Rory in Wonderland Words Melissa Burgess, Illustration Sim Onay
Class of 2000
I
t was amongst the whimsical drawings, intriguing rabbits and intricate sketches that we met up with Rory Dobner. Rory is an impressive and fascinating individual. His way of expressing himself and describing his journey captivated us and for almost an hour, we felt transported into another world where ladybirds stand on cakes, rabbits become human and fishes smoke underwater. Rory graduated from Central St Martins in 2000 and since then has worked with no end of world famous brands and names such as Dior and MTV, as well as building his own collection that can be found in shops such as liberty, London. Melissa Burgess:You studied at Chelsea school of art and then moved to Central St Martins, what made you want to change and go there? What was it about CSM that caught your attention? Rory Dobner: I wasn’t really into researching where I
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wanted to go, this lady turned up and said ‘’we would like you to come to Central St Martins’’ and I asked around if that was a good place to go and people said ‘’yeah it’s really good’’ and I said ‘’ok yes’’. Actually I asked where it was and they said ‘’it’s in Soho’’ and I said ‘’definitely’’. I wanted to go to the best place I possibly could, I wanted to be with the best students I possibly could be. I knew that the tutors were practicing and successful and that is a very valuable thing, to hear what they have to say. Overall it was a combination. I remember looking at St Martins and it just didn’t seem to be like anything, it was exciting and brash and experimental and fashion’y and fun and had all these different things about it but it had that free feel about it. That attracted me to it. Melissa Burgess: Did you collaborate and work with your fellow students at CSM when you studied there?
Rory Dobner: I did fine art, so it was very much each to their own and everyone working in their corner. It was mostly on breaks and during crits that we would really critique and give feedback to one another, which was always interesting to hear and I think you learn from that. Something that I remember was these one-liners from tutors, that is what really sticks in my mind. I remember them saying these poignant quotes that just stay with you. Melissa Burgess: Do you remember any of those one-liners? Rory Dobner: I’m trying to think, probably things like ‘’just get on with it, just move it, don’t just push it a little bit, grab it, move it, change it’’ that kind of description of working. That is a comforting effect on what you are doing. Something about not talking about ideas, doing ideas.
It’s great if you know what you want to do, there were a lot of students stood around drinking loads of coffee saying ‘’I don’t know what to do’’. I say to students, ‘’ just pick anything up just do anything just start doing something and you’ll start your journey and instead of just thinking about it, naturally you will pick up something, you’ll be drawn to the things that you’re interested in and have that go with the flow attitude, that would have helped a lot of people at the time’’. Melissa Burgess:You mention talking to students, would you consider going back to Central St martins and talking to the students? Rory Dobner: I’m not sure I’m the right person to do that, I don’t know if I would explain things well enough but I suppose I could. I like helping people and that give back kind of thing. It’s always helpful. 5 Emanata www.ual.co.uk
Melissa Burgess:You are known for being experimental, how did you end up in illustration and producing a lot of illustration based work? Rory Dobner: I go through many stages. The drawing was a great accident really, when I left csm I was travelling in different countries for four years but it was only when I had my son that I knew I had to stay in one place, I didn’t want to educate him on the end of a pier. I had catalogues of ink drawings, hundreds of them and I ripped a few of them out of my sketchbooks and framed them in some old frames I found and decorated my house really. My wife is a psychologist and was being interviewed and photographed for psychology magazine. The buyer from Liberty wanted to become a psychologist and read the magazine article and called us and asked what the drawings where in the background and where she could find them. It all started from there, there was more and more demand and they offered me a big space in store to sell my work. Melissa Burgess: Do you think illustration can be applied anywhere? Do you think it is more a part of graphics or fine art?
Class of 2000
Rory Dobner: It can be because it’s so open, because it’s so simple. It’s just mark making it can be changed and warped into any practice really, it can be graphic it can be advertising it can be eye catching it can be dramatic, absolutely anything. It’s like content of television, it’s so vast the way it can change because it’s so simple it doesn’t contain many elements. It doesn’t matter what you use it’s a flat surface and you’re using something to make marks on it and that simplicity opens it up to become anything. The cross over is into graphics but it always existed it just went in and out of people noticing it really.
