Interview with Kev Grey

I was pleased to receive my answers from Kev Grey, see artwork below.

It's logical, although my publication is based on female artist,  to get an male artists input, especially one that uses the female form in his work so much.

1.     If first, could you please describe your own design practice and a little bit about yourself, what influences you & your designs.

I work mostly using Staedtler drawing pens on heavyweight cartridge paper making what I see as bold, weird, funny and ghoulish black ink drawings. I’m influenced by lots of different stuff from old comic books, sideshow banner art, 1960’s psychedelic poster art, old skateboard graphics, classic western tattoo imagery and early Disney cartoons such as Steamboat Willie to name a few.

2.     How did you begin your journey to being the illustrator/designer/etc you are today? Where do you see your self going? What would you ideally like for the future?

I began by making fanzines of my drawings and weird comic strips in the mid-nineties when I was in school and from there I also went on to become a graffiti writer and basically just became influenced by different aspects of skateboard, graffiti and tattoo culture, then around 1999 I had started to develop my artwork into the style I work in today.

My attitude is to just concentrate and focus on the present; it’s important to work hard, put in the hours and have a good understanding and knowledge of what sources are influencing your work.

3.     Contemporary craft and illustration is becoming more popular each day, yet a lot of it sectors are still heavily female dominated, for you personally, why do you think this is and your opinions on it?

If you mean why does the female figure appear in artists work then I don’t think that’s anything new, the female form has been appearing in artwork for centuries, and in all honestly I simply see it relating to sex and beauty. I don’t really see anything as being new or original, so there will always be interpretations of these subjects.

4.     A lot of your work is female illustrations, what role does the female play in your own personal design practise? 

I draw women in the tradition of pin-up art as they feature heavily in traditional tattoo designs. I grew up with my Granddad and Uncle who were covered in old tattoos, including pin-up girls, and I initially based my drawings on them, and as I said in my last answer and hopefully without sounding too serious I also see the women I draw as relating to beauty and sex, which for some people can be their pleasure, in other cases what they desire. I guess that’s why I think women will always be a main feature in art.

Interview!

Below is the results of an interview with Leeds based screen printed and illustrator Helen Entwistle, Hello Memo.

1. If first, could you please describe your own design practice and a little bit about yourself, what influences you & your designs. I work as a freelance illustrator and make stationery and other handmade products under the name of 'Memo'.  I coined the name during the second year of my degree in 2005, it comes from my love for stationery, I collect notepads (memo pads), pens, erasers, way too much stuff.  Alongside stationery I also collect objects and memorabilia from the 1940s-60s.  I love things that have a history, another life before they came to live with me.  My collections primarily form the basis for my illustrations and product designs.  Hobbies, pass times and day to day life also provide me with ideas for my work.  My work is handmade, this is something that is very important to me, hand-stitched or hand-printed, no mass-producing here.

2. How did you begin your journey to being the illustrator/designer/etc you are today? Where do you see your self going? What would you ideally like for the future?  I decided what I wanted to do aged 17 when I first had a go at screen printing during my AS-levels.  It has been something I have loved ever since and used to produce products and prints. I completed A-levels and an art foundation course in Chorley, Lancashire and then a Ba(hons) degree in Visual Studies at Norwich School of Art and Design in 2007.   Now I live in Leeds and spend my time creating new work, finding new stockists, promoting my work via the internet and collecting good things.  I set myself little goals each week and hope that one day Memo will be stocked in Little Otsu in San Fransisco, that would be a big achievement for me.  I just keep on going, try and keep myself motivated and drink a bit too much coffee.

3. Contemporary craft and illustration is becoming more popular each day, yet a lot of it sectors are still heavily female dominated, for you personally, why do you think this is and your opinions on it?  I think a lot of what classes as contemporary craft is definitely female orientated, so are the buyers.  Girls like to sit and make things.  Some areas such as zine making and poster illustration involve more of a mix of male and female makers.  I think it depends on the products and their target audience.  I don't think it matters too much that a lot of craft is female dominated, males just don't seem interested in making jewellery, fluffy toys and bags which is understandable really.  Those males I know of that do make such items are successful and not treated any differently to female makers.


