21/07/10

Crowdsourcing Design | The Skillful Balance of Type and Image

Paul | Designer Spotlight

Our Crowdsourcing design agency has the magnificent graphic designer/illustrator Chris Wharton to present this week….Based in London and hugely passionate about design, he was awarded ‘best in show’ at D&Ad for a delicious promotional poster collection of sayings, eaves dropped conversation pieces, quotes and foreign proverbs. Chris has a diverse and accomplished portfolio that showcases great style uniting type and image.

What comes first Illustration or Graphic Design?For me they are a happy and equal marriage of creative differences. Theyboth perform roles within the creative field, offering different skill setsand producing different results. I find both challenging and I don’tconsider myself to have a particularly distinct style in either.For me illustration is as close to artistic expression as you can findwithin the commercial artist sphere, its an inherently revealing andpersonal process, producing images from scratch and imbuing them with yourown sense of identity and authorship.Graphic design on the other hand, is naturally a creative process, butequally its also about working within and responding to an external set ofstimuli (brief, client, constraints etc). Graphic design can be flamboyant,sober, clean and simple or simply chaotic, but more often than not itstempered by the brief.This is just how I see the them, and I enjoy them equally for both theirrestrictions and their freedoms. Its great to sit down with pencil and paperand pour things out and equally as fulfilling to work meticulously on apiece of design.

What are your visual inspirations?I think like most people they are varied, I go through fads and have longterm love affairs, and meticulously hoard away images from blogs, and otherambient sources(ctrl click save as…). Right now today though I really likethe work of Cody Hudson (I think he balances design and illustrationbeautifully), Yusaku Hanakuma a comic artist of the very funny Tokyo Zombieand master of the ‘Heta-uma’ style of illustration (translates as ‘bad, butgood’), Mary Blair who was a principle artist at Disney, Tomi Ungerer aFrench illustrator whose work spans decades, Antoine Girard another Frenchillustrator. Design wise; Karlssonwilker a couple of Europeans working inNY, Yokoland, Julien Vallee papercraft madness, some of the classics -Robert Brownjohn, Paul Rand, Alan Fletcher, Bruno Munari.

Favourite brand and favourite band?

I am a big fan of ‘Freitag’, I think their logo is very simple and acounterpoint to the random element of their products, and also in terms ofbrand experience I think they’re great. If you were unaware of them, Freitagmanufacture handmade bags made from truck tarpaulins, tyre inner tubes andseat belts 100% recycled, each bag is individual in colour and design. Notonly do they have a great product which they are forever bringing out newversions of and new lines, but they also have unobtrusive and usually funnyadvertising , they also have great photography and tight clean design intheir publications. I think think they offer a rounded experience, greatproduct, advertising and tone.Favourite band, I don’t usually do favourites, but at the moment it has tobe Saul Williams a hip hop spoken word artist. Others would include Battles,The Amps, Sigur Ros, QTSA, The smiths, Be Your Own Pet.The perfect night out?

Although I live in London, I am a country boy at heart. Perfect night out;drinking and eating on a beach into the wee hours.