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Melissa Burgess: Nowadays, everyone has a camera, everyone can be a modern day photographer. Do you feel that illustration is a dying craft? Are illustrators slowly fading away? Rory Dobner: Well I kind of do the same. I remember drawing, drawing, drawing and then I got my hands on a camera and started photographing things that I would have normally sketched. Then I questioned what the point of that was. A camera doesn’t filter through your brain, you are just pressing a button and capturing like catching a butterfly in your hands. If you draw it, it’s going through your eyes, through your brain, down your arm and onto something and then odd things happen. You record it in a different way, that’s the interesting part really. It’s all these accidents of things that photography just doesn’t allow. Melissa Burgess: What advice would you give to current and graduating students at Central st Martins? Rory Dobner: I would say getting involved, putting yourself in those environments, the creative environments that you feel you want to be in yourself. That is something I didn’t do because I left and went travelling but I wish I did. You have to try and drop yourself in the right pool of people that you can learn from. But it doesn’t have to be that exact thing that you want, but you might find a connection or an area you’ll feel comfortable with. Being adaptable now is that fusion of ideas and that experimentation. I think the more adaptable you can be, the better as well. Friends of mine practiced the same style of painting in the same way, sort of like putting all your eggs in one basket, and there is no right way or wrong way or what you should do but being loosened up and being adaptable to whatever is around you and whatever you can get involved in, you will probably end up in that dream job, in the mean time see where your path flows to. I would recommend students to look at vintage vinyl’s and LP’S. People don’t notice the typography but I found some of the best typography and most experimental fonts on the album covers. In a way, I would say do everything and anything you want to, simply because you can.
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Class of 2000
Rory Dobner’s studio, Hampstead, London
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was walking through Soho, I looked down an ally way and I found a huge bowl, it was like a semi sphere. It was absolutely huge, at least two or three meters across, it was amazing. I carried it back and thought what shall I do with this?
I built a huge wooden tower on the top and filled it with blue dyed water, with a spot light under it so it glowed and I found that very cool. Then I built a duck, a huge chicken wire duck. I then decided to climb inside the duck, upside down, so my legs were sticking out the back like wings. I could be dropped into the pool and I could paddle around. At the time it was all about what was the most ridiculous thing I could come up with. I couldn’t really get into it very easily though so the students made a stretcher, I had to be lifted into it and then dropped in. It was at that point that I realised that I was getting locked into it upside down, it was becoming quite dangerous. So I had a secret pipe running down my neck, an old snorkel tube if you will. It was becoming a performance piece. I was getting known for it and I ended up doing it on MTV. It was sort of like a Houdini thing, but because we were in an art college we could make it look like it was going horribly wrong. I made it look like I died at the end of the performance. I would start panicking and bashing into it and then I would stop and just float on the surface. Then the curtain closed‌
Class of 2000
We did series of those but then it got to the point where I was getting known for it and everyone would ask what I was going to do next. It was becoming ridiculous and too much of a joke. I was becoming the stereotype of art and an art student. Like in a system of working, I realised that I had taken it to its absolute limits and from that I became really serious. The next faze of my work included a lot of wire sculptures. I went from being colourful and extravagant to stripping everything down, being very minimal, cold and empty. You go through big changes and you need to embrace them.
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Class of 2007
The Wise Man
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lex Spiro is an impressive guy, really intense and strong.You can tell he is his own man from the first handshake. His work is a breath of fresh air and he appears to be a real force of nature behind Nobrow, an illustrator’s collective set up with Sam Arthur. When you walk in the East London shop you first get a strong sense that the image is king. The following interview took place during a snowy afternoon when Alex came back to Central Saint Martins to offer a little advice to graphics students. His softer side became evident as he took time to look at work and chatted to some about their hopes and plans for the future. Afterwards student writer Oliver Ballon asked some questions.
‘‘Internships can be expolitative, be careful!’’
Class of 2007
Oliver Campbell Ballon: What was it that you leant from your time at CSM? Alex Spiro: I was here (St Martins) from 2003-2007 and I spent the first half of the four years, mainly focusing on graphics. At the beginning of my second year of the BA I decided to switch over to illustration. I was answering a lot of my design briefs with illustrated solutions and had always straddled the two disciplines, I thought I’d give it a shot. I had already completed a degree before I came to CSM, so I was a bit older, 21. For my first degree I read modern history at Oxford, as you can imagine, I was coming from a very different background to many of my design classmates. I learnt a lot at CSM, but I have to admit that much of what I learnt was self-taught. I think that’s what’s quite good about Saint Martins, it forces you to teach yourself things that you’re scared of, things that you aren’t comfortable doing, because 16 Emanata www.ual.co.uk
there’s only so much help you can get from the technicians when you aren’t a third year !But I think that it was an encouraging and very creative atmosphere.
to him to work in my holidays and any down time I had from college. I was mostly going in that direction when I graduated, AV and music videos.
It helped having a lot of talented students around to inspire and collaborate with, it pushed you to keep inventing and innovating to compete.
