Adrian Shaughnessy & Tony Brook D&AD Lecture

Due to the fantastic effort and lengths that Stockport go to, to enable us with the best design lecturers as possible, its been a great achievement and an appreciated one that combined with help from Thoughtful and D&AD that Adrian Shaughnessey and Tony Brook, Two fantastic designers/ writers and now publishers have been able to come and share their wisdom with us. It took place at the Odeon cinema in the Printworks in one of the cinema halls which was great and there was a brilliant turnout from designers and students from all over Manchester.

It began by Tony and Adrian talking about their collective design backgrounds, Tony Brook the self admitted Graphic Design addict, formally of Spin where he formed his interest in making books after a realisation that there needed to be a new direction. He kindly talked through the first few books they made, The highlight for me being the 'Logo' book which has been a regular source of inspiration over many projects at college. Adrian Saughnessy then gave us a bit of back ground of how he spent 15 years (not 50 years) at Intro, and showed us many examples of some of the work done for music labels and artists, which was great as I was familiar with almost all of it but never realised spin had been behind certain pieces. He then went on to talk about the first produced book they made which was a sampler series of 3 which was followed by "How to be a Graphic Designer, without loosing your soul" He described the reason behind this book as wanting to make a book that tells you about all the non-design things that happen to designers, and not sugar coat it. He also spoke heavily about the frustration with the amount the publisher restricts the designer, which echoed what Tony had said aswell. I suppose it reached a point for both designers that they felt they had the capability to become publishers and once they met in a pub it seemed they followed the same desire and from that Unit Editions was born.

The explanation of what they do was as follows "imagine each book cover is a pixel which acts as an addition to a bigger picture" the idea that all their work will add to something bigger and better. They set themselves a series of frank questions when setting up their publishing company, ones which some designers would choose to ignore, one which stuck out was 'Why are you setting up a publishing company when the development in technology and the vastness of the internet allows people instant access to online books?', They did a great deal of research into the lifespan of a modern publishing company and asked a list of profound designers whether they still regard books as the necessity they once were, which came back with brilliant results as one example that made me smile was the idea that you can search for ages on the net and find some really interesting stuff but once you exit that page the site is almost vanished from memory, whereas a book is forever there.

Neither Adrian or Tony are disillusioned with the inevitability that digital technology is becoming ever more popular and have acknowledged that their company will form a hybrid of fantastic print and online copy in the future. 'Studio Culture' is the first book that they have published and was fast selling online before it had finished printing! What has been really interesting throughout this talk is actually finding out the process of publishing and the amount it actually cost. What was frightening was to learn that if a copy of their book is bought on the internet from any leading provider that 50% of that cost will go to the distributer and a further 25% gets swallowed up by the seller, leaving them with just a 25% share compared to buying directly off their website where they receive 100% this has never really occured to me when buying independent books but is something once I am no longer a poor student I will make an effort to avoid.

Generally I found the lecture really interesting I got to see lots of work that both Adrian and Tony like which is always a plus along side some wonderful work of their own and a definite insight into an area I am not too familiar with. As I am continually thinking of what to do my dissertation on next year the idea of researching the digital impact on a certain area of design (such as publishing) seems something I could really engage in and enjoy.

Alun Cocks

Today Alun Cocks came in to speak to us about his agency, Dust that he runs along side Patrick Walker and Pamela Bowden. They all met at university in leeds and Alun even attended Stockport College. He showed us a great range of work, alot of it with careful consideration to printing material, texture and adding a really hand crafted style to it. His first piece he showed us was largely made of mark making, something we had all worked with in first year and added a real different approach to the brief. During his talk, although his quick flicking from slide to previous slides was abit sporadic his content was great, he talked largely about how doing one good project leads to a job that leads to better jobs. This echoing what Stuart and Chris from Thoughtful had said a week earlier in their talk.

What was really good at the end of the lecture was we were able to go an have a look through most of the pieces that he had included in his slide show. And the photographs gave them no justice as the quality and precision of the books and pieces he had done were excellent. And to be able to feel them made me really get to grips with his explanation of the briefs.

Aswell as operating their own studio Dust collaborate with Mick Marston to form Fine & Dandy which is a side project heavily based around pure illustration. Fine & Dandy are part of CIA (Central Illustration Agency) which represents over 45 different illustrative artists/outfits.

Below is a piece by Fine & Dandy that really stuck in my mind, i love the sense of working towards that goal of being paid to do something you would give an arm and a leg to do anyway.

