Your CV takes you from Falmouth to Cambridge: where are you from and how did you start out as a designer?

Throughout my life I’ve moved around quite a lot. My Dad is in the military so as a family we lived wherever he was told to live. Subsequently I’ve lived in various places because of this, between the UK and Germany, which I think in turn has informed my wider view as a creative and a person. At school I had natural leaning to visual arts and I continued with this quite naturally into college. It was at sixth form college when I really started to become aware of the existence of the creative industry on the whole. I originally thought I wanted to be an illustrator but did a foundation art course, during which I really enjoyed various forms of visual communication, particularly photography and screen-printing, and I realised that if I pursued design at university that I could do all sorts with it.

Even though your work consists of both printed and digital media, there’s a definite consistency through your photographs and your design work. We can really tell it’s yours. Is it a conscious effort to imprint your signature on your work?

The work on my website is meant to be a showcase for my more personal work. It acts as a platform where I can publish personal projects with no restrictions and act as an insight into what makes me tick as a designer. I intentionally don’t show any really commercial or contextual work. So in that sense the work on my site probably does have a natural consistency, as it’s done for me, but it’s not a conscious effort.

Being trained in design I tend to allow visual outcomes to be determined by the unique situations that a project exists within. It’s about whatever communicates the point the best. But I agree that I probably have a natural leaning to various ideas and visual manifestations of these. My ideas tend to be more relational and intuitive to each project. I also have an unashamed awareness of aesthetics and interest in materials and processes, though I don’t let that drive a project by itself.

You’ve worked in Brighton, London, Cambridge and yes Shrewsbury. What are the differences in creative culture between those places and which would you recommend for someone looking for a creative city?

I’m a firm believer that these days you can produce good work no matter where you are in the world. It’s one of the things I think is great about the internet. It’s never been easier to know what’s going on visually and socially somewhere else in the world. However, I also strongly believe that your surroundings inform your view. It’s easy to forget what it’s like where you’re not and what the internet can’t do is replicate and translate the very fabric of a place. Such as the people who inhabit it, the diversity in culture, things on the street, buildings, food, drink, excitement and loads of other stuff.

All the places I’ve been have naturally been different, that’s inevitable. I don’t want to overtly credit or discredit places as its not fair to compare them competitively. Shrewsbury is a pleasant town with nice rural surroundings, but it doesn’t quite have enough going on for me. Brighton is obviously a quite open minded place on the whole, with plenty going on, of which I only scratched the surface during a two-week stay. Cambridge has some interesting stuff going on and some great places to check out, plus great rail links with London. It’s also a pleasant and comfortable place to be. But London definitely has a lot more to offer with loads going on and things to dive into. It would, being a massive city. Its a really great place to be a designer with plenty to be inspired by, directly and indirectly related to design. The standard of work is also generally higher and in larger volume.

Typography and iconography seem really important to you. It’s almost like they’re the subjects of your photographs, in a world devoid of people. What do letterforms mean to you?

I have a fascination with signs, symbols and language systems, to me they’re visual communication at it’s rawest. Letterforms are essentially shapes for sounds, to borrow from Falmouth tutor Timothy Donaldson, so are essentially symbols themselves. I’m interested in symbols because they’re consciously designed graphic forms that carry meaning. Signs are the more functional counterparts of symbols, that aren’t elevated to a higher status to stand for something culturally, and just communicate something in it’s simplest most effective way. Language systems are collections of shapes and symbols that can be endlessly rearranged to create new meaning and to help human beings communicate with one and another.

We tend to enjoy photography that has a reality in its tone. That the people are your neighbours or anyone in the street. A lot of your photographs have this quality; they’re fragments of memory. Is this intentional?

I’ve never thought of it like that before, it’s not really intentional, the memory fragments that is. A lot of my photos are simply things I find interesting that I’ve captured and recorded visually. They’re almost functional in that sense, which is why I refer to myself as more of a photo-taker than a photographer. I don’t like to get in the way between what I’ve seen and how it’s presented to other people, I prefer the honesty of reality. I believe in honesty to the medium, not making something look like something it’s not and making something the best they can be using tools relational to that medium.

You enjoy taking photos of things that have fallen down. We love that. Why do you do it?

