Creative Report 1

Burrill Kühne Kaye Leslie Loaring Muir * Six Conversations on...

Print, Digital & Everything In-between.

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Contents

12 Dafi Kühne

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Jeremy Leslie

"at some point you cant stop those 20 tonnes of metal type, they’re heavy. You get infected by them. " ................................................ 12 - 19

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Hamish Muir

"They want to be successful on, their own terms and part of that success is just making something beautiful." ............................................... 04 - 09

"Now everyone’s a graphic designer (or claims to be) and the only qualifications required seem to be access to a laptop and a subscription to CS." ..................................................10 - 11

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Mylo Kaye "We are currently expanding into VR at the moment but in the next few years we aim to start getting... involved shortly with AI as that is the next up and coming advancement in technology" ......................................20 - 21

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Nick Loaring "In my work, I've always enjoyed engaging with people through humour and making people laugh. It's an extension of my personality. Weryone’s a graphic designer (or claims to be) and the only qualifications required seem to be access to a laptop and a subscription to CSuhd "

.................................26 - 29

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Anthony Burrill "In my work, I've always enjoyed engaging with people through humour and making people laugh. It's an extension of my personality.

.................................22 - 23

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JEREmY LESLIE

Magazines in 2017 Jeremy Leslie has 25 years of experience in editorial design, has written four books on the subject of magazines and is the founder of the MagCulture.

Interview by Sammy Harpin, conducted via phone.

SH: Over the years you have become a spokesperson for print, setting up The Modern Magazine talks as well as many MagCulture events. Do you feel it is necessary for designers to be vocal about their work?

JL: Interesting question, I think it’s important to, not necessarily about your own personal work, but be vocal about the work that you’re involved in the more general sense. It’s a matter of regret that graphic design in the broader sense is not very well understood or appreciated in the same way that other creative endeavours

are. So you know architecture, fashion design gets a lot of notice, credit and attention and actually most people in their lives are exposed to just as much graphic design but they just don’t even recognise it. So I think it is important to make it clear that it even exists and discussing what’s good and bad about it.

SH: And in terms of print, did you feel it was important for the design community to start conversations about where the industry might be going?

JL : Yes, yes I think again not necessarily just the design community but people in general. From way back, the first book about magazine design I published back in 2001, I was talking about that again recently, in the introduction to that, I talk about this idea that print is going to end and you know this was sixteen years ago and the discussion was been had then, and continues today to whether print will continue or not. It’s not a discussion as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a fact that print will continue but there are still some people, for whom that is still a discussion worth having. A lot of what I got involved in was to remind people that its not a simple as digital is here now so print is ending.

That was a completely absurd piece of extrapolation from that fact there was this new thing called digital. Digital now is completely different to what digital was ten years ago and in many ways print is completely different now to what it was ten years ago, you know it’s a developing thing. I find it very interesting between the two, but one is not replacing the other.

SH: With the rise in popularity of magazines like Riposte, The Gentlewomen, why do you think the magazine medium is becoming such a

great place for feminist thinkers?

JL: I’m really not sure why actually (laughs), why it has become such a focus. I think subject wise it is absolutely valid and important, but it is intriguing that there is such a focus on women making magazines for young women. It’s very interesting for me that is the case. I think in a way it really just mirrors general society in a sense, it’s a very important topic right now and I think any sort of relatively small form of publishing or medium leads itself to whatever the contemporary voices are from young people, that say things that they need to get across, and in that respect it’s maybe not surprising. I think after quite a few years where students and graduates wanting to get involved in expressing themselves jumping into making a website just want to do something physically, I think now there beyond that, essentially that side of things is just like electricity and oxygen it’s just a given. It’s just you know Facebook, Snapchat and whatever else are just a bit mundane, and dull, and useful, and essential even, but not very exciting. So I think a lot of young people now have got back into print as an exciting format, an exciting medium. So having got excited by it they look to the issues in their mind that they want to communicate, and it makes sense that a lot of young women right now are concerned with their views, in terms of what their future is and in terms of feminism and their position in society so it kind of makes sense, because alongside that there is lots of other things happening as well. But you’re right. There is a definite… That was a very long answer.

Is that alright?

SH: Yeah, yeah very good thank you!

JL: The fact is also an element, at the

head of all that is ‘The Gentlewoman’ and Penny Martin I think she has been very inspirational to people, and I think people, and even people with very much there own voice and there own things they want to say, can be inspired by an individual like that. She and her magazine have been a very powerful force and been inspirational to a lot of people, so there is probably a degree of that happening.

SH: With the launch of the iPad in 2010 and the app store in 2008, there was an emphasis for magazines to be translated digitally, but it never really took off. Why do you think this is?

JL: Because magazines are better, that’s all. I have been involved in a few iPad apps, and I had one on preorder for that first day when they were launched, and I downloaded the only magazine app that was available that day which was an American edition of Wired, and it was really exciting and you know it was a thrilling time, it was very inspiring, and I worked with one or two publishers and began to scratch the surface and get deeper into it, and you realise that the amount of money and resources that Wired poured into that app to make it as exciting as it was, was completely unsustainable, and I think there were multiple reasons why iPad apps perhaps have struggled, but the fundamentals of them all were that at every stage when it came to it you’d sit round the table talk about how you could improve an app and actually almost without exception it just down to, actually the printed magazine does it better. All your ever really doing is creating a bad imitation of a printed magazine, I still think there is something there to be done, but the real thing around the promise of the app, was that it was a way for publishers to make

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money out of digital, and that was such a red herring, because actually at the same time, apps were beautiful, were interesting and were very intriguing, but actually at the same time the digital space/websites were about to make a huge quantum leap forwards, so actually you could do it all on a website, and then suddenly no one’s gonna pay, people expect free apps. It’s very complicated, ultimately both a website and a printed magazine are better than an iPad app magazine.

SH: Today the range and variety of magazines on offer is extensive, how do you think digital effects the launch of new magazines? Are there still opportunities to launch new magazines out there?

