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Alison Carmichael is our current poster artist for the Hope issue. Although you might not have heard her name, I can almost guarantee you will be familiar with her work in typography.
Your
poster design's a bit deceptive. From a distance it seems all jovial
and carefree with its balloon, but the text spells out something
sinister. This kind of delicious contrast seems to repeat itself in
your work (see also Michelle is a slag). Do you aim to catch people
off guard?
I don't know if I aim to catch people off guard, but if that's a good thing I will say yes I do!
I
like the idea of irony and ugly things looking beautiful but, to be
honest, that is an old idea used by loads of artists/designers! It
is nice when people read into work though and sometimes something that
I design, where I think, "awwww, that looks nice", other people
perceive it to be much deeper than it is. It is good to make people
think a bit!
Sainsbury's? Nifty! Do you ever find it strange seeing your writing on shopping bags and posters?
It
always makes me laugh, especially with Sainsbury's because it is
everywhere! I love seeing my work in print, especially when it is
something you have designed on an A3 piece of paper and suddenly you
see it on the side of a road as a 96 sheet poster - that's brilliant!
Working in typography, is it ever difficult to find the right phrase? Do you prefer working to briefs?
I have always worked commercially simply because it is what I know and how I earn a living. I studied Graphic Design and learnt early how to answer a brief effectively.
To
be honest, when I started out it never occurred to me that I could
have taken another route with my work and painted pictures to
exhibit. There is an art to understanding an audience and making
someone's idea work as an ad or as a piece of branding. I particularly
enjoy this process and the collaborative element BUT it is nice also to
exercise one's own creativity and design something for yourself now and
then so that you don't feel like a slave to the industry. And
yes, when I do this, I find it extraordinarily difficult to find the
right words!! Ideas on a postcard please...
In the work you did for the Loyd Grosman ads, you style the name of
each sauce in a unique way. Do you think that working in typography
requires a kind of synaesthesia? Like, if i said 'blueberry' - is there
a particular style that would strike you?
Blimey..... if
you said blueberry as a creative direction, then I would think you were
a bit nuts. It would be fairly easy to push in the direction of making
it look like a blueberry.... but it is not always that simple with a
brief. In Loyd Grosman, it just so happens that it was meant to be
quite literal and the sauces were meant to physically look like the
ingredients (chopped ginger, parsley etc).
But
in a lot of my work I am asked to portray an emotion or feeling. For
example, I get asked to design lettering that looks "organic, sexy,
edgy, cool etc" which are more human qualities and largely subjective.
It can be hard to hit the nail on the head, as often with vague
descriptions like that I feel that perhaps the client briefing me does
not really know what they want themselves until they see it and it can
be a long drawn out process to get there!
What trends in the world of fonts and typography are we seeing too much of at the moment?
Ermm... god
I don't know. Lots of really bad hand writing fonts that don't work
well and make things look cheap and disposable! But I would say that wouldn't I?
For budding students of typography, what would you say is their best hope (haha...) for moving into commercial work?
Take inspiration from everything and be open minded and try out loads of different mediums.
Make
sure you create a really clean and beautiful portfolio, remembering
that it is better to have five GOOD pieces that you are proud of than
20 mediocre ones that are not that great.
How
you present your work really says a lot about you as a designer and a
scruffy folio with bad mounting and an unconsidered, repetitive layout
speaks volumes about how that person might work on a job!
Be prepared to listen, take criticism and learn from it and be prepared to start at the bottom.
You can pick up the Hope poster with Alison's artwork, completely free at these outlets now. If you miss it, you'll soon be able to purchase it from here (or, if you can't wait - email us).
See more of Alison Carmichael's work at www.alisoncarmichael.com
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