BRYN JONES
Year Graduation / Grade
1986 / 2.1
Bryn Jones has won national and international awards for his professional work including D&AD, Roses and New York Festivals awards.
He has been a lecturer in Graphic design for twenty years and has been awarded at the last count 45 D&AD student awards. These include 12 golds, 4 student of the year awards and a further 3 John Gillard Awards.
Between 2005 – 2008, he was the CityBrand project Leader/Lead Designer, a post graduate research project which focused on designs ability to transform small cities and larger towns. The project went on to be featured as one of only three films made nationally on the subject of excellence in design education by Design and Art Direction of Great Britain. The project pioneered collaborative practice and working methods between all the design disciplines and was instrumental in the philosophy underpinning the new MA Transdisciplinary Design Course of which he is the course leader.
Robinson Lambie-Nairn 1985
The Chase 1986 – 1988
Sampson Tyrell Manchester 1988 – 1990
Sampson Tyrell London 1990
Salford University Final year tutor, Part time 1990 – 1992
Staffordshire University Final year tutor, Part time 1992 – 1997
UCLan Final year tutor, Part time 1993 – 1997
Kingston University Final year tutor, Full time 1997 – 2004
UCLan CityBrand Project leader / Lead Designer 2005 – 2008
MA Transdisciplinary Course Leader 2009 – present
BA Graphic Design and BA Illustration course member
How and where did you secure your first job?
SELNEC (South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire) Bus Company. At my secondary modern school careers day, I was asked what was I good at. I replied, “art”. The careers officer offered me the choice between a welder or a motor mechanic. Immature and too timid to rock the bus, I perhaps unwisely took the former and spent the next six years in a Salford depot. You get less for murder nowadays.
On reflection, it benefited me having gained some worldly experience before I came to college, something some students lack especially if they come straight from school or without a foundation of some sort under their belt.
Do you think being a Preston student has benefited you in any way?
Enormously. It made me understand that design was about ideas and importantly how to generate them. It’s only after you leave and work in design groups that you realise, not all students have gone through the same process.
I also experienced this first hand when I began teaching. I could quickly make a difference wherever I went because so many other institutions didn’t have ideas at the centre of their course.
Where do you get your ideas from?
It sounds like a cliché but they are always there in front of you. Get to know the problem and the solution will reveal itself, often when you least expect it.
What do you find most challenging about your job?
I find life challenging, not just my job. I simplify things in a variety of ways to get through. It’s also my philosophy to graphic design. Complex problem = simple solution.
Do you prefer collaboration or thinking alone?
I prefer to come up with the idea alone and then art direct the rest. Working with people you trust and respect helps. As long as they maintain the integrity of the idea I’m happy to let them add things to the project.
On another note, I can’t use a computer to put ideas and artwork together, so I continually work with other designers and students of design to help me out. Is that collaboration or incompetence?
What are the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ things about lecturing?
Students.
What is the most unusual thing you have done in your career?
Sparred with Joe Calzaghe and danced with Bianca Jagger.
What has been the key to your success?
Fast hands and faster feet.
Any advice for students entering the industry?
Don’t worry. Good students will always get jobs. Work hard, put into practice the skills you have gained at college. Cream will always rise to the top.
Client: Anti-Apartheid Movement. 1984
A self authorised, live student project, undertaken in my third year. The identity and basis for an awareness campaign that highlighted the differences between whites and blacks during the South African regime of apartheid law.
Client: Birchfield Harriers. 1986
This Christmas card was the one piece of work that got me off and running. Dated in appearance maybe but ideas never go out of fashion. A good example of unrelated subjects conjoined to create a new and relevant meaning. You might say “I never looked back”.
Client: Boxing News. 1997
Six of the Best, a limited edition, commemorative box set featuring photographic portraits of Britain’s best pound for pound prize fighters of 1997, as voted by the readers of boxing news.
Client: Haemophilia Society. 1998
With the advancement of medical science through drugs such as factor 8 and 9, it is possible for all members of the family unit affected by haemophilia to live relatively ‘normal’ and happy lives. This charity logo was designed with fund raising events in mind.
Client: The Lowry. 2000
The problem at hand, was to get my own community of Ordsall, Salford to view art differently. This interactive Christmas card encourages the recipient to see different things from several alternative points of view.
Client: Nutters of Savile Row. 2000
Tommy Nutter, the original maverick tailor whose trademark look was created by dramatic and humorous twists on classic English style. He has dressed everyone, from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to Sir Hardy Amis and Lord and Lady Harlech, from Elton John, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson and Bianca Jagger to the Duke of Bedford and Sir Roy Strong. Posh people and rock people, oh and me.
Client: Creative Circle. 2003
A call for entries poster highlighting that on average, no more than 2% of entries make it into the Creative Circle Honours, which makes it one of the toughest advertising awards around.
Client: Preston City Council. 2005
Sustainable carrier bag and advertising campaign for Preston Market. For many, the market provides an essential social role as well as a practical one.
This piece of public art features the illustrations of Preston’s very own Leo Baxendale, the influential comic artist who created amongst others ‘the Bash Street Kids’. Sequential paving stones create a visual narrative and accommodate an original comic strip reproduced here in a permanent, ultra hard wearing industrial ceramic process.
Edith Rigby was a founding member of the Suffragette Movement. Opposite 28 Winckley Square, Preston where she lived, is an example of public art that features her profile in iron railings to signify her militant forms of protesting.
Part of a contemporary range of street furniture that makes reference to Preston’s rich industrial heritage. The bench is formed by peeling back the surface layer of the ground to reveal Preston’s historic foundations, set out in a cast metal typographic story.
Shop security shutters on one of Preston’s main arteries into the city have been laser perforated and lit, transforming negative first impressions of Preston into a memorable, positive outdoor art gallery experience.