JL: The so called big publishers aren’t launching magazines now really, that doesn’t happen. The new magazines come in from small independents, sometimes companies, sometimes individuals or partnerships. There are plenty of opportunities but not only opportunities but examples. To give you context, there is a guy I know who collects first editions.

He wants the first copy of every magazine that we stock, so once a month we send him between five and ten magazines, that are the first issue of a new magazine, and you know not all of those are gonna last forever or necessarily gonna be very successful but there’s a lot of enthusiasm and appetite for making new magazine and launching new magazine in a relatively small scale. And every now and again one will hit home.

SH: With the indie magazine market have you met anyone or spoken to anyone that has said they are becoming so successful that they may become the

mainstream?

JL: Well there is an element of that. In the short hand of language it is useful to talk about the independence and the mainstream because it clarifies something about the difference between the two types of magazines, and I kind of think they all get that and that’s fine, but it’s not a simple as that, it’s not a binary, its not as black and white, it’s much more complicated, because there are some small magazines, tiny magazines even, that there really is depth to it for somebody to kind of have fun with, its almost a hobby, they don’t want it growing bigger than that.

So people just want to make a little zine, and it’s a hobby, and it’s fun, and it’s just a way to vent their anger or their love or whatever it is they wanting to vent. Other people do a similar thing and quickly find this could become something, and grown into something and other people again have got a business plan and are coming at it from a more serious level and have a far more vocal ambition. You know so there is all these different things going on and some of them do well. I do a number of presentations around this and put together a slide that features a dozen or so (but you could easily get up to about 30 or 40) that are significant businesses in their own right, and that’s not a huge number but it’s a significant number in the face of the fact the mainstream publishers are struggling to keep magazine going. So the point is that there is all sorts of types of magazines, and all sorts of reasons for making magazines, and it’s not always that people wanna make magazines a commercial success.

The want to be successful on, their own terms and part of that success is just making something beautiful.

SH: Can I ask about, Pick Me Up: Stuff

you need to know’ created by you and David Roberts. What was the idea behind the book?

conscious idea for the book — to try and educate young people and spark an interest in communication design?

That book came about because Dorling Kindersley the publishers famous for their children books and encyclopedias, had always done this particular style of design for those (books) and that design was partly based on the way that books have to be international. So lots of white space with cut out images, and black text so they could translate it, and just change the black plate, so when printed in Hungry or German or even America (to the American spelling). But they wanted to do something more inventive and different so they got into a bit of a rut and came to the company I was working for at the time John Brown and said we really like some of the magazines you’re doing what if we gave you a children’s encyclopedia and said reinvent this. So that’s what that book was.

It had quite a large conceptual umbrella holding it all together but in the end it was an encyclopedia which encompassed the British school curriculum and very serious subjects: History, Geography, Science as well as things to do with what the kids of the age (11 - 16) were engaging with and interested in. So we did social media, one on ‘self image’, and ‘What is beautiful?

And we also got rid of the alphabet and did it randomly, and every single page was designed differently so there was no kind of visual structure. Everything was designed to suit the subject in question.

And we had great fun with it! And it did really well and it proved to be a bit of a blueprint for other encyclopedia they have done since.

JL: Yes, yes and I think if you know the book you will be aware, throughout it there are things (of this nature). Just the title was kind of a challenge, it was meant to stand out in the bookshop and be a challenge for you not to pick it up. There is lots of questions throughout, like asking you to imagine a world without words, there is a lot of information about how the book is produced, the industry of publishing and things like that so it’s about the process of making the book as well as the book itself.

SH: I loved the book and it was one of the first times I was introduced to infographics and design. Was this a

SH: I was always fascinated by the cover, the depth of the image and how it appeared to move, and that more books should take this on, was it a struggle to make such an interesting cover?

JL: The whole book was a struggle to be honest! (laughing), but I think that was the point, they were up for a big challenge, so we did challenge. I can’t remember but there was a lot of stuff to get through, the cover was always important. I can’t remember exactly how it came about but we were trying to evoke a kind of world of different subjects and things to give a clue to what was inside and make it look exciting. The lenticular thing came very early, it was only when we got Eboy in to do the illustration work that it came to life and became something, and then it was about making sure it went to the edges and it wasn’t just a little square in the middle, it had to fill the whole cover, stuff like that was very challenging production wise but we managed to work it out.

SH: Could I ask about Independent football magazines, they seem to be

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really popular, considering much of the market has moved online it is great to see a new audience of readers engaging with print content in a way they might not have done before.

JL: Yes it is!

SH: Do you think this shows positives for the industry?

JL: Yes I do, I think the underlying thing there is that, there was an assumption that was never going to happen again by some people, but I don’t think that was ever the case, and actually what’s interesting now with the whole kind of political situation, and the idea that online news sources and fake new sources it’s very unclear what’s real and what’s not real, and that is the nature of the online sphere, and that you have to be quite careful about how you respond to things that you see there. There still is something more definitive I think about print, and actually that the fact it’s still around now. To face the situation we are in now. Means it’s going to becoming more powerful again, for that reason I feel more positive about it. I think the fact that large international news corporations like the Guardian, The New York Times and the Washington post and other newspapers around the world have printed editions means it is harder for them to come up with fake stories because they are there in black and white in print, you know they can’t be collected or altered after the time, there is just something more definitive about when something has gone to print and someone has a copy of it.

SH: Do you think print has to maintain a high level of quality in its content?

JL: Yes it does, I think everything should

be a high level really, but print demands a higher quality.

SH: You have written and published many books about the course of the magazines, Magculture, The Modern Magazine and Independence what do you think the future holds for the mag?

