Craig Oldham Talk

Yesterday, Craig Oldham a designer from Music design agency in Manchester, came into college to give the students a talk on his experiences working with illustrators entitled 'But isn't that your job?'. He took us through 6 collaborations with different illustrators, 4 of them for the same project, and 2 for separate projects. For the first 4 he spoke about the design of the posters posted below, as part of a campaign for Manchester City FC...

Michael Gillette

Chris White

Todd Slater

Shephard Fairey

The talk was really informative, as he spoke about how he finds the illustrators (sometimes just from a single book!), how the designers negotiate the money side of it, both directly with illustrators and with their representing agencies, and a little bit about how to approach people with your work. He also spoke about how they pitched for the different projects, and why they came up with certain ideas. 
It was interesting to hear about how they really think about what the client needs and not just what they want, for example, creating a whole typeface that can be used throughout a company for all printed material, rather than just a logo or a couple of finished items using the type.
 Overall I think I definitely learnt a lot about how the process works, and also that it's going to be very hard work!


We were all also set a brief to create a poster for the event, so I've posted my design below. It had to be two colour, and include all the necessary written information. I went for a kind of twisted, intertwined image of an illustrator and an art director to represent them working together. I was quite pleased with it given how quickly it was put together, although I can't say I was too happy with the type, wasn't the most imaginative! oh well....