Professional Contexts Task 1: Find Your Future

The Brief

When thinking about the future, everybody is unique. Personal circumstances, ethics and ambitions play a large part. Being clear about these things will help you plan better. So what’s your perfect future? Write (and if necessary) illustrate this.

I'd like to think that in a few years I will have a small design studio with a beautiful office space in or near Bath (some of the spaces over at Paintworks in Bristol look really nice). Anyway, something really modern and inspiring with lovely views would be ideal. I would like the studio to consist of no more than four designers, each operating in both a creative and account management role and each responsible for handling a number of clients.

A studio like this would be rather nice:

Or perhaps this:

I would like the studio to be a place where I am happy to spend a lot of my time and can bounce ideas off the other designers. I would not like this to be a competitive environment, where each designer is trying to get ahead; it will be about doing what's best for the studio. It would be good to maintain strong links with Bath Spa University, offering paid placements and mentoring to graphics students, and putting freelance work their way after they graduate. I also intend to stay in touch with some of my friends from uni, as loads of them are incredibly talented and might be open to some form of collaborative projects in the future.

For me it is important to do work that matters, and not just stuff that looks nice. I understand that it is also essential to make money and that worthy well-paid jobs probably don't come along very often. As such I plan on spending some time each week doing pro-bono work that is about the stuff I care about, things that actually can make a difference or raise awareness of important issues. However, I am not naive enough to think that design can really change the world and I have enough business savvy to realise that such work can also serve to enhance my profile and reputation.

Design is important to me and it is something I am passionate about but I do not live and breathe it. Life is too short and there are other far more important things to worry about. Making good money would of course be lovely, and it would be great to get a nice house, new car and more than one ski holiday per year. Indeed, if we are talking about my perfect future then I would like a lovely Georgian townhouse in Bath, a Porsche 911 Turbo S (plus something more family-friendly for weekends, say a BMW 5-series estate) and my own ski chalet in the Dolomites. But money really isn't everything and I am happy so long as I can pay the bills without too much worry at the end of each month. And ski at least once a year.

Although I would ideally like to be self-employed, I can certainly see the benefits of working for an established design company in the short term, as it is surely the best way to see how the industry really works. As such, I wouldn't rule out taking a junior role if one were to present itself. At the very least I would like to get a few placements lined up for when I have graduated. I know that most of these opportunities are in London but at the end of the day that is where the majority of the 15,000 new graduates will be headed, so hopefully by staying in the South-West I will be able to find plenty of work.

I think perhaps a week or two working under James Victore in Brooklyn would be an inspirational start to my career as a designer. Or how about Dieter Rams?

Thursday Lecture - Rose Blake

I must start by saying I was half-tempted to not bother with this lecture as I am a bit tired of naive hipster illustration. I ended up going along simply to make up content for my Professional Contexts dossier. I am glad I did.

Firstly, I was surprised that Rose looked very normal, in a kind of shy librarian sort of way; nothing like the ironic xmas sweater and glasses type I was expecting. Shame on me for my stereotyping. Best of all she opened by admitting that she can't draw - obviously she can but she certainly fits into that exclusive group of honest and modest designers, along with David Pearson and Si Scott. This is a personality trait that cannot be faked and should not be underestimated.

So to her work. Despite my reservations regarding contemporary illustration, there is something I really like about some of her stuff, especially her depiction of Gilbert & George playing volleyball with a tomato on top of a kebab:

I guess it appeals to my love of the surreal, and Gilbert & George of course. I also liked her illustration depicting a visit to a Henry Moore exhibition, in part because I like Henry Moore's stuff:

Some of her work for No Brow was very generic, looking just like about a quarter of last year's degree show (and the year before), but at least that is only one of her styles. She also showed an example of an illustration that was used repeatedly on the BBC website, earning her around £3000. Not bad at all and perhaps a reason why I should never say that I am definitely not an illustrator - surely I can knock out some of this naive stuff too, even if I do it *choke* ironically. Isn't it all ironic anyway?