JL: I’m not sure, it’s a big question, as I said I think the whole issue of news– the one area of publishing in the mainstream which is booming and doing well, The New York Times is selling more than ever, the Economist is selling more than ever, Private Eye is selling more than ever and these are all news titles, I think that’s a reflection of the dissatisfaction, everyone is addicted to Twitter and getting headlines immediately but there’s a larger dissatisfaction abroad, means people having got their kind of daily fix online and they know everything that is meant to have happened but they don’t really know what it means and are turning to print for that. So I think that area is very interesting. Things like The Economist and a lot of the news outlets are doing very well digitally. The part of the Economist’s readership that is increasing is its iPad app, ironically given what I was saying earlier, but it is effectively just their website put through as part of a subscription, which is a paid for thing. What I think you have to remember, everything we have talk about here is general, talking about iPad apps failing, well the Economist’s iPad app is anything but failing, it has an app that is really going well, the New Yorker iPhone app is doing very well, so there is still lots of potential on the digital side of things. Whether you are talking about print or digital, the bottom line now is that there is not a generic answer that you can give to things, every single publisher with every single different publication has to come

up with their own system of how they are going to monetize and make a living out of what they are doing.

SH: Finally what are you working on at the moment? If you can say?

JL: Well one thing that we are working on, is doing a magazine about the last Modern Magazine conference. We are doing a magazine that is based on all the talk that happened that day, that was due out in November but it’s running a bit late (laughs), so we are working on that and working on a project in Luxembourg.

Yeah, busy!

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HAMisH MUiR Visual Engineering (8vo) Graphic designer, founding principle of 8vo and editor of Octavo. Co-founder of Cast Editions and MuirMcNeil Design Systems.

Interview by Ed Harland, conducted by email.

EH: Are there any practices, processes or principles shared during the time at 8vo that has been taken into MuirNcNeil? Are these evident in the branding for TypeCon 2016?

of your typefaces limit its application?

What dictates the extent of the pictorial representation in your type design? // What overarching aims do you adhere to whilst creating unconventional type designs? // To what extent does the typeface’s design maintain the recognisability of a letterform?

HM: MuirMcNeil typefaces are not primarily intended to be serviceable as carriers of language operating to optimise the reader’s assimilation of information.

Indeed they are systems (modulated through form and resolution) of building blocks which allow us to test the limits of readability in the context of the immutability of alphabetic form, and the human perceptual processes at work in the act of reading.

EH: Were there any cases where the overall art direction of a typeface did not translate well to certain letterforms during the design process?

HM: A typeface can be defined as a system of differences. As such, and working within the constraints we define for most of our type systems, we allow some letterforms to push convention beyond breaking point; the test whether they still operate within the context of being set, in words / phrases / sentences / paragraphs.

EH: What were you trying to achieve with the design style of 8vo?

HM: The potential of the z axis to extend the typo/graphic space.

EH: Was it an attempt to challenge people’s readability of type? Or was it designed to communicate a certain attitude?

EH: Does the unconventional designs

HM: 8vo did not set out to have a style

– more an attitude; using type as the core ingredient of our work. Making each job better than the last one. Seeing the output of the studio as a continuing and incremental journey toward new areas of experimentation. We were equally at home producing work which challenged the viewer as we were working within functional contexts when appropriate.

EH: Do you feel there was an affinity with the freedom of the poster and the visual language you were creating at 8vo?

HM: Posters are big (if they are proper posters) – they also have to work from far away; thus, unlike editorial design, designing a poster offers an opportunity to explore scale, type, form and colour in specific ways.

EH: After being in the industry for so long, has the way people viewed design changed?

HM: Thirty-five years ago, when asked ‘what do you do?’, the answer (‘graphic design’) always needed an explanation by way of a list of examples – typical things graphic designers designed. Now everyone’s a graphic designer (or claims to be) and the only qualifications required seem to be access to a laptop and a subscription to CS. It’s a sorry state of affairs. Not helped by the exponential rise in the number of graphic design courses / student numbers at degree level. In the eighties graphic design was hi-jacked by marketing people (which led to branding).

At the moment it’s under threat from too many groups with not quite so hidden agendas – for example critical design (and other pseudo-intellectual nonsense) at one end, and professional educators (who think

teaching is a process and that to teach requires no subject expertise) at the other.

EH: What difference did you find designing in the UK and America?

HM: Not applicable. Unless you mean working for clients in the US. There’s no discernible difference that I’ve come across, although both 8vo and MuirMcNeil have been fortunate with their clients.

EH: Are there still schools and orientations in design?

HM: I’m waiting for the demise of the Parish Magazine School of Graphic Design. Hopefully it won’t be long now, hastened by the last Riso machine ever made finally falling into disrepair.

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DAFI KÜHNE

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20 Tonnes Of Type Dafi Kühne is a Swiss graphic designer who specialises in traditional letterpress.

Kühne established his studio Babyinktwice in 2009 where he combines modern technology with long-established analogue processes to create contemporary compositions.

Interview by James Green, conducted via Skype.

JG: I have some basic typesetting skills using small point type but never attempted to set anything above 24pt, how does printing large type compare?

DK: Bigger is nice but my main concern is quality. If you can do, lets say, an A3 size poster and you can do them perfectly you will find a bigger press and you will be able to show off in a bigger size. If you have small type and do high quality work don’t worry about it. I see a lot of students who want to buy a big press and wood type..

If the stuff they produce in the end is just crap then it’s not worth it.

JG: A bit like ‘all the gear but no idea’?

DK: Yeah exactly, exactly, that’s the problem.

JG: So how do you encourage your students to working manually?

DK: There are so many workshops and museums around that are just not used at all so it makes sense that these workshops get more traffic. Everyone wants their own equipment but I think its stupid that everyone buys their own type and press and all that because it’s expensive. And if you really want to work for someone professionally it takes more than just a press. I had to learn this to hard way too, so I bought a press and I thought ‘well that’s it!’ But then I realised ‘well I need some ink and then I need some furniture and then I need some mineral spirits, some drying racks and all that shit.’ In the end though, you end up like me with 20 tonnes of type, which is nice! If you think as a student that you want to print some posters as a hobby, it doesn’t make sense if you buy all that shit. Go somewhere and prove to the people who run the workshop that you are the guy to do it. Then they will be happy to do anything. There are so many workshops around that are really under used and that’s all over. It’s not only Switzerland it’s in the UK, Germany and US as well. Imagine all the money you could save by paying a small fee to use their workshop but you don’t have to rent the space, you don’t have to buy all the equipment that is getting much more expensive right now. For me it makes much more sense to use the infrastructure that is around us. And I understand it. I did

the total opposite as well, for 8 years.

