WORD-FORM - Key Persons
Andy is the creator of the Never Not Creative community and co-chair of the creative, media and marketing industry Mentally-Healthy Change Group. He's been working in the creative industry for many years. From running the local offices of global agencies like Interbrand and R/GA, he was also an original co-founder of For The People in Sydney.
The reality of closed schools and a family of four spending six weeks / 24 hours together, produces a lot of guilt. Having to home-school my kids due to the current global situation caused by covid-19, I know by now, I am not a teacher of primary school math. I did poorly in math myself in late high school, because the teacher was boring (blame! She was guilty!) One of my daughters and I have a very sensitive relationship that we can almost read each other's minds, good in a creative sense and for inspiring conversations and bad when it comes to math. It can explode at an instant, each one of us knowing exactly how to point the finger at the personal vulnerabilities of the other with razor sharp precision. I am impatient - I don't understand why she doesn't understand. At the age of 9 she asks when she can move out, blaming me for making her life miserable - yes I am guilty for not doing better, being more understanding and patient towards my own kid. Despite from me blaming her too, I blame the schools (blaming is a desperate try to assign "guilt" to shift responsibility for a situation to someone else, making my own failures go away). It's the government! The teachers! And why is Germany so backwards analog anyway in its education system? And yes, of course, the virus, which is very guilty right now for a lot of things, only it doesn't care, there is no consciousness in this thing. It throws the guilt right back to me, because I am the one acting like I do. But pushing guilt over to someone else is a coping mechanism of self defence.
Part of the problem is also: I love my work, hence the impatience for explaining math. I need time, without being asked anything or shown that new scratch by the (obviously guilty) cat. I need to think. There is a constant white noise of having kids, this inner alertness to be of service any minute, to analyze the type of scream (serious / not serious). Since having kids, I feel guilty about loving my work. For wanting that time alone. I feel guilty when I ask myself if I love design more than them. Knowing that it is not the right question to ask and knowing the answer, I still acknowledge that graphic design is a big part of me as a person. I have chosen a path in design where play and joy is a crucial element, I cannot really call it "work" even. It became that area where I want to learn and evolve because it interests me, it's fun and I enjoy it most of the time. I have to live with that sense of guilt, it's coexisting with my love for what I am doing.
Luckily for a designer, there are others to blame as well. Usually that is the client. Aren't they often weak? They don't know what they want or give unclear briefings. They change their preferences, they ask their spouses for opinions (the worst!). Sometimes they want to control every step, every inch you move that image. And why didn't they spot that spelling typo on the cover before it went to print? That's the lulling mechanism of a designer, if a project didn't turn out as planned. But more often this assigned guilt is bouncing back at me like a boomerang, like from the virus. Because I am painfully aware, it's often not the client after all, it's me who wasn't clear or insisting enough on a proposal, my reasons weren't explained enough, or the idea really wasn't that good from the start. And sometimes I should have said no to the job, the client, because if I'd be really honest, I've known all along it's not a match.
As a designer you have to blame and you have to feel guilt equally, it's a balancing act on top of a steep mountain. Calling someone else guilty can be liberating and increase or keep a healthy level of self-esteem. But it may be a short-lived sensation - it makes you feel good for a split second - sadly it's a passive situation, you are only the receiver of the good news it wasn't you who f****d up. But it's still f****d up. Soon though you'll have to deal with something else. Only if you are taking on responsibility and that means sometimes admitting guilt (to yourself and others), you can actively do something to change your behaviour and evolve. Equally this might mean a chance for disarming an otherwise charged conflict of blame. I believe there is a strong connection between admitting guilt and taking on responsibility and therefore making way for growth - it goes way beyond design.