However, I also began working as an illustrator, at first with children’s publishers; I did some work for Dorling and Kindersley on a new non-fiction list. The first book I worked on was called Take Me Back. That was an interesting experience, not entirely positive, but not negative either. What was particularly enjoyable was that I was allowed to combine the two halves of my (very long) education, as the spreads required a lot of research to render them useful to the editors (research I was more than familiar with from my time as a historian). Having said that, I found that many of my ideas were being ignored because of the necessary contingencies of editorial control. That was to be expected, I’m sure, but I felt that illustrators should be
As I was on my second degree at CSM, I was working quite a bit on the side whilst at college. I was mostly working on music videos and idents, little AV projects. My forte was digital matte painting and in-betweens for animation, so I did a lot of that. Initially I was working for a director who I had known socially, Sam Arthur, I had experience working with other directors too, but Sam was the most talented (and the best to work for). As we worked together more, we found that we had a good work dynamic. So I kept coming back
trusted more in the art direction process, so the idea for Nobrow began to gestate. Sam was also looking for a change and he was as much of a print enthusiast as he was a great storyteller, publishing just seemed a good area for both of us to explore. So we set up Nobrow, with a screen-printing bed, a small budget for Issue No 1. Our aim: to develop a publishing company that would focus on the qualities of books as covetable objects and to always respect the illustrators’ vision. OB: Are there any specific practical tips you can give? AS: I can’t stress enough the importance of doing internships whilst you’re at college. Design studios vary greatly in size, from 3 or 4 people, to hundreds of employees, if you’re talking about something like Pentagram. Whatever size, these studios can always do with extra help, but can’t always afford it. That’s where interns come in.* Internships are a great way to learn and get stuck in. Who knows, you may even end up with a job! (*Don’t do internships without pay for more than a few weeks! They’re a good ‘in’ but they can be exploitative, be careful J) So I would say do internships while you’re still at college. Because when you leave you’re going to need a job and you might not have the luxury to try out all the internships you’re interested in.
OB: Was there a lot of collaboration at university? Or was it the people you meet outside CSM or by proxy that you end up working with? AS: I have to say with Nobrow it was very much a case of assembling a group for the first project based on their qualities and skills, as illustrators and it had almost nothing to do with the people I was at college with. It goes without saying that you get help from friends, but it was Sam, my former boss and now business partner who was the most formative in my development after college. OB: If you knew then what you know now… Could you give any advice to anyone starting out? AS: Yes, don’t expect too much as a result from having been here, [CSM]. You’re still going to have to work your arse off. You’re still going to have to do some unpleasant work placements and internships and work for some unpleasant people. Nothing is handed to you on a silver platter once you leave; it’s all down to you and your work ethic. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic but you have to have realistic expectations when you leave; you aren’t going to immediately be an art director in a design studio, and often you’ll have to work your way up the ladder, gradually. But at the same time be ambitious and aim high, just don’t expect rapid success, it happens to the few and even then it can be short lived. But enjoy your work and do it well and anything is achievable!
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“That seriousness can turn into arrogance and that creates a stereotype !”
Meeting the locals Words Melissa Burgess, Illustrations Sim Onay and Louis Grosperrin
Class of 2015
We caught up with Sim and Louis in the heart of the graphic studios. A hub where all students and ideas meet and merge together, a birth place for the latest creations. Sim and Louis are both in their first year of Graphic Design at Central St Martins and are no strangers when it comes to working together. Both being enthusiast illustrators and keen designers, we decided to ask them a few questions about the course and the university. Melissa Burgess: what was is about Central St Martins that made you go there? Why there over other universities? Louis: My cousin told me about the school, she was studying fashion here and told me how good and prestigious it is. I thought it would be a good name for my CV later on, it’s a great name to carry with you. 20 Emanata www.ual.co.uk
Sim Onay: Yes, I heard the same thing but I didn’t really know many art colleges because my high school didn’t know a lot about art and appropriate colleges. But I heard about Central St martins in turkey and if I heard about it that meant it must be good. Louis Grosperrin: I had the opportunity to study in France but the arts schools are too conservative and I wanted to be in an open minded and international environment. Melissa Burgess: What were your expectations when you came to St Martins? Louis Grosperrin: I was expecting to have so much work but it all comes down to time management. You get a lot from the school but you need some effort from yourself.