Everybody wants their own equipment. At least I can say it kind of paid off as I proved that I’m not one of the people that jumped in and two years later dropped out. There’s tonnes of these people that just buy them and create a very nice workshop, they build up all this stuff, they arrange all the reglets and sort them out but then they’re sitting in the workshop and all they do is print an alphabet. *Moves camera to a letterpressed alphabet on his wall* DK: This.. That’s not from me, but that’s what you get when you don’t know what to do. What can I do? I’ve got all this type in my workshop, it’s not worth it.

JG: Letterpress is considered more of a passion and a hobby, how did you start generating money from using analogue processes? As they’re so expensive and time consuming as well.

DK: Well that was a big concern of course, and it is still a big concern because it’s something you have to establish every day.

Did you read my book?

JG: Yeah, yeah I’ve got your book.

DK: It has this one thing in it that basically says something like ‘don’t do what you don’t want to do in five years.’

JG: Oh from the poster?

DK: Yes, so I knew that if I start working with letterpress and if I do it for free today then I will (probably) never be able to charge anybody for good money in 3 or 4 years. That will bring me into a situation where I can never charge because there’s

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never enough money. For me it was obvious that if I didn’t have any money I couldn’t do it for free, or super cheap, I would charge. Everybody tells you ‘Ohhh can we do this a little cheaper or cut the budget a little bit?’ Whatever and if you start like that then I’m pretty sure that you can never make a job out of it. I have an example a good friend of mine, he’s making silk screen posters. He does them really nicely and he’s won a lot of competitions, he won about 25 Grand for and he’s pretty good. But he’s done that for free, forever. He will never be able to charge anyone any money for that. He would send emails to big bands, bigger bands than I do, but he doesn’t charge them anything.

He goes ‘Can I make a free poster and then sell them at your gig?’ And they say, ‘Well yeah, that’s cool.’ So he makes the posters for free, he sells a couple of them at the gig and that’s it. But then he has a nice poster in his portfolio, his portfolio is really cool and diverse but he is now having to make websites to make money.

And then he can print posters. Now lets say I take a different approach and say ‘I need to charge some good money for it right now’. I could have charged anybody just 200 bucks for something and it would have been fine but I knew that in five years I couldn’t make a living out of it. That’s the problem.

So you’re asking how can you transfer from it being a hobby.. Its by self establishing it, you need to sell this.People get to you and they want a website, or they send you a Facebook notification; ‘can you make this look nice’, but I tell them ‘Well we could do that but if you want something really good you could just do a poster.

But obviously it’s not that easy.

there’s something else other than a Facebook invitation. There’s more than a website. Websites are important, nothing against that, but if you get 10,000 Facebook invitations and then one poster that is nicely printed then you will keep this invitation. That I think is the new market for old things.

JG: So searching for some tangibility in the digital age, is that what you’re saying?

DK: Yeah I just think that there’s a new awareness of that. If it’s cheap and fast on one side, and that’s the big commercial thing now, then there will be people saying ‘Well, isn’t there anything better than that?’

And for me that’s it. I’ve found my niche.

JG: There’s also a clear resurgence of vinyl, and film, do you think there’s a resurgence for analogue.

DK: Yeah and you could even go further you could say people start buying their food at the farmers market because they think it’s better for their Karma, their body.

They give the money to a family they know, who grow the vegetables and it’s really a direct market. I think it’s honest. You have to be careful. I think the vinyl market, that trend is increasing dramatically now but it can go the other direction soon. If I built my whole studio on a trend, that can be really really dangerous. I’m trying not to do retro design, if I made retro design in Switzerland then maybe there would be a market for a very short period. People would love these Western posters, like the posters I’ve done. Do you know Hatcho print?

JG: No I haven’t heard of them.

You need to make people aware that

just an introduction and typesetting is just for three weeks and that’s it. Then I got an offer for a press and I’m pretty sure if someone had offered me a silk screen press or a risograph, I would have taken that. The press was really cheap, about the same price as a smartphone, so its not something that you buy if you have rich parents. I came back from my internship and explored the digital aspect of my practice. We had a later cutter at our school and made my first wood type alphabet from it in 2008. Nobody did it back then. That’s how I really got into it but I never thought it would be my job but thats fine, I’m a designer. Then it grew and grew and grew and at some point you can’t stop those 20 tonnes of metal type, they’re heavy. You get infected by them.

JG: I am curious about how you actually start a project. Do you start with sketches or mock it up digitally, or is it all manually working with the type?

DK: They’re from Nashville, Tennessee and I went for an internship there which was great but they’re doing really retro designs. If you do posters that look like they were from 50 years ago then it might be dangerous because there’s not a big market for that longterm. People will love your style for two years then they’ll go. That is the reason why I focus on contemporary design and also because I studied visual communication.

JG: During your studies when did you realise you preferred to use manual processes?

DK: It was very much established in the classes when I studied. We did some typesetting but most of us switched back to computer very soon as it was

DK: Well its not always the same but during the process theirs always a switch between the press and the computer. I might start sketching something and I often work in illustrator for the posters.

Then I look at my collection and choose a couple of letters and prove them on the press. I sometimes simulate them on the computer using helvetica compact and stretch the letters until the proportions are correct. Obviously this is something you normally wouldn’t do but its just so I know how much space I can fill. And then its a back and fourth process again between what it looks like on paper and screen. I need to show the client paper samples and the letters and then I show them a digital sketch.

JG: You mentioned in your book that you

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get a lot of the copy for the content from the client, do you get some freedom to design?

