Creative Arts Lecture Series 01

OK went along to an Arts and Design lecture at Uni yesterday,

The Guest speaker was Fraser Muggeridge. Here is his studios website. He was introduced as a graphic designer who's clients include the Tate and Serpentine galleries and the London transport agency, particularly London underground.

He started his talk with a definition of what he does stating:

"I translate my clients needs into an artifact for their audience"
He did put it a little more clearly than that, but hey I'm only human.

His work was predominantly created using found materials and he seems to lean away from overtly photo shop heavy techniques, preferring for example to blow an image up and shrink it down over and over again using photocopiers to degrade a font rather than simply using photo shop. He also seems to be someone who can appreciate imperfections and minor inconsistencies in his work, highlighting cases where they chose to leave some in.

He will use tactile techniques to create more unique work. At the end he stated that most of his more original ideas were created through things he saw and was influenced by out in the world, by stepping away from the computer

In a series of posters for the London Underground (for which they are responsible for printing artwork) they allowed mold to for on the paper before scanning it (however they had to alter the image slightly, moving specs of mold away from the London Underground logo in the bottom right, as they didn't want to be associated with mold).

In another series of artworks for the London Underground, they had to create an advertisement for a platform (underground train platform that is) based exhibition, Life is a Laugh. He stated, in some cases, using this one as an example that:

"the thing you are designing for often doesn't exist"

In this case the art work in the exhibition hadn't been completed yet and Fraser and his team had a limited understanding of what they were designing for. For this reason he visited the artist in order to talk about and see more of his work.

Whilst showing us a large number of sample images for a page lay out, experiment after experiment he stated that he would often "Do what I don't think will work" in order to step away from what he is familiar with and create something more original.

Also, don't give everything away with the poster, force them to ask questions, this was achieved with the exhibition poster. Leave people asking questions, make them want more.

He also showed us an image of a test poster, using A4 images to make up small parts of a much larger 6ft poster. Much cheaper than printing the actual thing and allows you to test weather or not it works in the space that it was intended for.

I believe he was also involved in creating a book or books for Goshka Macuga.

He also suggested that we take leaps of faith and step into the unknown, talking about another artist whose work he became interested in, he simply knocked on the artists door unannounced. This resulted in a collaboration between them where he created a booklet showcasing the artists work.

Another example of how he variates his Images and designs was to visit the local market and look for old photographs and random pieces of paraphernalia and to then try to use them in unexpected ways to create unique graphics.

Also, something he said about budgets, creating lots of examples and possible concepts for something on a small budget, many of these were created cheaply and the limited budget produces interesting creative problems.

Client - "we've only got enough budget to print in 2 colours"

Fraser - "Great, Lets use one"

Fraser - "It doesn't need to be over expensive"

One of his greatest tools is an archive of Old type faces. One example was a popular type face that he blew up to a huge scale, that allowed people to appreciate some of its little eccentricities such as the diamond shaped full stop and the "claw" shaped comma.

I really liked this last image of a one book book shelf. :)