Page 22 - The Visual Thinker Magazine

20 The Visual Thinker March 2019
Last year you were asked to art direct One word of the decade right ?! All we ever do is get
Direction’s ‘On The Road Again Tour’. I remember you content commissions so that is a perfect world to
telling me about doing live visuals on tour with Hearts be a creator in because you can make content for
Revolution and Disclosure but OD must have been people in any area.
intense in terms of production ? Illustrators and graphic designers are now becoming
brand ambassadors for big corporations and big
They needed new designs for the various different stages brands, I have people emailing me all the time asking
they use through out the year and they needed a new to do a collab. I guess
opening film too. Watching the fans interact with that is if you think about the
“We are creating
the most amazing experience ever, standing in a crowd music industry in the 80’s
a world where
of 75,000 people and the music comes on and we had you just had packaging,
created this really epic pre intro for the opening film. everything is advertising for the
It was an amazing project. The band and their production releases and music videos
design and art direction team just let me do my thing, visual and that and that was it .
they felt what I do was right for their audience and right is why there is
for the band because its youthful but it’s also cool and so much work in But now for each release
it’s grown up too. Its not like I was just making something we have around 50
for kids, its not patronising, it’s about vibrant work and design now.” platforms that need
content that you can connect with and that enhances content on them and at
what they do as a group. Studio Moross we like to
try to do bespoke things for each platform so it is not
homogenised.
That is an interesting point you make about The
I try to encourage young creatives to find an area
Directioners making their own content. Do you think
they are interested in and learn how to create
it is quite different from when you started out as a
content in that industry. Whether it be fashion, music,
designer ?
architecture, furniture design or theatre think about
where you want to go and how you can create in that
Yes. Every single brand, every platform, every newspaper,
industry, you can always find a niche for yourself but
every online blog needs photos, they need video, they
even more so in design and music now, there are so
need illustration, they need content and content is the
many great places for things to exists.
21
“Throughout my whole third
You went to university at Camberwell Fallon
commissioned you for a commercial Cadbury
campaign – all of a sudden your work was year I freelanced and I set up
my record label, that’s gone
splashed all over the UK. How did that come
about and what impact did it have on you as a
second year student ? now but I was still trying to
juggle school and essentially
I had done quite a lot of flyers and things for My
Space and I think because I had a website from day a career at the same time”
zero, from aged 16 or 17, I had somewhere with my
work on it, anything I did, even if it was a pile of crap, I
would put it up on my website.
Then Fallon asked me to pitch for Cadbury and I
had never gone through the process before. But I
had experienced some freelancing before, even if
it wasn’t paid so I was familiar with the process of
briefings and revising and receiving feedback, so it
wasn’t as intimidating as it could have been as I had
already had a dry run.
I think the biggest impact it had on me was the
realisation that I could make a living out of it and
I discovered that I was good at business. I could
handle that side of things. At 19 I could sit with an art
buyer at an ad agency and hold my own. It scrapped
all fear of work in the future as I knew I could do
it. And of course it was great to see my work
everywhere too.
What was the inspiration behind your book,
Make Your Own Luck ?
I think the book was about removing the pedestal
around this idea of a successful career which is kind
of bullshit and showing how things can happen. You
don’t need things to make your career happen, you
just need to work hard and be out there and you
don’t need luck.
As much as I hate the title of the book, it makes it
sound like a motivational self help book, we couldn’t
get away from it because it did just sum everything
up perfectly about what I wanted to say. It’s kind of a
blessing and a curse coming up with that title.
But yes I don’t believe you get things by chance, I
believe you get them by working hard and being in
the right place, yes there is an element of luck by
being in those right places but if you don’t get out
there then it is never going to happen anyway.
Special thanks to Kate’s dogs, Tako and Ebi, for
keeping us company.
Article by They made this, 2015