4. A more corporate application of this kind of design is springing up alot these days within advertising, 'twee' indie style adverts are abundant now and more low-fi approaches to advertising etc are appearing, what do you make of this? Do you feel it's a fad that corporations are using to appeal to a more young & independent audience? Etc. How do you feel this will effect the independent craft community and the working artists within it?  Advertising involves trends the same way fashion does.  I think current adverts with an indie aesthetic are definitely influenced by the rise of handmade/ independent makers and lifestyles.  I hope that such a trend is creating work for illustrators who work in relevant styles.  It probably won't last, with nothing being permanent but I can't see lo-fi advertising doing any harm to us indie makers, fingers crossed it will boost our profile and help us to make a living!

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Nokia Advert

I'd been searching for this advert for a while to relate directly to the use of illustration in corporate adverts and campaigns!

Charlie Brooker

Regarding some of the adverts below approaching campaigns with a more crafted and twee approach, Charlie Brooker wrote this fantastic article for the Guardian regarding the increase and lack of success of these types of approaches to ad campaigns.

Adverts are twee and infantile. Why don't they tell it as it is - just like that nice man who sells Calgon

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• • Charlie Brooker
  • The Guardian, Monday 11 June 2007
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My favourite advert at the moment is for Calgon. A kindly looking handyman is sitting behind a washing machine and a box of Calgon, addressing me directly. "You've heard about Calgon, but why should you use it?" he asks. It's true. I have indeed heard of Calgon, but don't know why I should use it. It is as if he has looked into my soul. This guy understands me better than many of my closest friends, and I've only known him four seconds.

Better still, he follows his ice-breaking question with a straightforward answer. Apparently Calgon stops your washing machine turning into a crumbling chalk sculpture. "Calgon protection," he says, patting the box. The advert ends with a good old-fashioned jingle - a small choir singing: "Washing machines live longer with Calgon!" It couldn't be simpler.

Now obviously, I'm never going to buy Calgon; popping a Calgon tablet "in every wash" might make the washer "live" longer, but a) it sounds like too much trouble to go to on behalf of a machine and b) I could probably spend the money I'd saved on not buying Calgon on getting a new machine when the old one finally dies of limescale cancer - and I bet new washing machines are thrillingly advanced these days, with wi-fi iPod connections and sat nav and everything. But I appreciate the ad's straight-talking nature. It's refreshingly unsophisticated, and unlike almost every other advert on television, not glaringly over-pleased with itself.

Right now, there's a rash of commercials which combine "twee" with "patronising" - "tweetronising" if you like, although that's quite tweetronising in itself. You can spot a tweetronising commercial a mile off - it'll have a modern folk music backing track, a cast of non-threatening urban hippy replicants, and a drowsy hello-birds-hello-sky overall attitude that makes you want to chase it down an alleyway and kick it until the police arrive.

Furthermore, tweetronising takes infantilism to a new level. They're like children's programmes in miniature - not so much talking down to the viewer as placing the viewer in a cot and tickling his chin. George Orwell once described advertising as "the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket". These days it's more like the rattling of a rattle.

Take the current Orange ad in which a woman stands in a forest unfolding a range of ain't-it-cute props while a self-consciously lo-fi recording of a female voice recites: "I like conversations that last for hours and hours/Full of jokes about singing bees and talking flowers/I like it when they take up whole mornings/And fill up whole nights/When they mention books and cocktails/And trumpets and kites/I like them when they talk about parties and talk about dreams/And talk about cakes covered in cream/And all that they need is me and a friend/ And the talking to go on and never to end."

