Scanner Magazine

SCANNER

Scanner is a magazine showcasing work from CSM graduates producing visually stimulating and refreshing work. Each issue we will present three new alumni that share an aesthetic or certain way of seeing. This issue we interview Emil ﾃ《grﾃｭmsson and Tom Vek as well as present the work of Miles Aldridge.

Emil ﾃ《grﾃｭmsson is an artist and designer.

Tom Vek is a musician, designer and most recently, app-developer.

Miles Aldridge is an internationally renowned fashion photographer.

All three have different approaches to their fields, but all share a Central Saint Martins degree, and an aesthetic that is consistent, personal and appealing.

Their works share a sense of surrealism and popping colour; which is what attracted us to work with them in the first issue of Scanner Magazine.

This publication works best with the app Layar. Look out for the S symbol on certain pages to find extra interactive content. Simply scan the spread and watch it unfold.

ÁSGRÍMSSON

VEK

ALDRIDGE

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EMIL ÁSGRÍMSSON

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NOVA AWARD SHORTLISTER, SURREALIST ILLUSTRATOR AND MASTER OF MOVING IMAGE

Emil Ásgrímsson graduated in 2012 and has had a busy 2 years freelancing and working for TV production company Sagafilm in Iceland.

During his time at CSM he was nominated for a Nova Award from his final year show and won an illustration competition for River Island’s winter collection. Having the chance to interview Emil really gave me an insight into how multi-talented he is, combining his surrealist collage style with his specialism in moving image. His illustrative style came about by scanning and reproducing existing photographs in old books, giving the imagery purpose and bringing it to life. His dads’ profession as a geologist was the basis for his geographical and mountainous imagery, made into an animation for his final piece. He emphasised the importance of having a strong connection with your subject, making it honest and real. He is currently working on TV brand identities and has appeared as a guest lecturer at the Icelandic Academy of Arts.

“ZAMIR ANTONIO & ANTOINE CHOUSSAT, FOUNDERS OF EATSLEEPWORK/PLAY AND ALUMNI FROM THE COURSE VISITED DURING MY THIRD YEAR. AS SUCCESSFUL GRADUATES OF THE COURSE THEY WERE A BIG INSPIRATION TO ME”.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER YOU GRADUATED? I decided to move back to Iceland, there weren’t many job opportunities in London. In Iceland full time well paid jobs are much easier to come by.

There I was just freelancing until I joined Sagafilm in 2012.

FAVOURITE CLIENT? My favourite job has to be designing the new identity for NRK channel, one of the biggest Nordic channels. I had control of the full branding and aesthetics.

BIGGEST INFLUENCES DURING YOUR TIME AT CSM? Definately my peers on the course, you learn so much from the people around you. My favourite designers were Terry Gilliam, Karel Zeman, George Melies and Yuri Norstein. Zamir Antonio & Antoine Choussat, founders of EatSleepWork/ Play and alumni from the course visited during my third year. As successful graduates of the course they were a big influence to me.

WHAT ADVICE CAN YOU GIVE US? Don’t go there expecting to be taught everything, listening to the tutors is really important, but dont be afraid to disagree. Be independent and search for opportunities, make the most of your time there.

TOM VEK Musician, Designer, App creator, CSM graduate.

RGB BLUE “I UNDERSTOOD HOW DESIGN WAS A SERVICE AND COULD FUNDAMENTALLY BE GOOD OR BAD, OR SUCCESSFUL AND UNSUCCESSFUL I GUESS, AND THAT MADE IT FEEL MORE OF A SKILL THAT COULD BE REFINED”

How has CSM influenced your work approach, whether towards music, design or whatever else you put your hand to?

I think it helped me be playful with trying stuff out, and confident to present initial ideas to see if something simple could go all the way, specifically for someone else, you realised in a crit that if no-one else got it then you’d failed as a visual communicator, being cool with feedback was a big thing, and getting the opinions of people you respect. Out of the box thinking as well, it was cool for me to answer a design brief with an audio piece and that was very inspiring. Also the fact that some of the other uni’versities thought of us the pretentious elite actually appealed to me; to be ballsy and confident, and efficient with your ideas so you could spend the most time having fun.

Did you have a favourite tutor during your time at CSM? If so, why?

A visiting graphics tutor called Marc Wood was very good to me and a few other students on our 2nd year, he was working at an advertising company that had Nokia as a client. I remember he took us aside after a crit and asked if we wanted to go to Barcelona for a top secret project. It turned out to be Nokia’s first camera phone (!) and we were photo messaging each other and it was being beamed back to a big screen at a conference, this was like 2002. We ended up doing it in Cannes too and even ended up making a book (“See what I’m talking about”), which had a kind of vertical layout, which allowed us to have this continuous timeline. So exciting to be involved in real world projects.

What were your influences before/during/since CSM? Before I was mainly influenced by music art. During CSM I discovered Designers Republic, which was very very cool for a graphics student, the web work of Hi-Res at the time was mind-blowing, and I think almost unbeaten since (Requiem For A Dream website, for example). During the course I discovered vector graphics, actually through doing Flash animation, which I still like as an ideas tool. Since I really got crazy about logo and brand, and also how the art side, like Keith Haring in particular could have a wider brand to their work; colour and solid lines, and always flat design, a’ways.

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Why music over design? Or do you prefer to view yourself/your artistry as a mixture of both?