DK: No it doesn’t work like that. Normally I get copy and I ask them to tell me all of the mandatory information and what is the information I can play with. With some posters you’re happy if you have more content and some posters you’re happy if there is less content, and I need to be able to play with that. I also need to be able to change some of the structures or formulations for how I want to say something. Fact is when you have bad content you can’t make a nice poster. If a CEO of a company thinks they’re super funny for a younger audience but he’s a 60 year old stupid guy. He wont get the humour of the younger generation because he’s old, or his practice is a different style. You have to be careful and tell them what they’re saying isn’t appropriate for a younger generation. This is the target audience. In these cases you need to talk to the client about the content and this is something that designers don’t want to do, they don’t want to talk about the content because they are not advertisers, they’re graphic designers so they take what they get and if the topic is cool they’ll design something really cool out of it.

If the content isn’t cool but you do the best you can do and it’s crap... Five years later no one will ask you if the client was stupid or if the content was crap or the time schedule was shitty, you are stuck with this piece of work.

JG: From making my posters I can relate to if the content is boring its really hard to make a nice poster out of it. There’s evidence of you locking up type at angles, would you say working manually encourages you to breaks traditional rules?

DK: I wouldn’t say it was because of the technique, I think it goes back to how I started. I bought that press and I got a whole load of type. The type was a bit of a mess, I sorted it but if I hadn’t taken that time it would have gone to scrap. So I saved it and I said, ‘If I do one good poster with this type then its already worth it. I don’t care if I break anything, I don’t care if I’m breaking traditional rules, I don’t care’, I just wanted one cool poster. At least I did something good with it. I started exploring in a really weird way and of course, if you don’t have a nice portfolio and an old guy watches over your shoulder and says ‘hey what’re you doing here, its all crap’, then a couple of years later I know much more about the process and technique than the traditional guys because all they do is print photo plates, risoplates, lead type and maybe wood type and thats all. I’m much more flexible because for me it didn’t matter I just used things on the press.

That gives me a lot of freedom. But as you probably know, breaking the rules is only okay if you know the rules and I think that is really really important with typography.

JG: I found one of the quotes from your True Print poster really inspiring. It was the one about how traditional and expensive processes shouldn’t justify bad design.

DK: Yes it’s not only expensive. I work with students and for example, they mix ink to get a certain tone. They show me the pantone colour from the swatch, they choose the colour and mix it for half an hour. They come back and the colour looks nothing like the pantone they decided on before. So they’ll say, ‘well this one is much nicer’ but it’s only nice because you’ve made it with your hands. You fall in love with what you’ve just made but if this

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18 is the perfect colour why did they show me the pantone swatch. I don’t know if you’ve seen my print using refrigerator magnets?

JG: Yes DK: Everyone thought wow you’ve used these letters, this is crazy. Yes, but if you don’t make a poster layout to fit that technique or the aesthetics of the magnet, then its not worth it. This is a real problem, a problem of getting experienced enough to take enough distance from what you love. People fall in love with a poorly printed letterpress because they did it with their hands. But if you did that on the computer and printed it on a photocopier it would look crap. That’s the problem because you need to step back, its so easy to fall in love with these objects.

JG: You mentioned when you got your first set of wood type it was old and worn. You also create your own metal type, is that recycled/damaged lead type? Also is sustainability part of your practice?

DK: I think its nice if we can reuse materials or cheaper materials such as chipboard if it’s going to be a one use solution. It’s cheap, it’s easy to recycle and there’s not a lot to throw away. In other cases if I take the time to cut the alphabet for a particular poster, I might cut the whole set and keep it because I can reuse it. I think its all a question of purpose and the budget because sometimes you don’t have the money to get pear wood type. If I’m honest, it takes a lot of energy to melt metal. The heater burns all day long, I love the machine I think its great because you can cast the type and then melt it back in and then you can have different type. If you think of it as an ecological fact... I’m

not 100% sure if its that good to have that heater running for three days. But its definitely nice to have something that you can reuse and work with the same collection of objects. You can use type that used to print newspaper headlines 50 years ago and now I’m using it for a completely different purpose. Thats really cool, I like that.

JG: You’re passionate about education, especially with your summer program as I see you want to get more students involved. How important do you think it is to educate students on manual processes?

DK: If you find a good teacher who can teach in digital Im 100% sure that this could work as well. I feel that a lot of students, including me, would crave for something that is manual because they were on the computer for 8 hours a day.

For me that’s really refreshing. It offers a lot of potential to teach the students to decide about certain details step by step.

When I work with students, we normally design between 250 - 500 sketches in A5. So that’s really a tonne of variations of one design and its all done manually. Im teaching them how to create a diversity and ideas typographically. When I was studying I was worried that at some point my brain would just be empty because I don’t have any ideas. I thought my draw of inspiration would empty if Im working so fast and so often. Of course then I found out that creative people aren’t filled with ideas, they learn to create things. Thats the thing. I try to give the students tools to create a mass of ideas in a short time. I hate it when you’re at a wedding and they give you a book and they say, ‘Oh you’re a creative person can you draw something funny’ and it takes me forever to figure out

something funny. It’s down to hard work, its not just ‘we are creative people’ thats not how it works. And I think that working manually breaks down the students to work slower and avoid falling back into digital processes. A lot of students resort to ways of designing that they’ve always done before such as searching their font library and using illustrator. I want to break this up because its the only way they will learn something new. If they use it later or not I don’t care, it’s just one new approach.

JG: If you had to choose a favourite typeface, what would it be?

DK: In my work its not about choosing a typeface, I could easily choose one thats easy. I only use around 15-25 typefaces in all of my posters. For me, I start working with proportions. I need heavy type here, what can I find within my 25. But if you want.. I like Akscensz Grotesque Bold.

JG: Good shout. I also saw you in Double Dagger, I really enjoyed the publication and the fact it was all typeset. You said in that that you would start stretching and manipulating the type, have you made any progress with this?

DK: Im working on different things right now. It’s something that is there and if I find the right project I will start with it. I did some but its not something that I need to pursue now. It’s in the draw I can take it out whenever I need it. It’s slightly more important that it’s not about me, its about finding the right idea for the client. You can’t do what you want to do, however you can argue for it.

JG: Giving your concept a purpose.