I’m not sure really. I guess with those photos I find it amusing as things aren’t supposed to have fallen down. Sometimes when things have fallen no-one realises for a while. By chance they’ve changed appearance and how they’re perceived. I think it’s the unexpected and fresh perspective that I like. Its the kind of approach I try to have with my more developed design work sometimes.

You describe yourself as “a Graphic Communicator and observational photo-taker”. Which disciplines do you feel are your strongest and which would you like to explore in the future?

Which one is strongest doesn’t really come into it. To me it’s all linked under a wider discipline of visual communication, which I practice broadly. My photos are more of a constant flow and more easily immediate, unless it’s a planned project. The more graphic and illustrative design projects take more time and deal with more elements, making them more developed than immediate. I’m just going to continue what I’m doing, graphically and photographically, exploring the spectrum as a whole.

Here is a sneak peek at the process!

Skinny Laminx is the creation of illustrator, writer and designer Heather Moore. Her work has gotten a huge amount of attention from big name blogs like DesignSponge to respected magazines like Elle. We found Skinny Laminx when first getting into the Etsy game, her store is incredible. Her designs are fun and colourful, and simple. They have a Scandonavian feel in the minimalist designs but the colours and imagery reflect sunny South African influences.

Find more via the Skinny Laminx website, Skinny Laminx blog and Skinny Laminx Etsy store.

They may be riding into their wedding on a bicycle and they wanted their portrait to be all about the fun and joy they find in each other!

Keep Moving, by Levi McGranahan

2012 Student Show Poster, by Jake Dugard

I Am, Recker House

I Am, Recker House

Sabadi, by Happycentro

Various identities, by Brent Couchman

After initially meeting clients and the efforts of understanding their problems and requirements there’s a stage at which if the project is going to live, both parties need to have gauged each others commitment to the project and dive in.

Price per hour

It’s at this point, where we’ve not previously talked about money, hours and estimates, that usually the client gets rather twitchy. You can tell that they’ve been burned by larger, more costly agencies charging upwards of £150 per hour. At this point we tell them how much we would charge them per hour and they’re relieved and excited.

We’ve had this situation with both of our larger clients and it’s not pleasant; we don’t want to feel like we’re selling them something, we want them to feel excited that we’re helping them with their business, just as we’re excited to get stuck into their problems.

However, we’ve gotten to a point where we can see a better way of working. After creating the agreement with our client, we’re constantly asked for more exact estimates for projects and we’re trying to fit more value into the time they’re paying for. We always try to provide value to clients but don’t want to make cheap products. There is a difference.

Price per Month

From now we’re piloting a new way of working. Instead of squeezing more and more requirements into deliverables we’re giving clients as much value as we can. We’re charging by the month, not the hour. We agree on a minimum number of hours we’re committed to in a month and we then work any additional hours we can fit in.

If we charged the London rate of £150 per hour for our time, here’s a comparison between hourly and monthly pricing:

It’s easy to demonstrate how we both win from this. The client is paying less and receiving—in this instance—more than double the hours we offered by charging hourly. We also hate having to squeeze as much into a set number of hours. We design and craft products because we love doing it and we’d gladly choose the situation where we’re earning less per hour but having all the time we need to crete a better product.

I love Chicago and I love design. I decided it was about time to mash those two loves together, and the logos you see here are the result

Steve Shanabruch

Keep up with more of Steve’s work on Facebook or follow the Chicago Neighborhoods on Twitter!

We hope we encapsulated her experience. Three of South Africa’s top five animals are: Leopard, Elephant, and Wildebeest. The national tree is the yellowwood, the national bird is the blue crane and the national fish is the galjoen.

The thing that strikes us about your work is that it’s trend-less. It seems ageless. With this in mind, what influences have been most important to you?

First and foremost, I had a few design instructors in college who were brilliant. Not only were they tremendously talented designers (and artists in general) but they helped me understand how to create with intention. They already knew that over time I would eventually improve on all the technical matters, like aesthetic and craft, after getting enough mileage under my belt. So, I like to call what I learned, The Anatomy of a Creative Solution, and it has three parts:

1. Historical Perspective
2. Innovative Thinking
3. Craftsmanship

This stuck with me. I try my best to incorporate those three things in whatever I create, then from there I just make sure that my aesthetic or style is appropriate, and if at all possible, fun to do.