Never to end? I'm all for a bit of pointless digression, but this imbecile wants to witter about "singing bees" and "trumpets and kites" for eternity. This is a description of hell. Orange does not think insipid babble is the sole preserve of womankind, incidentally - there is a companion ad backed with a man moronically singing about how he likes to talk about dinosaurs, cars, and "anything that pops in my brain/and then falls out my mouth/kind of like the rain". He is either naturally stupid or recovering from a head injury. Or maybe years of intensive mobile phone use have caused a brain tumour so huge, it has crushed his IQ, leaving him with the conversational skills of a six-year-old.

The rule of thumb seems to be that the more grimly impersonal the product, the more ingratiatingly syrupy the ad. Cars, for example, were until recently portrayed as cold mechanical sharks; selfish metal cocoons that transported men in sunglasses across isolated desert roads at fearsome velocity. Now, apparently, they are cuddly scamps with an impish sense of humour. Or toys. Or skateboards.

But they're not. Cars are bastards. You know that advert where the smashed-up little girl whines about being run over at 40 miles an hour? A car did that. And the car was such a bastard, it probably thought it was all her own fault. (And to be fair, it's got a point: if she's OK with being hit at 30mph, why didn't she start running away at 10mph the moment she saw it heading toward her at 40? No, she'd rather laze about on her back at the side of the road, moaning about it. I've got no sympathy.)

In summary: phones are little plastic boxes, cars are large metal boxes, and no amount of goo-goo gurgling will change that. Please, advertisers: enough with the sugar and folk music. It's time to get puritan. Washing machines live longer with Calgon. Ronseal does what it says on the tin. That's all we need to know.

Orange Adverts

I'll be honest, I cannot stand these new super 'twee' adverts Orange have been doing recently, but they do make an interesting point of the aspect of illustration and independent craft being integrated into a more corporate context.

Corporate applications!

While so far I've been researching illustration in a more independent context, I wish to investigate its appearence in more corporate contexts, I feel these days there's a definate increase of more kitsch and crafty approaches into advertising.

The one below is a stop motion hand drawn animation from the Carphone warehouse.

The animation is from CHI Advertising Agency based in London!



Below, some of their other recognizable work.

PEN advert

Below, another advertisment for Olympus cameras using a more hand crafted yet successful approach to advertising, the video below it is the original video that it was clearly influenced by.




And here, the original.

Context research

While I'm researching for this context publication, I've also been considering how the book itself will work style wise, inspired by using hand rendered and computer generated text & image together, below is the work of Ryan Spacey and other Leeds Met graphic students, a calendar for the Make, Bake & Grow Armely collective. This style is something I would like to work with in my design of the book as I feel it will work well with the subject matter and will allow myself to add a more personal and hand crafted feel to it.

Miss Led

Following up on my design context research, one of my favourite illustrators, Mis Led, I've sent her an email with a series of questions regarding her work and her practice as a female illustrator working freelance and independently.

Some of her interior work

Some of her corporate work, an interesting point her to see an independent illustrator working in both independant industrys and corporate ones.

Xoo Studio Packaging Designs

Having recently stumbled upon this studio, I've fallen for Xoos design style and approach to packaging, particularly their designs for Oso Ice Creams below.

Milk Packaging research : Carton designs

Looking into designs regarding packaging but in the medium of cartons, wether it be milk or something else.

Milk Gone Bad!

Milk Packaging research

             

        

Milk Packaging research: I Love Dust

Sourcing from The Dieline and Lovely Packaging, researching into current designs for Milk Packaging.

Designs below by I Love Dust design studio, until now I hadn't seen any of their work before, I love it! Its nice to find a collective based in heavily based in applied illustration.

Their designs for Bills Milk.

Some of their other packaging designs.

Some of their other design/illustration work.

Charlotte Thomson Illustration

Charlottes work is perhaps the recognized and sort after illustrations within the UK Burlesque scene, her burlesque portraits are recognized across the Atlantic too, I adore her work and her use of hand drawn illustrations then painted to perfection. I hope to contact her in my research for my context design book.

Some of her burlesque portraits below.

   

    

Some of her poster and events designs.