or die – 15/07/97 16:04
Till receipt

This piece was conceived after collecting other peoples discarded till receipts. By formulating an alphabet using the initial letters of items purchased, I was then able to create any subliminal message I wanted by simply running certain products through the checkout and into my trolley. This one was suggested by Billy Harkcom.

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Water – 31/12/99 – 10.20pm onwards
Time based installation – Medium – Household tap water (100 bottles – C 50 H 50). Captured, bottled and corked at one minute intervals on the eve of the millennium. This installation was conceived in response to the pervasive consumer frenzy of the time.
To be exhibited each millennium.

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Type Face – 2005
Print making – Medium – Wood block type (edition of 4 – 1000mm x 1500mm)
Wood type has a beautiful aesthetic so when The Chase – Manchester approached me to illustrate a childs face using 30 trays of wooden type from The Science & Industry Museum I thought, this could be interesting and it was. The whole project took quite a long time. There were several processes and individuals involved but finally we managed to get 4 impressions.

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Cod Apocalypse – 2006
Photographic Montage – Medium newsprint and colour photocopy (180mm x 155mm)
This image was physically montaged from two pieces of paper. The Chicago skyline image was taken from a stockshot book and the backdrop was cut out of a daily newspaper – from an article that was highlighting the planets dwindling fish reserves (cod in this case).
Essentially a visual trick with a verbal twist (cod = fake). How it is perceived by the viewer is interesting, I think it has a certain resonance for the ‘war on terror’ generation and at some level taps into the zeitgeist.

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Wall – 2008
Installation/Performance – Medium – Sandstone (10 tons and 10 yards in length)
Take a stretch of drystone wall from a field in Westmorland and re build it 52 miles away in a
Gallery in Preston.

The essence of this piece is rooted in exercise.

Concept, vision, rationalisation, organisation, economics, time management, co-ordination,
construction, exertion, observation, balance, scale, proportion & craftsmanship.

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PGA – The Pub Golf Association – 1989 – Limited Edition of 60
Compendium included – A map of the course, Rule book, Score cards & pencils, 20 page handbook, Membership card with badge, Beer mat markers, Trophies (mens & ladies) & Ledger

This self initiated project was designed in collaboration with my good friend Neil Dawkins during our 2nd/3rd year on the graphics course at Preston. It was probably the most enjoyable piece of work that I have ever been involved with and it lingers long in the memories of all those who participated in the mayhem that it inspired.
Conceived in the exuberance of youth and packed with loads of ideas, it was one of those projects where everything just fit into place. There had been a few murmurings of a pub crawl based on golf but as far as we could see no one had actually formulated or designed a coherent concept.

This where we stepped in. We formulated a course (18 boozers), paced it out around the campus, designated the shots (pars) per hole and wrote the copy and designed a complete pack. The annual PGA championship became a mainstay in the Art & Design calendar and continued long after we had graduated.

The lengths we went to on the detail were ridiculous, it took over a year to produce, we had a Latin motto translated to go with the PGA logo that translated as “Christ give me a drink and let’s get on with it”, plus the trophies were initially engraved by a guy who had also engraved the F.A Cup.

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A massive thanks to Andy on behalf of all his students. Past and present.