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.