Si Scott is an illustrator best known for his amazingly detailed and elaborate typography and decorative hand-drawn renderings of animals. His work has a unique style of it’s own and his reputation has earned him an impressive client list including Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Channel 4, Converse, GAP, Hugo Boss, Vogue, Wallpaper Magazine… The list goes on. He’s also a visiting lecturer at Leeds College of Art & Design and has exhibited his work at various institutions around the world including Tokyo, New York, Brazil and Sydney.

We’ve been big fans of his work for some time now and are very pleased to have him on board as part of our Ten Questions series.

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“Sometimes it simply doesn’t matter how good the brief is, how good your idea is or how well the project seems to be going. Design is a creative pursuit and definitively ‘right’ answers simply don’t exist. To design – or do anything creative – is a practice in asking questions, trying things out and exploring uncharted territory. Attempting new approaches and new ways of thinking are a part of being a creative person. This experimentation can lead to brilliant, maybe even groundbreaking results. But not always. Unfortunately, sometimes you just have to concede that what you’re trying to do, simply doesn’t work. By no means an easy thing to accept, the fact is that attempting new things won’t always result in success. Saul Bass knew this… Keep reading…

David Foldvari is a London-based illustrator. His dark, distinctive (and often very funny) style will be recognisable to many from featuring weekly in the Guardian and Observer. His illustrations have been
regularly featured alongside articles by columnists such as Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Stewart Lee.
Alongside his editorial work, David spent a large portion of last year working on the ‘Dickens Dark London’ series for the Museum of London and is now in the midst of illustrated book about the life of Picasso, a project for Laurence King.

He was kind enough to take some time out of his day to contribute his answers to our Ten Questions.

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Computers these days are amazing. With the right software and a little bit of know-how it’s never been easier to whip up any ridiculous image you have in your head, and make it a reality for all the world to see. If it doesn’t look quite as good as you’d hoped, maybe add a load of drop shadows, lighting effects and any other number of gimmicky Photoshop filters until it does? Although, after a while you begin to realise that perhaps the reason it ain’t that great, is because of the idea in the first place. If the foundations aren’t strong enough, the house will fall down. A truly great idea can stand on it’s own without the need to be supported by effects and decoration.

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Every designer has one client who gets a bit neglected. One who all other clients are treated as a priority over. The projects for these less important souls invariably get pushed to the bottom of the pile in favour of work for the ‘special’ people. So who are these mistreated folks, and why are they letting us get away with treating them so badly? Well, they’re ourselves. You and I. Try as we might, the vast majority of designers have a tendency to postpone creating or updating their own design work in favour of spending time on ‘proper’ clients.

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“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody”
Bill Cosby

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To state the obvious; any designer worth their salt wants to do great design work. Work that can stand the test of time. Work that gets noticed. Work that they can be proud of and get recognition for.

The only real way of knowing that the work we’re producing is good, is when others tell us so. Design is a strange, subjective thing and most designers at one time or another have had to deal with a concept they thought was brilliant being rejected on the grounds that it simply wasn’t all that good. For a piece of design work to be really good, other people have to agree with you we’re afraid.

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Steven Bonner is a designer and illustrator based in sunny sunny Scotland. His work is largely focused on beautiful illustrative typography and we’ve been big fans of what he does for some time now. He has worked for a range of clients including Audi, The British Heart Foundation, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Diesel, Nike, The Scottish Government, William Hill and many others. Refusing to stick to a single style, each brief is approached from a completely different angle, the only common factor being that everything he does looks bloody amazing.

He kindly agreed to give us an insight into his world by answering our Ten Questions.

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Creative briefs are, by their very nature, problematic. They are a challenge set out to designers – ‘Here is a problem, solve it’. Sometimes the solution is blindingly obvious, sometimes it’s a little more elusive. Every now and then, the answer simply seems to be impossible to pin down. At these times, the best approach is often to forget what you know, ignore the supposed parameters and do something that doesn’t obey convention. Something you haven’t been asked to do and perhaps even something which strays into forbidden territory. Taking these creative risks is easy to talk about, incredibly difficult to actually do and the majority of the time will create the most interesting results.

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At Mat Dolphin, we mess about. We work hard on client work, day-to-day admin, finances, quoting, invoicing and endlessly hunting for new business, but an important part of the way we work involves playing, experimenting and trying out things we find interesting for the sake of trying them. The process is often as important as the final result and the fact that these experiments have no real ‘point’ (in terms of financial gain), is the thing that makes them worth doing.

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Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to pen romantic verses for our Valentines poster giveaway. We had a huge number of submissions to choose from – some beautiful and creative, some ridiculous and funny, quite a few creepy and vaguely worrying, but all very much appreciated.