Ariane Spanier is a Berlin based Graphic designer. She studied visual communication at the Art Academy Berlin-Weißensee. Her clients often share a cultural background such as galleries and museums, artists, filmmakers, musicians, publishers or architects. The studio's work ranges from the design of printed matter as books or posters to identities, animations, illustration and digital design. Among her clients are Phaidon publishers, the Museum of Modern Art Yokohama, she has contributed to the Washington Post magazine, Time or the New York Times Magazine with her work. Since 2006 Ariane has been the creative director and co-editor of Fukt, an annual magazine for contemporary drawing. Her work has won many awards, including from the TDC New York and Tokyo, D & AD, ADC New York, Stackawards or the Graphis Poster Annual. She is a member of AGI Alliance Graphique Internationale since 2013.
Ariane Spanier lives and works in Berlin.
Brooke Holm was born in California, USA and moved to Australia when she was 9 years old with her mother and sisters. While growing up in Brisbane, she found her love for photography and later moved to Melbourne in pursuit of the creative industries. Working across editorial, commercial and fine art projects, Brooke's aesthetic and photographic sensibility sparked interest from many corners of the world. This, combined with her instinctual love for nature, travel and the desire to question the way things are, has largely contributed to her fine art practice and its constant evolution. After 20 years living in Australia, Brooke moved to New York City in 2016 where she continues to work with likeminded creatives and delve further into her captivation of photography and the opportunities it presents.
"Charles Wilson Hursthouse is my great-great-grandfather ... an 1843 oil painting of his mother-in-law has come down one line of eldest daughters, beginning Ellen Hursthouse, and is now in my care. She leans on a wall in the lounge close by a keyhole rug from my »Club de Conversation« series. In August 2016, on a journey from Auckland to Wellington via New Plymouth, I found my aunty, Te Muri Jo Turner, eldest great-granddaughter of Charles Wilson Hursthouse and Mere Te Rongopamamao Aubrey ... Opārure Road, the signpost said ... I knew this was where their daughter Rangimārie Hetet, sister of my great-grandmother Margaret Kate Lattey, was born ... I know I'm a dot in this landscape of whakapapa, yet it is important to me."
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Creative Director of Alt Group
Dean Poole is co-founder and creative director of Alt Group, a multidisciplinary design studio based in New Zealand. He studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, majoring in sculpture, graduating in 1993. Committed to raising the profile of New Zealand design locally and internationally, he has been involved in the establishment of the Better by Design programme in conjunction with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Dean has helped conceptualise and deliver a number of national interest projects including the promotion of New Zealand creative industries for Brand New Zealand, the development of brands for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira and Te Oro music and arts centre, as well as the creative direction for Fisher & Paykel globally. Since 2005 his creative direction has been awarded over 450 international and national awards. He has received the highest accolade in New Zealand eight times, The Purple Pin, along with 30 Red Dot awards and the German Design Award. In 2010 he received the John Britten Black Pin, the most prestigious individual award for his contribution to design in New Zealand and internationally. Dean is the first New Zealander member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. (AGI).
Erik Brandt is a graphic designer and educator who has been active since 1994. He is currently Chair of the Design Department and Professor of Graphic Design at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Estados Unidos). He was elected a member of AGI in 2012 and curated Ficciones Typografika, a project dedicated to typographic exploration in a public space. Educated internationally, his career began as a cartoonist in Japan in 1994, and has since found focus largely in print media. He maintains a small graphic design studio, Typografika (Visual Communication und Konditorei). His work has been published and exhibited internationally and he has also received recognition for his very, very silly short films.
Gemma O'Brien is an Australian artist specialising in lettering, illustration and typography. After completing a Bachelor of Design at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, Gemma worked as an art director at Animal Logic and Fuel VFX before deciding to fly solo as a commercial illustrator in 2012. Her typographic work takes on a variety of forms, from calligraphic brushwork, illustration and digital type, to large scale hand-painted murals. She splits her time between advertising commissions, gallery shows, speaking engagements, and hosting hand-lettering workshops around the world. Her clients include Playboy Magazine, Nike, Volcom Stone, Kirin, Westfield, Heineken, QANTAS, and Diet Coke. A number of her projects have received the Award of Typographic Excellence from the New York Type Directors Club, in 2015 she was recognised as an ADC Young Gun and in 2016, named one of PRINT Magazine's New Visual Artists: 15 under 30.
