Kris Andrew Small:
I think it’s really easy to get caught up in how your work is going to be perceived, or the technical process.
I wanted to give myself a voice to talk about issues I felt needed addressing. So I try and focus on that now more than anything else. So I decided to make a zine. At the same time as this, I was starting to get super into the idea of masculinity. I was really confused by it because I felt like I didn’t relate to it at all… but did that make me any less of a man?
I’d been working in advertising for a while and I was a little frustrated that I never got to make my own work, or work in my style. So I stayed up late every night making my own things, which I wanted to be the opposite of what I was making in the daytime.
When I was maybe around 15/16, I realised I wasn’t really good at many other things at school, and I found all these artists like Keith Haring, Kaws, Jonathan Zawada and Jean Paul Goude. I found something that I could relate to and figured that if they could do it there was no reason I couldn’t, that was of course a little naive, but I learnt over time that if you really work hard and be patient, things will come eventually.
Movement, colour and madness best sum up my work.
Braulio Amado:
I think I was always into drawing, but I was honestly terrible at it. I tried to do graffiti, too, and was also really bad at it. I only starting making things I was happy with when my parents got me a computer.
I like to think the work is always evolving, or at least I try to experiment as much as possible and get to new places whenever I do something, mostly because I get easily bored with what I do. So a lot of times I feel somewhat embarrassed with some of my old posters, but having them all together in a book helps me make some sense of it and understand what I was going for back then.
If you want to do something, don’t wait for someone to ask you to do it. Get off your phone and meet people. Get a full-time job you don’t hate, do your own art on the side, save money, and when you have enough saved invest it into creating something you like and believe in. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t. I have no idea what I’m doing either.
Hassan Rahim:
I love versatility. Different range is what makes anybody good, you know?
I think it’s important to collaborate. I don’t want to work alone all the time. That’s why I always work with different designers and different people. The only constant is what I put into it.
I’m a night owl. That’s when I can actually throw on some two-hour or four-hour-long mix, or I’ll put on NTS Radio and just zone out.
I keep pushing more and more for things to have meaning and have more impact. You don’t always have to be conceptual and serve a purpose, but I’m drawn to that. But more recently, with so much social anxiety, and also, this political climate—this combination of things being so hectic—I think it’s also okay to just put something on a t-shirt for fun without needing a fucking purpose.
I’m super hard on myself. Actually, that was one of the crazy things about one project I worked on last year. I held myself to such a high standard that I froze. I couldn’t even get out of bed to work on it. You know, with trauma survivors, there’s fight, flight, or freeze. And [my therapist] was like, “You’re a freeze person. Like a deer in headlights.”
David Rudnik:
We [designers, architects, artists and musicians] are partly responsible for the social and political content of the world.
We should remember that we are not working for the client, but for the audience. Otherwise, we create systems of manipulation: using your design, people can lie, change the appearance of their brand, and earn money on it.
Art is a pure form of expression; graphic design requires responsibility.
I messaged a designer I admire, Ham Carlile, and asked her for advice. She sent me this:
Shut your laptop. Go outside and go get inspired. You never come up with ideas when they are forced and stressing over this only makes it worse. Ideas they come when you least expect it. Like when you’re commuting, in the bath or watching stupid youtube videos. Great ideas spout from small observations and when you do reach eureka its like magic
Come with an open mind. There is no such thing as failure. Sometimes it is going to be tough and you’re gonna work you’re ass off but oh my is it
worth it.
worth it.
Unfortunately creativity is not pushed in the current rigid academic system. We are all taught to think the same and revise gcse bitesize copy to get a good grade. Artistic skills are not celebrated. I had no idea what graphic design was in school because i wasn’t told!
For the next generation of designers to thrive and innovation to occur, creativity needs to be embraced and seen as a viable career option.
I truly believe we have the power to change. The world is quite literally built on design, everything you look at / interact with has been designed and we are now at the forefront of a rethink. Designs are created with sustainability in mind and we are coming up with new and innovative ways of bettering the planet we live on. Unlike scientists we have the brilliant ability to view the world through gifted lens to creatively solve problems and provide solutions which would otherwise go overlooked.
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