Damian Gascoinge

I loved this guy, definetly the most entertaining talk weve had, even if he didnt show that much of his work. He said he had done a powergen ad a few years ago that i vaguely remember, but wanted to show his personal projects and family photos rather than this commercial work.

He talked in alot of detail about his research methods; how he obsessively collects, doodles and photographs anything and everything. He draws from life alot, and as an animator is particularly interested in posture and movement. He photographs objects that can look like something else, and invents stories based on the situation and mood of a photograph. He is in the habit of constantly creating, and said that you have to be obsessive to get anywhere.

He uses commercial work to pay for more enjoyable personal projects, one of which he called 'The Love Books'. This began as a series of books full of drawings, like a visual diary he produced when he was single. This became an exhibition in somewhere like Korea, i cant remember, where his drawings were projected onto a large polystyrene book (which he then had to pay a huge amount to have environmentally recycled). He described the Koreans, or whichever country it was, as being incredibly disorganised and last minute about everything: the polystyrene book only arrived on the morning the exhibition was due to open. The piece i was most interested in is one hes currently working on; an animation of two guys arguing about folk music, really well written & funny.

He described how tough and competetive the design / animation industry can be, saying that last year was his toughest yet. During the last 12 months, he spent time and money pitching for 7 different jobs, but didnt get a single one, untill something came up in December. He described this as having been very stressful, and said that you have to have nerves of steel to stick at it.

He has little interest in the technical side of animation, but as a lecturer at Kingston uni, has recruited a former student to help with this. He criticizes alot of computer animation for being too processed and all being pretty much the same as the next, which i agree with. He didnt say much about his influences, but mentioned that 1950s design and animation inspires him.

After the lecture he joined us in the studio where we had beer and cake.

MWM Graphics

I found this work by Matt W Moore on the creative review blog, hes American but his first UK exhibition has just opened at the Concrete Hermit gallery in London, I really hope ill get time to go down to it. I dont think hes been working that long, but already has a massive list of clients. I love it. Id be interested to see how black & white designs like this could look on acetate projected on a wall or something, maybe with different coloured light...

British Museum London

While i was in London i made the mistake of visiting Buckingham palace. It was crap. Armed police swarmed around it so i couldnt get anywhere near it and the building itself was nothing special. If i was queen id have a better house than that. So after a dissapointingly short visit to that dump, we noticed signs to the British museum and went there. It was late afternoon so we only had an hour in there, i couldnt believe the size of the place and could have easily spent all day in there, the exhibitions covered all world cultures, displaying various artefacts from the last 2 million years. I found the exhibition on the meaning of life and death in different parts of the world really interesting, it described so many different rituals and beliefs, & there was a piece by an artist whose name iv forgotton, but it was basically a display of a huge number of pills, surrounded by various photos and other personal objects. The idea was to make the viewer consider the number of pills we take in a lifetime, using two different individuals as an example. Visually i didnt find it that exciting but once id read the point of it i spent ages looking at it.
Next time im in London ill definetly go back cos i didnt even see half of it in that hour.

London: Proffesional Practice Visits.

Gardeners World Magazine - Guy Bennington

This was the first time id shown my portfolio to anyone out side of college, but due to my train being late and me missing the connecting one, i didnt get time to worry about it. I wasnt sure if i should let him look through it and wait for questions, but i just talked him through each piece and that seemed to go pretty well.

He especially liked the beer can bees, and asked if id considered selling the design to boddingtons. As the magazine had just done a feature on bees, he was interested in my symbiosis project, and understood (without me explaining) what i was communicating in the signpost piece, so i was really pleased with that. He mentioned that with editorial work, it is 70% about the communication, which i took to mean that in some of my work, i need to concentrate more on this.

As i was in such a rush to get there on time thanks to the bloody trains, i left my promotional postcards in the hotel room. He was really positive about most of my work, and im definetly gonna remember to send him a few cards.

Container + : Luise Vormittag

I wish id have taken a voice recorder or at least made some notes as luise gave me some really useful advice that i am now struggling to remember. When i showed her my portfolio, she advised that i put my best work at the start (which i thought i had done), but she was much more positive about the Fear and Loathing project that im currently working on. She particularly liked the use of coloured light and the atmosphere of the iguana and bat photos. She also suggested that instead of putting together each element digitally, i could try making the whole image and photographing it, but did warn me of the difficulties of getting each aspect exacly right.

Luise then took us through the Container + portfolio, showing her huge range of clients. There was alot of self initiated work, which she recommends doing as it helps to develop your style, can be used in promotion and gives you fresh ideas. The problem with it is that theres no guarentee of earning any income from it, and the way she works requires her to employ several other people such as photographers, which works out very expensive if you dont get any work from it.

There are three people working in the Container + studio, one of which spends around 50% of her time on promoting the company. This was alot more than i thought itd be.

She suggested that i should look at a book called Tactile, which iv already seen, and the next one in the series, Tangible, which i havent.

Otto Detmer Talk

Otto Dettmer began working as an illustrator in the early 1990s, after completing a degree and then a Masters in Graphic design. After finishing his education, he felt that focusing too much time on self promotion had a negative impact on his early work. During this time, he would have up to seven appointments per day with both clients and agents, but soon realised that the best method of self promotion for a designer is completing a job succesfully. He found that roughly 1 in 8 client visits would result in a job, whereas agents were not particularly interested due to the relatively low pay of editorial work.

His style has evolved quite significantly since the early 90's, largely due to taking up screen printing, and now produces various promotional books including fold outs in this way. I liked the idea of using original methods of self promotion. He no longer uses a portfolio, but advised that if we do, to include original drawings rather than finished digital work that art directors see every day.

Otto's work is often black / grey with one other colour.. This comes in part from the limitations of screen printing, but also when he first began working and magazines often requested simple colour schemes. When starting a new brief, he makes a list of assosiations to come up with ideas, and has a huge reference library for further inspiration. He tries to send the client at least 4 roughs, and generally 2 different ideas. He works largely for newspapers and magazines such as the economist and the Independant. A job every three weeks for the Guardian has to be completed in an afternoon, which he found very stressful at first. Recently, since the start of this recession, he has done several jobs relating to the fall of Capitalism. He has done two advertising jobs and did not enjoy either, due to the lack of creative control, but the large amount of money made it worthwhile. He has recently started selling some of his designs as stock illustrations in order to supplement his income, but is considering whether or not the money is worth giving up control over his images. He also reuses old illustrations for a foriegn paper which cannot afford to pay decent wages.

Otto cites his biggest influence as being Russian Constructivism such as Vladimir Mayakovski, Michael Cheremnyk and El Lissitsky, because of their use of simple illustrations but strong political concepts, and the combination of shapes, diagonals, and typeography. He likes work that is not too obvious, and leaves something to the imagination, but is always careful in his own work to be aware of what ambiguity could come from a piece. He takes reference from old films, renaissance painting, mythology, found images, sculpture and consumer culture, and trys to keep away from the mainstream. He prefers working alone due to the competition that can exist between a group of designers working together in a studio.