29.06.09
Everyone starts somewhere

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There’s rather entertaining mini-exhibition that D&AD have put together where a host of well known designers and ad-men have dug out slightly dodgy early work, with accompanying captions. It’s called Everyone starts somewhere and is on show at New Blood this week, or online here.

Johnson banks’ Michael Johnson was asked to find something early and embarassing from the back on his plan chest: here’s an over-worked agency brochure from the late 80s, followed by some choice exampes from other designers.

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Michael Johnson

Prior to working at Sedley Place I had been out of England for a couple of years, and returned to a design community in the thrall of the new typography from the likes of the Why Nots and Octavo. I fancied myself as an expressive typographer too, and set about turning what should have been a straightforward brochure into a typo-tour-de-force. Only snag was this was pre-computer and every page had to be meticulously hand rendered, then typeset, then re-rendered and re-set. It took four months, and eventually Sedley Place fired me. Can’t blame them really, in retrospect.

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Mark Farrow

This was my first sleeve for Factory Records. I used to work in a really cool record shop on a Saturday. Everybody involved in the Manchester music scene bought their records or just hung out there, seven-inch singles covered every inch of wall space, it was an inspiration in itself. I became friends with the boys who eventually became the Stockholm Monsters so it was natural for them to ask me to design their sleeve when they signed to Factory. At last a Factory Records sleeve, I cannot explain how much I wanted to design one. The type came from an old book I found in the studio where I was a junior in my day job. There wasn’t an entire alphabet but there were all the characters I needed. Much photocopying and paste up followed, then it was down to Granada studios to nervously present my idea to Tony Wilson. I told him I couldn’t decide which colour I preferred, he suggested I do both, how very Factory. I’ve kind of expected that attitude of every client I have had since.

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Nick Bell

Inspired by the Dutch graphic design of the time, this overwrought theatre poster was my very first commission on going it alone after a year working for Siobhan Keaney in 1988. Without a budget, I shot the image myself using the flat of a friend (Howard Milton’s sister) whom I used to cat-sit for in Battersea. The limited wide-angle on my lens meant I was balanced precariously on top of a stepladder. The name of the playwright ‘Yeats’ on a piece of board was wired to the tripod (also on top of the step-ladder) and reflected into the lens by a small vanity mirror I was holding close to the camera – it also reflected in the venetian blinds. Photoshop children don’t know they are born! The model was one of my flatmates – we shared a dilapidated hovel in post-boom busted south London.

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Simon Waterfall

When I should have been eating sweets and cutting class to go down the Arcades in Brighton, me and my bezzer mate started a Computer Games company, called Silicon Genetic Ltd. It sounded important and professional but this was an age when everyone worked out of their garage and bedrooms, swapping “tapes” in the playground and buying magazines each month for any tips on how to make these plastic boxes work. We played and later programmed games for Commodore 64 and Amiga, they were the most expensive things we had ever owned and treated them like altars where we would over time, sacrifice our social skills, childhood and skin complexion. We had lunch meetings in the Grand Hotel in our school uniforms and eventually had an office with about nine staff, this is one of the rare few games we made that actually went to market, and one of the few that sold! We were sixteen.

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