Rose does quite a lot of editorial illustrations and some of these have been commissioned by The Independent and even The New York Times. Her work for the latter reminds me very much of Maira Kalman, which may be why they commissioned her in the first place.

I was also delighted to hear that she had designed a bunch of t-shirts based on Robyn Hitchock songs. I have a soft spot for his unique brand of lyrical madness - who wouldn't love The Cheese Alarm?

Illustration aside, Rose had her fingers in a couple of other interesting pies. Firstly she is involved in a collective called This Is It, that started out with a 'zine (like Artshole perhaps?) and now makes mental art films. These look like fun projects to be involved in, providing a bit of a break from drawing while keeping the creative juices flowing. I think it is important to occupy yourself with a range of creative pursuits outside of design.

Finally she showed us her Studio Music project. This is a simple website that lists what famous designers (and Kevin Spacey!) listen to while they work. It's an interesting project in itself but more than that it has opened a lot of doors for Rose - she has made some serious contacts in the design world off the back of it and continues to build on it. A very clever marketing ploy and not half as cynical or calculated as most of these kind of things seem to be these days.

As with all decent people, I wish Rose Blake every success!

Lecture Poster - My poster is on French's blog!

Just noticed that my poster is on French's blog:

http://www.funeralfrench.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/lecture-at-bath-spar-university.html

Shame I didn't actually go to his lecture because I was too busy with my dissertation...

Thursday Lecture - Yuri Suzuki

Having looked at Yuri's website while researching for the lecture poster, it was pretty obvious that his talk would be a bit different. He stated from the off that his work was all about 'sound and physicality', which roughly translates to 'making fucking mental mechanical instruments' in order to explore what he calls 'the physical value of sound'.

First up was the Sound Chaser - a tiny mechanical stylus/speaker on wheels that pootles round a track constructed from bits of old records.

This is quite clearly a bit mad and the sound produced is horrendous, but I really like the idea and can imagine it having an application in something like an advertising campaign. I think the idea of making something new out of old junk is a reccurring theme in Yuri's work. I nabbed the image from Yuri's blog - I hope he doesn't mind...

Sound Chaser from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

Next he showed us a clip of his Colour Chaser, an amazing little vehicle that follows a line drawn on paper. When you scribble different coloured areas across the 'track', the thing actually interprets the RGB data as different tones. Very cool. It would perhaps have been even better if he demonstrated the kit by getting it to play a recognisable tune. It's not commercially available, which is a shame, as I am sure my son would adore it.

Colour Chaser 2010 from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

Another interesting project is Analog-Digital, whereby he created a CD with grooves cut into the surface so it could aslo be played on a turntable. Again, there is no real practical application for this but then it is actually a kind of modern art. The thing with Yuri's work is that none of it can actually be described as graphic design, so it's not especially relevant to what I am doing, but most great designers advise students to 'look outside of design for inspiration', so I understand why he was invited to show us his work.

Yuri is very keen on getting people involved in his projects, so he often spends time creating sort of modular kits, then getting others in to help him explore their creative possibilities. One such kit is the Denki Puzzle which consists of stylised pieces of printed circuit board (PCB). The shapes themselves are indicative of the function of the specific piece, allowing people with little or no knowledge of electronics to create simple, functioning circuits. They also look really cool, which is probably why Lizzie Sharp reproduced them for her awesome lecture poster!

http://lizziesharp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/yuri-suzuki-giving-lecture-at-our-uni.html

My favourite piece of Yuri's work is definitely the amazing robots he made for Japanese band's music video. He said that he and his team spent three months making these, as if that were a long time - looks like a lot more than three months work to me!

Music video : androp World.Words.Lights from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

Lecture Poster - My poster on Yuri Suzuki's blog!

http://yurisuzuki.com/blog/lecture-at-bath-spa-uni/

Result!