Sim Onay: I expected to learn a lot of things very quickly, I was expecting to be spoon fed with information but that wasn’t the case. So I had to learn things by myself and give effort to learning stuff. It was frustrating at first to do it on my own but I got used to it, but it wasn’t what I expected. Melissa Burgess: Is that a good or bad thing? Sim Onay: It’s a good thing, it’s a new thing so it can’t be bad. Melissa Burgess: Were you expecting an intense schedule and work load coming into your first year of the BA? Has it been easy? Sim Onay: Yes. I wouldn’t say it was easy since there are a lot of things that are brand new to me. But I would call it laid back. Louis Grosperrin: It’s very much a structure, you have to make your own structure out of the classes. When you have a lesson in the morning and a lecture in the evening, you have to find a way to fill that gap and stay motivated otherwise you just start picking up bad habits. Especially in your work ethic.
too seriously. That seriousness can turn into arrogance and that creates a stereotype. Melissa Burgess: What do you think of the method of teaching at Central St Martins? Louis Grosperrin: I heard recently that a lecturer said that students from St Martins should be unemployable. That was crazy. Well I feel that the work and briefs here are very conceptual. You do your work, you add your own spin on things, your own cool designs but when you finish the briefs you ask yourself what now? How will my work and creativity be used outside of the school? What about the future? We aren’t being told enough about how we can use our talent outside of the university, in the real world. I don’t know if we are being prepared for the so called business world. But we do have a lot of live briefs where you can get involved with different projects and established brands. It’s definitely a choice. You can get involved or you can just live your peaceful, easy student life.
Melissa Burgess: When you meet people and tell them you are from csm, do you feel there is a prejudice, do you feel it’s and advantage or a disadvantage? Louis Grosperrin: Most of the time, they ask me if I am doing fashion, because it’s the most known part of St Martins. Of course, with alumni like Mc Queen and Galliano… Sim Onay: When I tell people from outside UAL that I am at Central St Martins, they give me the reaction of ‘’oh that’s a really good school’’ but if I talk to a guy or a girl from Camberwell, they will give me that face you know like ‘’oh you’re from Central St Martins’’ Louis Grosperrin: yes, there is that certain competition. I suppose St Martins has a reputation of being arrogant, snobby and judgmental. Sim Onay: That is true to a certain extent but not everyone is like that. Melissa Burgess: So studying here, do you feel that reputation is justified? Sim Onay: I think there are two sides to Central St Martins. There are people who are laid back and who don’t take any nonsense but there are people who take it just that little bit 21 Emanata www.ual.co.uk
Melissa Burgess: In terms of illustration at Central St Martins, do you feel that it has a place of its own or do you feel it’s still very much seen as a traditional technique that is slowly fading away? Louis Grosperrin: I don’t think illustration has a place of its own here, I feel it’s a big part of graphic design. Sim Onay: I quite like that though, I can’t complain. It’s such a broad thing and you learn about so much here. I think its better to not specialise in one specific thing. I prefer to know about bits and pieces from everywhere. Louis Grosperrin: I think it helps to be surrounded by other creatives and see other departments and really get inspired. Melissa Burgess: Both of you are amazing illustrators and it seems that’s what comes naturally to you. But with everyone owning a camera, do you feel that illustrators are fading away? Sim Onay: I feel like I need to put down my pencil for a while to learn new things. I am stepping back from drawing right now, to do photography and other stuff more. I really don’t know if it’s temporary or if I might stick with digital and leave drawing forever. Louis Grosperrin: I was happy to see that Central St Martins encourage you to use older techniques like screen-printing or print making. The facilities that they make available to us are incredible. I would have never had the opportunity to look into these techniques on my own. Sim Onay: I had never heard of screen-printing before coming here.
Class of 2015
Melissa Burgess: with you having already completed two years here, would you recommend Central St Martins to other people? Sim Onay: it’s quite weird, one day I think CSM is great and another day I hate this place. It’s very much a love hate relationship. Louis Grosperrin: it’s really what you make of it because the tutors and facilities are truly amazing. The school is a crazy place, look at the architecture and all the light falling inside it really just makes you want to learn.
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“You can get involved or you can just live your peaceful, easy student life!”
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Class of 2015
Sim is a first year BA graphic design student at Central St Martins. Sim’s illustrations truly capture her quirky, bubbly and curious personality. On the one hand we are merged in a dark world, warned off by odd and intimidating creatures. Yet on the other hand we are drawn into a vibrant, eccentric pool of joy, colour and expressive characters.
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Louis is a first year BA graphic design student at Central St Martins. His interests in graphics are broad but his talent and unique approach to intricate and interesting illustrations is what caught our attention. His sketches are full of life, colour and almost psychedelic subjects. Whilst observing his drawings, we feel transported into the imaginary sceneries, lost between the lines and hypnotized by all the detail.
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