Titanic

One of the things I remeber frm this film was the class divide between the people aboard the ill fated Titanic. But what was great was the love affair between two characters oblivious of this class system. I remember the character of Jack asking Rose what he was supposed to do with the cutlery laid out to him at the dinner table her response was "just start from the outside and work your way in" i thought was a particularly humourous moment.

Jon Pertwee

Jon Pertwee played the third characterisation of the well known 'Doctor Who'. I loved this character as a child, he was elegantly dressed and had a polite manner even in the face of adversity, overall I found the character warm.

Michael Parkinson

Michael Parkinson is someone I very much admire. I used to love watching his chat show and what stood ot to me most was his very polite, well mannered technique of interviewing guests. Hes an example of the perfect gentleman

John Steed

The character of John Steed from the TV show 'The Avengers' I think is a great character and a cult icon. The character is a gentleman, polite, well dressed wearing a suit, bowler hat and carrying an umbrella. John Steed and Emma Peel were investigators the storylines would combine spi and science fiction themes. What I liked was that Steed was able to defend himself but in subtler ways, often the character of Emma Peel would fight so there was an interesting reversal of gender stereotypes.

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.

Chris Corr

I had a correspondance last year with Christopher Corr, a travel Illustrator whos childlike style I find charming. I emailed him again for further information and this was one of his responses:

I’ve always loved painting, printmaking, drawing.
Very old fashioned forms of image making.
I enjoy seeing what’s around in current exhibitions, galleries, museums.
A lot of my work is inspired by travels that I make, places that I want to draw.
I like to make comments on life as I see it and show a world that I’d like to live in.
You can communicate with abstraction.

Gillian Blease

When Gillian Blease did a lecture last year one of the things that interested me was her fine art background and that she did a crash course in illustration. Fine art vs illustration is an issue in the industry and i was interested in her opinion on the matter. More so i was intrigued to know what her experience of fine art education was in relation to defining the meaning of it and how she sees herself.

I think the term still applies, but only within its traditional use, and mostly with regard to training. I can say I was trained in the Fine Art tradition (ie I studied the crafts of painting, architecture printmaking etc.) but if I continued to make art I would call myself a visual artist or a contemporary artist. So I think its possible to study fine art but, unless they were working in a very classical way, most artists would not use that term to describe their practice.

I used to produce lots of work for exhibitions when I was an artist. I think I struggled with the fact that the endpoint of a piece of art is generally an audience in a gallery space. I found it impossible to get away from the constant awareness of how it was going to be perceived, which always interfered with the process of making it – ie self-conciousness. What I love about illustration is that its main purpose is functional and it exists in tandem with something else usually – ie the host copy or product. It’s a real partnership of different media. It’s about making a difference in small ways as opposed to making a statement. I find it more ego-less than ‘art’ which is full of ego!