From the pages of my notebooks - Ideas that got the chop.

How Graphic Design became just another service industry.

Computers have changed everything but then again you didn’t need me to tell you that. Everything is quicker, faster and easier. Better is something though I’m not so sure about.

We can now tailor everything to the way we like it. This is particularly true of commissioning design. You don’t like the way your designer used a tasteful typeface? Get them to change it. They left blank space where the layout can breathe? Fill that fucker with words of how great your company is, after all that’s what your clients love.

Never mind the fact that the professional, trained designer you have chosen to execute your project has advised you against it. Simply tell them you could do it in MS Paint yourself just as easily but you don’t have the time.

Before computers though the designer crafted a mockup, clearly setting aside an area for text, a site for logos, image area etc. Clients did not have the ability to do any of this badly themselves and they trusted the person they hired. After all, hadn’t they sketched it out in front of them and agreed on everything. Design stood for something – it was part of the process of printing. It wasn’t just someone who could operate a computer that looks vaguely familiar but is clearly running a different and daunting operating system.

Everything was agreed before artworking began. Designers didn’t have to ‘make my logo bigger’ after the final pdf proof. They also told clients wat typeface would be good (highly specialised knowledge in those days) they told them full colour printing was out of their league but you could do something really eye-catching by doing ‘x’.

At least nowadays we designers have our ‘cliquey’ design sites where we can log on and faithfully trot out whatever style is the current plat-du-jour.

(I have just been asked to remove a blue sky image and replace it with ‘something financial’ for a financial assistance brochure. That’s what the reader wants – penury instead of trouble-free horizons)

What I call my private work is painting. This leaves me with two issues to resolve.

Firstly, They are not paintings. They may never be, or they might be. They are more like wall mounted sculptural pieces, like mounting archaeological relics. They are assemblages but that sounds too contrived. They are constructions but some are barely ‘made’. Mostly they involve cutting and re-building on a micro-scale.

Secondly, I don’t know why I make them. I haven’t pursued with any great vigour an outlet of a public nature. I am not always sure what I wish to say with my ‘pieces’. I think that far off in my mind I see myself as an artist/creator in tandem with and beyond my design work. Even though that sounds faintly ridiculous. I think I would like to spend my latter years creating beautiful works of simple complexity and have that define me, at least partially.