DK: Right exactly. Hey why don’t you

apply for my summer program?!

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JG: Yeah I’ve looked at it, I would love to. It’s just funding the trip. I would love to come to Switzerland, it’s a beautiful place.

DK: The problem is that Switzerland is very expensive to travel. I’ve thought about it for quite a while and I understand it is expensive but you get a tonne for it.

If I lowered my fee by 20% or something, it is still very expensive to travel and stay and it’ll make it harder to pack everything into the program. This still wouldn’t matter because the big part of it is affording to travel and stay in Switzerland.

JG: If I ever come to Switzerland I’ll let you know, it would be great to visit your studio! Thanks a lot for taking the time out of your day to speak to me.

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DK: All the best to you.

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MY LO

Mylo Kaye (DREAMR) Why Digital Works...

Mylo Kaye is CEO at award-winning app development agency, Dreamr. Having spent the past decade in digital, he has found a passion for technology that changes the lives of people and businesses.

Interview by Ste Crowther, conducted via email.

SC: What do you feel Jaxon brings to your team?

MK: Jaxon the Dachshund dog, is in our office because he sets a good mood. We currently have another Dachshund in the studio. There has been a lot of studies into pets being around in offices, and it creates a more calm and relaxed environment that helps stressful situations. If we think about being around pets and petting them, it puts us in a better mood overall.

Dreamr also have a fun and very engaging office in which Jaxon contributes to this environment.

SC: What is the best piece of advice you have been given and why?

MK: The best piece of advice I was given was from my mum. She said to me that as long as you have a roof over your head you’ll be fine, and that everything else we are given or have is a bonus and a luxury.

SC: How do you keep your team motivated?

MK: That’s a hard question because every person is motivated by different things.

If that’s work, money or satisfaction. We have work spaces in our office with Xbox’s, PlayStation’s and pool tables which create a motivational and fun environment to work in but also help build relationships and generally keep the team engaged. We also do a range of team building excises and events, doing fun things together as a team helps me form a team of people who want to strive to do well.

SC: What is your vision for Dreamr 5 years from now?

MK: We are currently expanding into VR at the moment but in the next few years we aim to start getting involved shortly with AI as that is the next up and coming advancement in technology. A good book that I am currently reading related to AI is Our Final Invention by James Barrat. It talks about how AI will run everything and how there could not be any need for humans.

It is definitely worth a read. In terms of the studio, we aim to have 30 staff in less than two years’ time.

SC: I’ve seen Dreamr getting involved with virtual reality, can you tell me more about this? Why have you decided to do this?

MK: I see ourselves as a tech company and we like to keep up with the ever so changing digital world, keeping the latest tech in our office and designing for this. I think it is crucial to stay with what is the latest tech, designing for this so that we aren’t behind in the times, producing for old outdated content.

KA YE

SC: how did you find the university experience?

MK: I studied Business at university and my overall experience was shit. Because I suffer from Dyslexia, I found it very difficult to sit with books and read as well as write academically. I am a visual person and I enjoy viewing and doing visual things, that is why I decided I wanted to bring my business knowledge into a visual design studio.

SC: What did you enjoy about university?

MK: I really loved the social side of university. I am a very social person and very much appreciated meeting new people and the overall social experience.

SC: I’ve seen that Dreamr are involved in a range of local community and charity based events and activities, what is your motivation and rationale behind these?

MK: Dreamr are in a fortunate position to give back to people who aren’t as advantaged.

We are all about giving back to different communities and where ever we can we do this. For example, we support two homeless charities and do different charitable based events to support them.

Not only is this for such a good cause, but it helps create a picture for Dreamr.

SC: Does this refer back to keeping your team motivated also?

MK: It does because the activities and events we set up for the charities are all team based and usually fun challenges.

SC: Can you tell me a little bit about the transition from university to opening

your own studio?

MK: I didn’t just one day wake up and decide to start a studio, it was a long and very challenging process that took us to where we are today. We began just as two people, advertising ourselves anywhere and everywhere, pleasing clients and getting work through recommendations.

SC: How many creatives do you now have in your entire team?

MK: We have just employed a new design which has taken us up to 23 members of staff, some designs, and some programmers.

SC: Where did the name Dreamr come from?

MK: Dreamr’s name was created because we help our clients realise and bring their dreams to life.

SC: Do you have a personal motto? If not, what would it be?

MK: “Believe in yourself, and believe in others.”

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ANTHONY BURRILL Wit in Design Graphic artist, print-maker and designer Anthony Burrill is known for his persuasive, up-beat style of communication.

Interview by Michael Humphries, conducted via Skype.

MH: Why does wit enter into your work AB: I suppose I'm naturally drawn to work that's amusing. Using wit and humour in communication and design especially graphic design is quite a rare thing. In my work, I've always enjoyed engaging with people through humour and making people laugh. It's an extension of my personality. I like to be quite amusing with people in real life, so it appears naturally within my work.

MH: Do you believe in a difference between funny graphic design and witty graphic design?

AB: When work is trying to be too selfconsciously funny, it can be a bit naff. But work that really hits the nail on the head and is interesting, is much better, rather than just a piece of stand-up comedy. It can be a fine line, as different people find

different things amusing. It’s got to be right for the audience and get the message across swell.

MH: Your series of cheeky posters for the Hans Bricker Wost Hotel in the world are very witty and engaging. How do clients engage with your proposed ideas and does self-parody or the ability to laugh at oneself ever become a problem for the client?

AB: It depends on who you're working for really. Hans broker came out of relationship of eric kisses had with the client. He had very close relationship with Hans Brickier.

So that's how it worked. The client has to trust you to understand what you're trying to do. it was one of the first campaigns of its type to be anti-advertising in a way, being brutally honest. Using the facts that the hotel was awful to kind of tell a story about it.

MH: Steven Heller stated that graphic design humour's primary agenda is to make a client message more memorable, do you agree with this or can graphic wit be more than advertising?