How did you come to move from Seattle (Washington) to Orange County (California)? It’s a pretty stark contrast in terms of weather. Have you noticed a difference in your work since you moved?

It is funny you ask that because I have been thinking a lot about that recently. I have actually lived all over (including West Virginia, Utah, Idaho and the Philippines) and I have found that each have inspired me in some way or another. But to be brief, I spent the better part of my life in Seattle growing up, then moved to all those other places, and I ended up with a job, wife, kid, and a dog in Southern California. The weather in particular has had a big influence on my art. Before I was much more reserved in my color choices, not just in my work but my wardrobe haha. Now, as I am exposed to much more sun, my work and wardrobe has just been an experimentation of color it seems. A bit of that has to do with my added knowledge in color theory over time, but sunlight and beautiful surroundings do have an impact.

Infographic design is a really interesting discipline. Do you feel that as users come to expect more of online experiences, the imagination and skill needed to craft infographics will be expected of websites?

That is a great question. After working at Column Five Media, I am realizing more and more applications for information graphics, particularly on the web. The skills that go into making infographics or data visualizations are very similar in that they both have information that they distill and communicate visually to an audience. Already on many sites you see companies explaining how their product or company works via infographics and all types of analytics tracking. Basically, the skills needed to craft infographics come in handy whenever you want to visually communicate a process, pattern, trend, idea or function.

Column Five specialise in ‘Infographics, Data Visualization and Motion Graphics’. Where do you feel they fit into the modern web?

People are reading less and less, so the demand for visual representations of data or processes are crucial for organizations who want to communicate effectively to their audience. On the web, people read even less, so the services Column Five offers are very effective. I have been really impressed with Column Five and the way they are adapting to where the true need is for infographics and data visualizations. On the web there is a great need for saying what you need say quickly, visually, and effectively, so many clients come to C5 for that. Now, there are more and more asking about designing ways online to track data and spot trends, so we do a lot of UI dashboard work now. It is safe to say though, that what C5 has to offer will be something that will always be in demand, in one way or another.

What’s your average working day like?

My average work day just got ten times busier with the birth of my son 8 weeks back, but it is completely worth it. During my day at C5 I am usually working on 2 or 3 projects simultaneously for different companies. So every week I get the chance to really research and understand a completely different topic, and generally in a different format. But working for eight straight hours can take a toll on your ability to be creative, so I break up the time with some games of pingpong and lunches on the beach. Then once I go home I stay up late working on freelance jobs and writing for Visual News.

The term vintage is thrown around a lot these days. Your work has a wonderful balance of vintage influences, shapes and lines without seeming at all kitsch or forced. Is that something you’re afraid of when working?

I am afraid that I might be making something that is “vintage-y” for no other reason than it looks neat. There is nothing inherently wrong with having something look vintage, it just has to be appropriate and well executed. It’s important to look back at what has been done. But it is also important to look back and understand why it was done. I constantly look back at the colorful and shapely work of mid-century modernists for inspiration. And if there is a time where it is appropriate to use that “vintage”, mid-century modern style, I tend to favor that direction.

We like the “vintage style” because it hearkens back to a time when things were more handmade, and often times, beautiful. When you look back, you see hours of work and quality materials that went into products. In my opinion, our fixation with the vintage aesthetic is a result of things being made in mass quantities, resulting in less focus on beauty and durability, and more on cheaper production costs. So in a way people are rebelling against disposable, ugly things, to put it bluntly. Just like how the Arts and Crafts Movement was in rebellion to the Industrial Revolution, people now are rebelling against the Digital Revolution. And I am all for this revolution as long as we are still incorporating, again:

1. Historical Perspective
2. Innovative Thinking
3. Craftsmanship

How important is originality to you? Do you feel like the current trend of vintage is because we’re running out of ideas or is it just a recycling of good design?

Creating something that is truly original, that isn’t influenced by something already done, is near impossible. Everything we create is in some way based off prior ideas. The goal is to take those ideas and rearrange them into something uniquely yours.

Feel free to name them in the comments section!

(This guy’s not having it.)