Grant Gilbert

Grant Gilbert studied a national diploma in Graphics at Stockport college going on to study at degree level at the UCE in Birmingham. After graduating he worked for 3 years at Planet 24 starting on the bottom rung. Thereafter he worked for Channel 4 again for 3 years. He has had experience with title sequences and promos whose work has included the rebranding of BBC 1, ITV 2, Channel 4 and Five. He owns Double G studios and went on to describe his process which involves making moodboards and detailed storyboards. He showed us powerpoint slides of his work including a channel 4 music ident which I found really interesting which involved tents with cables coming out illuminating, I thought it was extremely abstract.
Gilbert calls himself a designer but gets labelled Graphic Designer which he said he has done but it doesn't mean he he can't do motion graphics. He has eperience with logo designing/development including the More 4 logo, the sister channel of Channel 4. He went into detail about rebranding the BBC logo being influenced by past BBc logos including Abram Games' 1953 logo. He went onto say that he uses After Effects and described one of the ads he was developing for the BBC. He wanted to produce a design of people holding the BBC logo divided into seperate squares. There is a lot of development with his ideas and that things that stand out are simple and striking. I had no idea that Gilbert was involved in the hippo ident which got many complaints because of the financial cost of 1.2 million pounds. Gilbert mentioned that he has collaborated with 'Spin' a company in London and likes to paly the channels off with each other when promoting himself. He did comment that he found it difficult to work with the BBC because there was so many people to work with. Overall I found the lecture very interesting and felt that his ideas were original and inspiring.