AB: Yeah, especially with whether brands work with designers. It's all about engaging with people through social media. it's such a big marketplace now that the official bombardment through our screens and being in the world. Brands are very conscious to connect with people directly. its all about brand loyalty. To be able to speak to your audience in a way that really communicates. Working with brands they know who they’re talking to and they know the language that their audience will engage with. A brand like diesel will speak in a very different way to say BMW. they’ve got very different audiences. it's

very different tone of voice and it's a vast industry.

MH: Your posters of Oil and Water Don't mix are very witty but have an engaging ethical topic. How powerful can graphic design be when coupled with wit and ethics?

AB: I think you have to think of new and interesting ways of communicating. This poster was very specific about the gulf of Mexico. it was talking about environmental issues and there is a whole sort of visual language related to that. You have to do things unexpected and in an intelligent way. Trying to avoid pictures of a seabird covered in oil would b the cliche way of doing it. But you’ve gotta be clever in the way you do things. Keep that directness about the work and not get too polished or professional. People are interested in the way things get made and the story of how they get made.

MH: Do you intentionally try to create witty ideas?

AB: Yeah, I get bored quite easily. I'm always trying to push things along and think of new ways of doing things. I work in a very specific way. I’m continually trying to rethink how I do things and the way I work with clients. By just applying thought to stuff. I want to make memorable work that stands out with a specific tone of voice and character and make work that all comes together as a complete body MH: Is there such thing as pure design wit?

AB: Not sure. maybe it's a use of language.

Saying things simply. In my personal projects where I’m making my own

statement posters. That's when it's in its purest form. Within that, I just try to amuse myself. if I’m amused by things it shows through the work.

MH: Must everything you do evidence the wit of its maker?

AB: Yeah. it's important to have that connection with the work. every project I work on I try to steer it to my particular way of doing things. and I think that why I get work because of my particular way of doing things.

MH: You have clients who call on you especially for your whimsy, why is that the case?

AB: I suppose they buy into my profile as a designer. I present myself and my work in a very particular way. They buy into that and the way I do things. I bring my sensibility to a commercial project. But sometimes I work on the commercial project and just work as a designer, so there's a variety in that really. If you match the work with the right client you can make interesting projects together. If you're given the freedom to do your own work but still be in the commercial context, that's what we aim for. To do my own thing but with brands.

MH: Do you have a philosophical reason for using wit in your work?

AB: I think I’ve got a broad philosophy about everything I do that I try and kinda make it as honest and truthful as possible. I try to make my work human and concerned with making connections through the work.

There are Honesty and human elements to everything, I’m always keen to get that in, and present things in a clear and simple way that engages people.

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NiCK LOARinG Making Type Talk

Interveiw by Connor Hastie, conducted in person.

CH - can you start by giving an overview, how the print project got started?

NL: It started by accident thats what I usually say, but it goes back to, probably about, 1996/1997 I bought a case of wood type in an antique shop in Settle for about 25 quid, so I bought this case of wood type, I just bought it because it was beautiful, id studied to be a graphic designer in the past and I was just interested in these sort of things and they were stook on my wall for ages and they were just there and they’d fall off the wall occasionally, and I was running a small

independent record label at the time and I'd use those wooden letters to make artwork, making the record covers with it.

In workshops in universities and colleges that have collections of type, You sometimes find bits of wood type that look like they’ve got paint on them, and its usually acrylic paint that's what I did with my wood type and I still have that wood type somewhere, but that was the start of this kind of interest in printing and letter press printing, I bought a printing press ten years later very similar to the one you are sat next to, the Korex printing press there, a very high tech version of the press I bought ten years ago, which was about 100 years old, a big flat bed print press and I bought it because if you want to print big things and big wood type you generally need a big printing press to do it on, so that happened and then i moved back to Bradford in 2010, and a friend of mine told me about somebody who had a printing press at a place called 1in12 and they donated it, and the printing press had been manufactured in halifax by Josiah Wade, it was called the Arab.

It was very different printing press from the one I had, but it enabled me to print the type which I got in 1996 for the first time, so that kind of kickstarted a mad journey which I'm still on essentially, which basically meant that I got immersed in another world of printing design or printing through physical objects. Predominantly at that beginning it was based on printing wood type cause that's what I was interested in like a lot of people kinda get into it through that because of the beautiful objects, they’re physical they have a history and quality to them so its quite a seductive thing I suppose, so I started to buy bits and pieces of equipment, I realised that if I

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wanted to do something I needed to start somewhere.

I have bought printing presses, sold printing presses, and I have acquired things, got given things, bought things, I cleared out old print shops to pull these things together and then massive equipment started happening and that going on at 1in12 and at the same time happening at my house and then eventually it got to the point where I was getting work, coming from various places so it was 2013 that I moved in here and I moved in with three other people, friends of mine and they weren’t printers or designers or anything like that and we rented this space behind the theater and put everything in and equipment comes and goes.

CH - What were your inspirations are there books, designers, influences?

NL - I am undoubtedly influenced by things that have gone, I'm interested in skateboarding, punk music, making selfpublishing. Along the way loads of people I know have gone through these phases and I've kind of ended up still here, I stuck it out, I remember being at school getting into skateboarding and people would take the piss out of me for that cause it was considered stupid, but look at it now, it’s part of mainstream culture, people who used to kick sand in your face are wearing Vans shoes, you know so those subcultural signifiers, skateboarders, punks and so there was an element of sticking together, those influences stuck with me.

I was making skateboard fanzines. Those propelled me onto wanting to become a graphic designer, I went to college but spent more time in the pub, not really buckling down to what I needed to do, which was get good grades, pass it, get a

degree, I didn’t quite do that, I did get to do a degree. I went to college in Stafford, which I’ve since found out is known as a radical place for rigorous typographical approach, I didn’t know that at the time but I think some of the influence still lived on.

