Practitioners report - Music and Fake ID

The first practitioner I am going to look at is Music, a Graphic Design company based in Manchester. Music have been an independent Graphic Design company for one and a half years, and at Stockport College we were lucky enough to receive two visits from them. The first visit was from Anthony Smith who started his talk by giving us some information about what he did after he left Bolton University in 1989, and because of the recession he explained it took him a year to get a job in Graphic Design. This gave me a better idea of what to expect when I leave, that it may take quite a long time to get a job in something I want. I found the talk overall was very down to earth and honest, and Anthony had brought in work at the end for us to look at, which was different from any other lecture as previously we had just seen work on the big screen.
The second visit from Music was from Craig Oldham. He started his talk off with a 'parental warning' on the screen saying that he is going to swear, but “that is just how it goes” he stated, so I knew this talk by Music was going to probably be even more outgoing than the first. Craig had not been out of University for that long, so he wanted to give us an outline of facts of what to expect when we did leave. He explained that he could just see two words explaining 'Graphic Design' and these were 'Emotional' and 'Logical'. Things like logos for toilet doors and symbols are logical, whilst practitioners such as David Carson are emotional with their work.



This leads me on to my second practitioner I am going to discuss, Yvan Martinez and Joshua Trees from Fake ID, who are in my eyes without doubt emotional designers too. Currently in its tenth year, Fake I.D. has produced a diverse range of work, recognized in numerous books and magazines, including commissions from Aiwa, Anthropologie, COLORS and Emigre. Stockport College was privileged to have these designers come and visit us, for a 1-day workshop and a lecture/performance. Working with Yvan and Joshua on the project named LSTN (Line, Sound, Text, Noise) made me realize that these designers were in fact more emotional in the work they produced. In the talk they delivered they discussed some of their ideas, and that some of the work they produced was '4th wall' between audience and performance, and breaking this ‘4th wall’ would create interaction between audience and performance. One of the memorable quotes I can remember from the talk was when Joshua described some of the things that occurred when they started designing saying, "The line between Art and Life disappears".
This results in creating a link between these designers, and the designers at Music. Both agencies undertake independent projects. I remember when Craig was showing us his work he showed us a typeface that he had created independently and not for any company but just because "it was in my head, so I put it down on paper". He then went on to say something quite inspiring, which was "Graphic Design is a job. A designer is a lifestyle choice." Therefore it shouldn't be something you do it should be who you are. And I’m sure Yvan and Joshua at Fake ID would agree. Their whole lecture was not about their work, that they said "you can view that anytime on our site". The 'performance' was something I had not really seen before, and it was a good way to end the year off by seeing something different. It was another independent project that they shared with students that could be used as inspiration for commissioned work.

Hearing what these practitioners have to say has enlightened me and even changed the way I think about my own work. I have always found it difficult in past briefs to organize images and type on a page so it looks dynamic, you could say in a similar way to the works of David Carson. Sometimes, I have found that I cannot place something in a peculiar way, as it just doesn’t seem logical. However, after Craig’s lecture I realized that I was perhaps in fact just a logical designer, and more of a problem solver. That is just in the design process though, I am quite an imaginative and emotional person, and my work has sometimes even been described as ‘surreal’ for instance in conceptual studies, I think it is just when putting pen to paper my logical thinking takes over.

As both design practitioners each do independent studies as well as commissioned work, this has made me want to begin my own projects on the side. I think this would be a good idea as it shows that you’re not just doing it as a job, it is because you enjoy it.

When I went to visit Anthony at the Music studios he asked me what I would like to see in a piece of Graphic Design, and I replied that I like to see a great idea, one that get a reaction from the viewer either emotional or comical, and he agreed. Fake ID was similar in what they wanted to see from us when we started the workshop with them. The brief was to write a narrative accompanying an image, and at first I was just seeing the image and almost started to describe it. However, this wasn’t what they wanted to see and told me to take what I was seeing at the moment, but pushing it further, perhaps even rewinding and imagining a beginning to the story that I was currently imagining. With this is mind I started to think of more ideas, and it had great results. The idea I created was something that would not have been thought of if it had not been pushed, and so this is a process I am going to apply to my work in the future.

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