We’ve gone through the lot and are pleased to announce the following lucky winners. Our judging process was pretty simple and based on one simple question; which ones did we like the most? Apologies to those who contributed work and weren’t chosen – we would love for all of you to be winners but there could only be a lucky few, and (in no particular order) here they are…

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** UPDATE ** The competition has now closed, we’ve been overwhelmed with a huge number of brilliant entries, and will be announcing the winners soon!

The time has finally come to announce the details of our Valentines poster giveaway! Let’s get it on…

If you’d like the chance to receive a copy of our A2 Valentines print delivered your door anywhere in the world, all you need to do is get in the mood for romance and follow these three simple steps:

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This week see’s the annual return of the corporate, manufactured and over-priced celebration of all things love – St. Valentines day has arrived!

We decided to get involved with the romance and produced some posters, which we’re planning to give away as a token of selfless love. If you keep an eye on our Twitter feed on 14th February 2013, you’ll witness the grand unveiling and be in with a chance of having one of the beautiful, love-themed A2 prints sent directly to your door. Free of charge. Don’t say we never do anything for you.

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Since long before starting Mat Dolphin we’ve been hugely inspired by Non-Format. The two man studio is run by Jon Forss and Kjell Ekhorn and the work they produce is beautiful, interesting, boundary pushing and, at times, a bit weird. The pair have created a style that is both completely unique and instantly recognisable for a pretty impressive client list. Since establishing the company in London in 2000, the pair have gone on to work with the likes of Nike, Coca-Cola, K-Swiss, Gap, Sony, Adobe, EMI, Orange, Rick Owens, Nokia and The Economist as well as a number of small independent record labels – music packaging being one of the things for which they’re best known. Now based in Minneapolis (Jon) and his native Norway (Kjell), their incredible typography, design and art direction has spawned a host of imitators but by the time most people have caught on, they’re already two steps ahead.

They were kind enough to spend some time answering our Ten Questions. Here’s what they had to say.

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On this blog (and elsewhere to anyone else who will listen) we constantly bang on about the importance of solving a brief. We highly value the need to communicate the message of client to their target audience. We feel it’s a vital part of the design process and a key part of being a designer. However, as with all creative pursuits, there is always room for adding a small part of ourselves into our work. Authorship is a huge part of what we do and making the work ours is part of what makes it a passion, rather than a bog standard job. Solving the problem in an appropriate, thoughtful and creative way is obviously essential and should be the primary focus, but a designer injecting some of their own personality into the work can go a long way. The esteemed Mr Wim Crouwel knows the deal…

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Our Ten Questions series has been absent for a long time. Too long, baby.

With this in mind, we wanted to make sure the first of 2013 was an absolute belter, so we got in touch with Marta Cerdà Alimbau. A Barcelona-based illustrator and designer, her work is largely focused on illustrative lettering and her eye-catching, highly decorative work has attracted clients such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Ray Ban, Penguin Books, Zoo York, Panasonic, Virgin and many others.

Since setting up her own studio in 2008, she has developed a visually rich and distinctive style of her own. We’re huge fans of her work and are delighted to get her involved in the series. See what she had to say below.

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A recent article by Michael Bierut is currently causing a bit of a stir over on Design Observer. The piece ponders various aspects of graphic design criticism and raises a number of questions about the merits and pitfalls of online commentators appointing themselves as a critics. Bierut warns this continual increase risks becoming simply a ‘spectator sport’ rather than a constructive and productive means for comment and debate.

The lengthy piece is as well written as one would expect from Bierut and the points it raises have attracted a number of comments. Design industry heavyweights such as Rick Poynor, Marian Bantjes, Armin Vit and Paula Scher have got involved to share their opinions on the matter.

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With love

Phil and Tom

It’s Christmas yet again! How did that happen so quickly?

We’ve had an amazing 2012 and although we seem to say this every year, it’s been quicker, busier and better than we could’ve imagined. We’ve worked with some amazing people and been involved in some projects we feel truly lucky to have been a part of. With this in mind we would like to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to all our clients, suppliers, supporters, followers, haters, friends and family. Merry Christmas to all of you!

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Recently, the University Of California unveiled a new logo. The general reaction in the studio was relatively muted. Clearly they’ve attempted to update their previous mark – pictured below – with a more contemporary look. The result, whilst certainly not horrendous, is also not amazing. It’s pretty inoffensive and basically ok. It would seem that others had stronger, more negative opinions about the rebrand, and weren’t afraid to let their feelings be known.

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Designers work with clients. Clients work with designers. It’s a symbiotic relationship which can be productive, surprising, infuriating, satisfying, testing… but always interesting. If we’re honest, life without clients would be a lot easier – there would be no need for compromise, no need to adhere to deadlines and the clichéd request to ‘make the logo bigger’ wouldn’t exist. These constraints and parameters are, however, the things that differentiate what we do from other creative disciplines and should be embraced. Michael Bierut knows this only too well and sums it up neatly with an all too easily forgotten point.

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