I came across people like Neville Brody, octavo, or Hamish Muir they’re active now still and their approach was quite radical. This was just as the Apple Mac was coming about and these guys were doing this really radical stuff, specifying everything and sending it off to somebody and it come back done, so this was a really hardcore approach that they had to typography, I spent the next four or five years trying to emulate on computers never got anywhere near it. I didn’t really know at the time what swiss typography was, but I knew about people like David Carson, he was involved with skateboarding, magazines and stuff that was a real grungy, dirty, gnarly style of graphic design, it was all sort of messed up, the typography all over the place and he was vilified and criticised for his style, but undoubtedly as a young person he had a massive influence on me.

I got into photography, and became influenced by magnum photographers and then eventually I came to Bradford and was more interested in doing work that would enable good things, which sounds like a really lofty ideal at the time.I came to Bradford college, and saw the printing department but didn’t get involved at that time, but I got back into graphic design and that spurred me onto design my own typefaces and look at modular approaches towards design and consequently I got exposed to Swiss styles and dutch design, but I was also interested in psychedelic artwork too, being fascinated by early explorations of visual art in a way it was

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graphic but didn’t necessarily follow the rules of graphic design. So those influences really, to a certain extent have come together in terms of the work I do now.

In some respects people say I’m an artist, I say I’m a printer, people say I'm a studio, I say workshop, I’m not a designer anymore,maybe I am, and I don’t really follow graphic designers or design agencies, I'm a bit bored of looking at business stationary, I like graphic design that's got a message and is really strong.

I’m probably blinkered in some ways cause I do just follow or watch printers or printers who are designers and one of the things I've done, Double Daggers is about looking at other people's work and being gobsmacked by what they do, so it's looking inward to some extent.

I still follow Swiss design but there is so much of it now that I cant really keep a track of it (Laughs). Graphic designers are going to repeat the styles because its part of the DNA of what we do so there is always going to be someone who makes some super cool minimalist design, and it always looks really great but it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it is the same thing over and over again in different permutation, but for that person who’s doing it, it’s fucking amazing, so it would be easy to say that graphic designs rubbish but it’s not, it’s relevant to people who are involved with it and I think as someone older now, I’ve stepped away from it a bit, though I’m still fascinated by it, but its just that i cant keep track of it all.

I think maybe that's good in a way, you step away and you don’t subconsciously absorb some of them styles and influences,

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you start to develop whatever it is you’re doing and that becomes your own thing and I think as a designer you may be encouraged to develop your own style.

CH - you mentioned using digital elements and you’ve mentioned fat out festival that you did work for, you used the laser cutter to make the shapes for print, what was the concept behind the work?

The concept behind it was just like ‘well can I do it?’ I don’t know if I can cause I’ve got this thing on screen that I was like ‘fucking hell’ you know? thats doing it for me, thats hitting all the buttons, but can I do it? and I think we need to get this out there i’ll say that by doing a job thats just completely stupid, the amount of work that goes into it doesn’t make it any better and it doesn’t make it any worse and just because its letter press doesn’t mean its better than anything else, theres a lot of bad letterpress stuff out there but there is a lot of elements that I push in what I do in that context because that is what I do and in terms of where I am geographically Im kind of one of the only people doing this weird stuff and thats not because I wanted to end up doing that its just because its just ended up being that way, I didn’t set out with a plan to dominate the North or anything like that, i’m just doing what I do.

The Fat Out poster was something that existed digitally made when I worked a little late one Saturday night and I came back to it and thought yeah there's something there, you know, it’s done all the things I'd normally do, it’s repeating, it’s rotated, its a pattern and it’s symmetrical. It used what I'd normally do and so in some respects I hadn’t really reinvented the wheel but what it would do, if I could get it to work,

was it would be absolute madness and it would be absolutely fucking intense and it was absolutely fucking intense, I'd done some really stupid things in the past and I did some work for Magic Rock a couple of weeks back and I did a poster for Golden Cabinet about 3 or 4 weeks before Magic Rock and there was a bit of a testing ground, like can I print a bigger poster on a smaller printing press, and it turns out I can, but how much more work is it, and it's double the work, but I was intrigued by that. I was like can I print this poster bigger than the press and have it so the joints not seen and we can we just have to be clever about where the join is and it started to dawn on me that effectively that's what we could do with this poster, so it did start out on a smaller scale. So I had to test it, I came in on a Monday, which was a week before the was to be made, in the run-up to the festival.

I started by thinking what happens if I cut one of the pieces, does it work, they were super thin. So the laser cutter works in two ways, it cuts and engraves, so the engraving is removing parts of the surface, it burns away bits of it and the cutting aspect, is dead easy and quicker, really quick, whereas engraving takes ages. So I cut a piece out on the cutter and I thought ‘okay, let's do it’ as I was convinced that it was good and it would work, so I spent a number f days cutting these little bits out and sticking them onto bits of wood, so all the bits were stuck on by hand, but the laser cutter fucked up quite badly, as it does sometimes, and so I had to adapt to that, so there was enough of the red blocks but I didn’t get that far with the blue, cause the laser cutter, it's not broken but I have broken three laser cutters in the past four years, because they are quite temperamental.

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Contributors Sammy Harpin

Michael Humphries

@SAMMYHARPIN sammyharpin@gmail.com

@MIKE.HUMPHRIES lemikester@btinternet.com

Ed Harland @EDHRLND ed.harland@gmail.com

James Green @JWALTONGREEN jwg111@hotmail.co.uk

Ste Crowther @STE.CROWTHER ste_crowther94@hotmail.co.uk,

Connor Hastie @HASTIE.C ch250733@students.leeds-art.ac.uk

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Graphic Design has seen much change in the last 250 years, but nothing compares to the shift from printed matter to digital with the rise in popularity of the web. This asks many questions of the webs predecessor– print. Is this medium still viable?, Is there a future outside the web? Is print dead? All of which print has answered back with new and exciting ways of communicating, it can be argued that print is in its most diverse and exciting phase to date. Print is not only alive, but alive and kicking. With online media becoming progessively untrustworthy by the minitue with fake news, disatisfactory content and click bait ever looming, print has been resurrected in more ways than one.

This publication explores the views of some of the industries leading names and gives insight into their creative practice and what makes them tick.

Anthony DaďŹ Mylo Jeremy Nick Hamish