Gillian Blease - Illustator

On Friday the 17th of October, Gillian Blease was our first guest lecturer. Gillian is a illustrator practitioner who has produced work for magazines and newspapers, and specializes in colour, shape, composition, surface design and inherent motion. She currently works in a design studio in Manchester and more of her work can be viewed at her online portfolio -

http://www.gillianblease.co.uk/main.html

Her first statement was a inspiration for me, "I never thought I'd ever be where I am now." The reason this had an impact is because many times I have lost the confidence to believe I can go far with my skills, I spend to much time comparing myself to others. This statement got me engrossed into her talk.

She originally began as a artist before she became a illustrator, studying foundation at MMU before going onto fine art at Newcastle University. It was here she was moved away from drawing and introduced to a world of conceptual art and instillation design. Her main design keys are - colour, space and minimalism. This image I found on her website is a good example of work that uses these key factors. Detail is very minimal in the design, with the edges of the coin being the most detailed part of the image. Their is so much empty space in this design, which has an almost sense of freedom, with tension built at the area of all the coins. When designing a piece of work, she looks to create drama and tension in the details. The unusual idea gives this design added interest with the bottle opener being used to remove coins. Unusual ideas tend to get me to think more and are more fun to imagine.

Gillian has spent time in London trying to create big name for herself. She needed help from ACME, which is a support group for artists looking for residency in London. In her time she has been involved in a typing job course at the Whitworth Art Gallery as well as spending time in Japan. Japan has played a key influence into her design background, which I can relate to as I have always been fascinated with Japanese hero concepts and anime style drawings. Gillian on the other hand was inspired by symbolism and colour design.

Her old neighbour was the 2001 winner of the turner prize. What encouraged her was how he described his feelings to his work as, "anxious," constantly worried, which is a issue I believe every designer goes through. To hear this statement from someone so successful is an inspiring tool.

To further her careers, she won a competition for New Statesmen magazine, which won her a computer. From there she learnt new skills and was introduced to using an illustrator programs as a new design tool. Another practice that she follows, which is something I should motivate myself to do, is to collect as much design as possible.

One thought I had at describing her work was simplistic, yet overly detail. One piece of design could be a collection of very simple drawings, yet collaged together made a more epic and more detailed piece of design.

Her inspirations come from the likes of Paul Reed and Andy Warhol, but liked how one of her inspirations is one of my biggest inspirations. She showed us some design work of Julian Opie whose work inspired me to create this design back in my college years.

A quote she used quite often was function and context in design. This is was makes a good piece of art shine. A piece of advise she also gave was to never forget your inspirations as they will always help you out whenever you find yourself in a design rut. I think these are good pieces of advice for a designer to learn from.

This is an image I found on her website that I believe to be a logo. Gillian stated that she loves to work in one colour on a design, believing it is a great discipline for any designer to be strong at as it forces you to be stripped to the essentials and be inventive. She likes designing logos due to her strong influences from graphic design. She said that she, "loves that a graphic design piece has a particular function," and that the briefs main function is to idea. Logos are, "so small, yet so important in branding as the contain the true essentials."




From Gillian's time working for the Guardian newspaper, she said that it built up her confidence. She had a lot of independence with her designs as she wasn't set parameters by her contractor, which is great for any designers. The crucial part though is to always meet deadlines, you can't get too precious all the time, you just need to learn to believe in yourself and what you design will be something good.

When she discussed her job illustrating for a restaurant magazine, it made me think of the restaurant I work at and how in the future I could consider a project that incorporates food and service as I have always taking a professional attitude to part time work and can get passionate about it sometimes.

What I like about this design I found was how she create a sense of perspective with the use of empty space. Gillian will test herself in design to see how much empty space she create as the more empty space, the happier she is. The red and black create a nostalgic feeling, a warming and relaxed feeling you get on a summer night, whilst the green, a rather peaceful colour gives a bit of energy to the design due to it's contrast between the other colours.



This design she did for the London Literature Festival was supposed to be Gillian's major brief, the brief she was excited to receive. Unfortunately, the contracts used her as a, "puppet," left no room for creative input, which I find can be hard for a designer. As discussed in the freelance post in my research section, I have had experiences before whilst designing a typographical menu, the input of the contractor for me to add lots of images and overload with colour made my design lose it's aesthetics that could have made it a strong design.




Another example of industry issues is the problem of a designer being the middle person between the publisher and author. Everyone has a different design perspective which therefore causes conflict and doesn't allow the true experienced designer to work freely.




I wasn't very impressed with Gillian's presentation as a whole. At the start, it was difficult at times to understand what work was hers and what was from her inspirations. She would also spend too long one side, which would being to lose my interest, whilst other times she would flip through them too fast.

Last pieces of advice we were told, promotion of your work is very important as the industry is so competitive, its so easy to lose a job. The best way of promotion is an online portfolio. Also use your promotion to show that you are trying new stuff to keep interest going.

The content of the presentation was overall extremely helpful as Gillian provided us with plenty of advice for working in industry and what to expect. The main thing I learnt though is that simplicity, idea, function and confidence are the most important qualities for a successful designer to understand.