Thoughtful Presentation

Today we were given a great opportunity to have a sneak preview of a presentation that Chris and Stuart from Thoughtful were planning for the 4 Designers Conference in London. The presentation was brilliant it started with a brief overview of both Chris and Stuarts interests, which included designers, musicians, film makers and some intelligent ideas. The image below was on Chris's list. The idea that a hamster running on a wheel can generate the shredder to shred the paper that makes up the bedding in the cage. genius!

Chris and Stuart then went onto talk about key practices they thought were key to being successful in the design industry, one notion that stuck out was The 5 P's (how to make sure that presentations go as planned.)

Preparation

Prevents

Piss

Poor

Performance

They then went onto talk about a few design projects that they (as a relatively new company) have completed, pitched for and worked on. One that really caught my eye was their work for the Liverpool Biennial.

Thoughtful commissioned Mat Maitland an English Illustrator to create the striking collages following the title theme of 'Made Up' The campaign was hugely successful and fed into a series of other work for the agency.

Throughout the presentation Thoughtful quoted lots of practitioners that they had managed to interview. A few quotes that stuck out were.

"Earn the right to do good work" - Greg Quinton

"It is not the strongest or most intelligent species that survive, it is those that are most responsive to change" - Tony Davidson

Overall the presentation was extremely informative, helpful and enjoyable.

The Partners

Our final visit to a studio was to The Partners, located next to the Hudson River. The Partners is a large, well known and well credited company initially set up in London, and the most consistently awarded agency as long as it has been running. The company is over 25 years old and is dedicated to strategy and brand communication, a similar wave to Sterling Brands. The New York branch has been running for just over a year and consists of only 4 members. They are a member of WWP which is an organization set up to strengthen marketing communications by having a large client list, which integrates one another in projects and briefs and broadens the ability for work all over the world. www.wwp.com

The presentation we were given echoed similar advice in regards to presenting skills and working with people, however gave us an interesting insight to the difference between English designers and American designers. Stating that English designers use more 'out of the box' thinking and are heavily based on idea's and creativity whereas American designers orientate on a scale that is about profit and making money. This was really interesting as from spending just a few days in New York, it is easy to imagine working over here.

Sterling Brands

Whilst in New York, each pathway had organized visits to attend, the first of our visits was to a Brand agency called Sterling brands, which was situated in the Empire State building. The agency has been going for 10 years and highly revolves around its Global Clients and Global brands. The company prides itself on understanding the needs and requirements of its client and creates long lasting brand design which is relevant to the consumer. The agency is split between two departments: the design team and the strategy team. It was really interesting to learn how each department is run and how they communicate with each other on certain briefs. I felt familiar with the connection between strategy and design as during my time at STEEL i was involved in the same sort of environment with many different departments in continual communication. They showed us many examples of work they had completed and products they had rebranded and redesigned. What was really beneficial was they showed us their starting point and how they arrived at the final idea. Giving us a real flavor of the design process. They also spoke about bringing in freelance illustrators and photographers and the importance of finding the 'right person for the job'

They also gave us some really useful tips, one was echoing advise from STEEL with the use of mood boards and beneficial they are to visually explore different outcomes. Another was to draw from memory a brand or what you understand a product to be, as it allows you to realize what equity your brain recognizes apposed to just your eye. And finally the importance of speaking with confidence about your product or pitch to a client. The notion that if you're not confident, then the client will not feel confident in you're idea, and produce reason and research for idea's to show your thought process and understand.

Container Plus

We were given a lecture today by Luise Vormittag one of the founders of Container Plus, a company that prides itself on the range of skills it can offer its clients. It began as a partnership between Luise and Nicola Carter who began predominantly as illustrators, then have expanded to photography, animation, set design and hold a 'can do' attitude to almost any project. During the lecture, Luise spoke about how important it is to find the formula that works between groups and partners, and how having the same level of commitment, spirit and passion is a necessity to make any collaboration work. This is brilliant advice as it comes at the start of our cross pathway project where we are mixing different pathways and working with people we may not necessarily know.

Not only did Luise inform us of the brilliant connection she has with her 2 other partners now, but also spoke about when they broadened the business to 5 people and the difficulties that threw up between age, experience and work. Overall i felt the presentation was great, i found their work really interesting, vibrant and fresh. It was great to see some of their self initiated projects as well as their client projects, just to see a taste of where there passions lie. I felt that she was really interesting as a speaker therefore was able to connect with what she was saying and found all the advice regarding working in a collaboration and with other people really helpful.

The piece of work i really loved from the collection she showed us, was a piece of set design for a website called the assembly, each piece of illustration is carefully either cut out or created in 3d and looks really authentic not only as a photograph but as an animation as it appears on the website.

www.theassemblyagency.com