Georgia Hill is an Australian artist, specialising in type based works that combine bold, black and white textures and lettering within experimental compositions.
Hill's instantly recognisable aesthetic has developed into artworks which are read in terms of connections, time, place and community, seen in exhibition based illustrations, private commissions, client-based projects and murals across New Zealand, Canada, the U.S.A and Australia.
Over the past three years Hill's large scale mural works have informed an exploration of how structures, along with our natural environments, are home to and vital in allowing these experiences to exist and develop from one physical context to another.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Founder of DESIGNerd and Creator of DESIGNerd 100
Kevin Finn is an internationally respected designer. He is founder of the independent design practice TheSumOf, which primarily specialises in strategic brand identity focusing on simple, clear and accessible communication. Among other projects, he has designed the identity and communications for SBS, Brisbane Festival and de Bono Global, where he designed the identity and visual language of Dr. de Bono's life's work - the first time this has ever been done.
He is also founder, editor and publisher of Open Manifesto, an independent journal which for over a decade has focused on the intersection of design with social, cultural, political and economic issues. Contributors have included Edward de Bono, Noam Chomsky, Alain de Botton, various global thought leaders and designers, an ex-CIA operative, a real-life super hero and a real-life cyborg, among many others.
Kevin is also founder of DESIGNerd and creator of DESIGNerd 100+, the world's first design trivia game featuring personal questions from some of the most significant practicing designers, including Stefan Sagmeister, Steven Heller and Lita Talarico.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Managing Director of HM Group
HM Group brings together three brands: HM, a full-service boutique design agency dedicated to meaningful strategic design; fluoro, a platform for remarkable people in design; and wrapped, a collection of bespoke wrapping.From first establishing HM. 24 years ago, Nancy has always believed that design is everything - it is an integral part of life. It helps guide people, communicate messages and can offer a solution to even the most complex issue.
As a creative Managing Director/Editor, Nancy is a constant innovator, continually exploring the ways in which her work is applicable to new methods of communication and how, as a business, they can service a diverse client base to the very best of their abilities.
As a leader, Nancy cultivates a culture that fosters creative collaborations, to execute meaningful work that is both progressive and relevant to their clients and the broader industry.
Nancy Bugeja is the co-founder and Managing Director of HM Group.
Since graduating from a Bachelor of Design at Monash University in 2014 Tina has worked in professional roles at The Design Kids, The Company You Keep and Love + Money Agency. In 2018 she joined the team at sibling agency Studio Round and Common State.
Tina's passion and enthusiasm for the design community saw her spend five years as councilwoman and secretary at AGDA Victoria; working collaboratively to help broaden the design reach and to provide opportunities for creative professionals.
Elsewhere, she has moderated panel discussions and spoken at industry events for the likes of AGDA, BJ Ball and This is Not University; contributed illustrations to the 2017 Semi Permanent book and Stolen Publication; sat as a Juror for the 2017 AGDA Student Awards; and dabbled in the ever-growing podcast world as a guest co-host on Australian Design Radio and a guest on Never Not Creative.
Tina believes that art and design have the power to positively impact the wider community and is always on the search for new ways to realise this through collaboration and community projects. In 2018, she co-produced the Simple Gestures exhibition alongside fellow creatives Rhys Gorgol and Megan Voss, for the Alfred Hospital's Melanoma Clinic. In 2019, she became a co-contributor to Broads Down Under, a public directory of women and non-binary people working in the Australian creative industry.
Tina's current hobbies include kissing her nephew's cheeks, and feeding her fantasy fiction obsession (mostly Game of Thrones or Harry Potter… sorry, Lord of the Rings).
Tina Victoria Afshar is a designer living and working in Melbourne.