I kind of feel that fate intervened slightly with this; I loved making music but never studied it or wanted to get into it professionally. As an art form I wouldn’t want to be told what to do or relate anything to theory. It was the punk rock / grunge mindset I guess. I discovered design through music because I wanted to design my own album covers, in fact as soon as I had a mac and a printer I would make my own CD inlays and snap them into jewel cases of my recorded CDRs. After studying art A-level I understood how design was a service and could fundemtally be good or bad, or successful and unsuccessful I guess, and that made it feel more of a skill that could be refined, albeit with a heavy dose of artistry and character thrown in. I was very excited about a career in design and had started focusing on branding in a digital agency I was working at straight after graduating, but I’d also put together an album of music on an indie label. And then this crazy thing happened, where some massive label calls me up and says “you can quit your job and go on tour” so naturally I was like hell yeah, it’s the way I’d wanted it to happen. There’s always lots of design needed with music so I’ve been very busy with that, even more so now with all the internet stuff, been quite fun to do web ideas (like an album cover customiser). I also started to get fascinated by products and user Interface, specifically what was happening to music products and formats, and that’s been a real passion of mine recently, I think there is a big disservice being done to music design in the digital world right up to this point, and I have to stand up for it as both an artist

How did Sleevenote come about? As an app it’s very design-based, given that it’s a platform to have your music ordered visually rather than typographically.

Would you agree that it’s a natural meeting of your interests and talents in music and design?

Yes, it is the absolute apex of everything I care about. It used to be exciting designing a CD or LP, thinking everyone listening to the album is going to see all this. But a few years ago I started to realise that a lot of people are just going to get the front cover and nothing else, and if I wanted a hidden track, it wouldn’t be hidden, at all. I wasn’t about to say “you really should just buy the CD”; because digital music is so convent and it’s awesome to get music instantly. I’ve always liked crisp vibrant digital design, and these devices have such amazing screens, I felt like, ok there must be a way to get more artwork accompanying the music. I thought long and hard about what was truly useful, because I loved physical booklets, but I didn’t read them every time I listened to an album. The one thing I did a lot though was refer to the tracklist. I decided that it was realistic to start with adding one extra piece of content, but this would be the most useful; the tracklist art, with so much visual personality, could become interactive and mean there was no need for any boring text tracklist. The navigation experience was back in the control of a designer, and each album would feel like an individual entity again. Then it was a case of thinking, how can I create a product that is still useful while I attempt to build up this enormous library of new content, so it can be a functional, artwork-based music-player application. The thing I’m concerned about is what I’m currently calling “Post-discovery”: streaming and the internet is great for discovering something, but what products are there that allow you one-to-one time with something once you’re “sold”? I’m not alone in saying we live in a noisy culture right now, and I think that in being part of the generation that witnessed this huge shift in cultural noise, there are elements that are still worth keeping from the quiet-era, of “slow culture”, while at the same time being a constantly modernising thing. I’ll also add that Sleevenote started life as a physical concept; a double sided square music device that would be like a digital vinyl sleeve, acting as one album at a time, which I’d still love to make one day.

The blue and white aesthetic shown on your album artwork and within your app Sleevenote, how did this come about? Is it down to simply liking the colours or is there a specific personality those colours embody to you?

I think that the choice to use blue was from thinking digitally, because it’s full RGB blue, notoriously the hardest colour to print. It was like showing where my allegiances lie. The back cover was considered specifically for the Sleevenote format too; nice big tracks for the hit areas on a small iPhone. I actually felt grateful that knowing that it would have this digital exposure. It made me work harder on it. It’s the perfect time for a digital format to pick up on where physical is winding down,.Labels and designers are still doing great stuff, but I love working on the project and reformatting lots of artwork myself because it’s just looking at cool design all day. It’s interesting to think about what you consider work to be really. I think the most sensible thing to think about in terms of your dream job isn’t simply to “do what you love”, it’s more to “do what you’d love to be doing all day”.

ALDRIDGE In 2006 the British photographer Miles Aldridge was presenting a fashion shoot to Anna Wintour, the formidable editor-in-chief of American Vogue. ‘There’s something wrong with this picture,’ she said, pointing to a shot of a glamorous woman in a fast-food restaurant, shoving French fries towards a baby barely old enough to eat solids.

‘I loved that statement,’ Aldridge, 48, says now.

‘She knew there was something wrong, and she wasn’t sure whether to publish. She did in the end, and she got so many complaints.

But for sure, if you go to any burger place anywhere in the world, you’ll see mothers feeding babies junk food.’

“THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE”

‘These women aren’t blank because they have nothing to say,’ Aldridge says. ‘They are blank because they’re overwhelmed by their world. When somebody is thinking, they look blank. And it’s that moment that I’m trying to capture. When somebody looks lost in thought they’re vulnerable, and you’re able to intrude on that privacy and take a photograph that captures this human being using their brain, trying to clarify how they got to this position.

Why are they at the sink washing up, or in the playground pushing a swing with no child in it? To me, the great moments in Hollywood are close-ups of a woman’s face, thinking, and she’s just realised that her whole world is wrong.’

Film references come up constantly with Aldridge, and many of his pictures look like Hitchcock stills or outtakes from one of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s domestic melodramas.

He acknowledges both as influences - ‘I love Hitchcock. Stories that suck you in after which you realise you’ve been assaulted by pure image’ - along with Godard, Fellini and, most of all, David Lynch. Seeing Lynch’s Blue Velvet as an art student in London in the 1980s was a pivotal moment. ‘I have never seen anything so troubling presented as glamour,’ he says.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Miles Aldridge Interview - Exerts taken from http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/newsfeatures/TMG10048858/Miles-Aldridgeon-his-disconnected-subjects.html

Miles Aldridge Photographs - scanned and manipulated from “I Only Want You To Love Me”.

Emil Ásgrímsson content - emilasgrimsson. com Tom Vek content - tomvek.tv

This publication was a collaboration between: Ellen Foster Price Conal Kelly Oliver Vanes