ColourSpaces

This week ColourSpaces have got one the latest rising stars in the world of lettering and illustration - Glasgow’s very own - Steven Bonner. A couple of years ago, the veteran in the design industry has decided to branch out to set up on his own. Needless to say, he has never looked back. Now Steven’s work crops up everywhere on magazines covers and editorials,  ad campaigns and animation spots; all seamlessly tied up together in elegant and strong expressive signature style. This has made him a sought after creative with countless companies and art directors. Here’s your chance to find out how he does it all.  

Striking simplicity of your images is becoming quickly your signature - however no two images follow the same aspects. How do you tackle every new brief?

I try to approach work by thinking of an idea or a feel that will be appropriate for that particular project, and if that means trying something new, then that’s fine. A lot of it comes from my years as an agency based graphic designer, where I was always taught to look at each brief individually. While it’s good to have a recognisable style – and it’s really encouraging that you think my work carries my signature – it’s equally important not to let my individual aesthetic dictate the solution to the point where I’m just indulging myself, and not considering the end user.

What type of briefs do you tend to get from clients - open or prescriptive?

A bit of both really. Sometimes clients will ask for something similar to existing work which is fine as it gives me a head start on the look and feel they’re trying to achieve, and I can work with confidence that I’m going to be able to hit it quite quickly for them. On the other side, I love it when clients ask for something I haven’t done before or let me come up with concepts myself and I’m lucky that I get quite a lot of clients who trust me to do something I haven’t previously shown. Maybe it goes back to the variation of styles in my work and gives them confidence I can pull things off. Whatever, I’m happy they do, I like to keep pushing myself to learn new things.  

After many years at design agency, what was the deciding point for setting off to do freelance illustration?

I’d been doing some illustration on the side for fun and found that I started picking up enquiries here and there. It got to the point where I was working full time in the agency then coming home and doing another full time job illustrating which I physically couldn’t keep doing, so I chose to leave the agency and go it alone. To be honest, it wasn’t a difficult choice, as I hadn’t been enjoying life at the agency for a few years and was feeling ready to move on. Happily for me, it’s turned out well so far. I still keep a foot in the old life though and pick up the odd bit of branding and traditional design work now and again, as well as doing some freelancing for agencies in Glasgow and Edinburgh. I don’t think I’d ever want to leave traditional graphic design behind altogether as it makes for some nice variation.

You’ve recently moved into a new studio space in Glasgow? What were the main reasons to switch from home-based studio?

Cabin fever! After two years working from home I was getting incredibly bored of not seeing anyone all day and missed the community side of the industry. Another consideration was being closer to clients by being based in the city, but to be honest most of my clients are either based in London or in the US so that part of it doesn’t really make a huge difference.

Right now I’m working in a great little place in Glasgow called Toad’s Caravan with a group of independents and freelancers who all have different disciplines. It’s meant I can build working relationships with animators, directors, 3D artists as well as other illustrators and designers, and opened me up to new ways of working.

There’s also the feeling of going to work now, rather than just wandering into another room in my house to work. The journey to and from work really bookends my day and I find I’m much more more productive in less hours now. After working 12 hour days, six or seven days a week for a couple of years, I’m finally getting my weekends back. Bliss.

Is there a big change in your workload now that you’re represented by an illustration agent?

Not really in terms of volume, but the level of client that I have access to is greater now. Apart from the odd quiet month here and there I’ve been really fortunate to be kept pretty much consistently busy since I went independent, but I find that having an agent does give me more options and streamlines things a bit more as I don’t have to directly deal with contracts, trying to get feedback or chasing payments as much.

I had another agent before, but as nice as they were, things just never quite gelled creatively when I was with them. Now I work with Jelly who have been instrumental in promoting the type of work I really enjoy doing to potential clients. I think they’ve helped me focus what I want to do a lot.

Software manufacturers bring out new application packages on regular basis, but how important are the new features in terms of adding to creativity?

It’s all money-making isn’t it? If it’s a genuinely useful feature then great, I’m all for learning new things but sometimes I get the feeling some features are added just to bulk out an otherwise light upgrade. I only just upgraded to Adobe CS5 from CS3, but if I’m honest, had I not been buying a new mac I probably wouldn’t have bothered. I tend to have a process I use for my work so use the same  tools regularly. Now and again a feature will come out that I can use to refine my workflow but I think the image comes from the idea, not the tool.

Drastic majority of design blog posts these days get attacked from army of anonymous haters, picking things apart for no obvious reason. What’s your opinion on ‘creative negativity’ of today?

It’s going to happen due to the anonymous nature of it all. People like to build things up to break them down then hide behind their anonymity. I really don’t pay much attention to it as I’ve no time for people who only want to knock other folk. Design and illustration are subjective things, there’s no real right or wrong, you either like something or you don’t. There’s no need to be a hater. If someone’s work has technical issues, be constructive and help them out, but why cause grief? I don’t get it.

You’re coming from graphic design and print background, do you find yourself making conscious planned decisions about colours and lay outs or do you let free and go with the flow?

My colours are always really simple and always have been, but that’s mainly because I’m colourblind and utterly crap at choosing good schemes. I can tell you what a colour id from the Pantone number, but don’t ask me to pick it out from sight! I’m so jealous of guys like yourself, Ben the Illustrator and Matt Taylor who seem to effortlessly create these wonderfully bright and interesting colour palettes. So so jealous.

As far as layout goes, I do consciously use grids for balance and positioning and always have done. I come from one of the last groups of students who were taught to do layouts by hand with rub-down letters and technical pens for camera ready artwork, so measuring everything out was par for the course. Even though everything was computer based long before I started working, the lessons stayed with me, even when I moved over to illustration. Saying that though, you need to know the rules in order to know when to break them. Sometimes designs that are mathematically perfect can just look wrong, so you have to trust your eye. A little chaos never hurts!

The tutorials you’ve recently written received great response from the readers, but how do you see current tutorial culture?

I like that fact things are so open now, and I’ve learnt things myself that I didn’t know – mainly technical things, but it’s great to know that if I’m stuck with what a tool can do, someone out there has detailed its use somewhere.

What worries me though, is the amount of time I’ve seen hobbyists out there copying a few tutorials and trying to launch a career off the back of them. It’s a bit insulting. To me, tutorials are there to teach a tool’s use, or a certain process, not simply how to make a particular image. They need to understand that tutorial images are just a ‘serving suggestion’, and that the ideas and individuality are what makes a career.

Increasingly, we see a lot of infringement of intellectual properly in design world. Do you feel more needs to be done to educated people not to steal others work?

Definitely, it hasn’t really happened to me much but I get really annoyed when I see people like Gemma Correll getting ripped off left, right and centre. Like tutorials, it all comes down to people understanding that ideas are our business and by stealing them, they’re taking away our livelihood.

What is your proudest freelance moment so far?

Hopefully there’ll be lots of mini goals achieved as I go but actually making the jump to do it in the first place, then finding out I could be more successful on my own than by doing it for someone else was satisfying.

——————-

More info and Steven’s work:
www.stevenbonner.com 

——————-

Interviewed for ColourSpaces by Radim Malinic