Tell us a little bit about your background?

I studied graphic design and illustration in the National College of Art in Dublin, Ireland. While i was there I was always trying to get work in magazines and other bits and pieces here and there. After college I ended up traveling around and about in Asia for two years before moving to the UK in 2004 to work for the London based animation Studioaka. I left there to work again on smaller more creative freelance projects. I illustrate for several magazines and newspapers I have been making hand-made prints and designs for clothing and stationery with the fair trade company People Tree.

Who are your main inspirations? / What are your influences? 

I love Indian madhupani folk painting, and in fact most Asian folk art has something ornate and very beautiful about it, and its so different to what we are used to seeing. I used to be crazy about Rousseau’s work until I saw a book on Bengali painting which just blew me away I’m living in London at the moment and I visit museums pretty regularly. I’ve kind of used this for the work I have been doing for People Tree.
 
How do you keep motivated and interested?
I travel a lot and don’t work too hard!!
 
Do you have any new projects coming up that you can tell us about?

At the moment I am in Korea working on a childrens picture book that I wrote also.

Its about an owl that gets lost and makes friends with a squirrel.
 
Any words you would like to pass it to new comer designers?

I remember I saw Tomato (London based design group ) give a talk about design and they said that as a designer ‘you get the work that you do’, which i think is a really good piece of advice.
If you start out doing fashion illustrations and have nothing more than fashion illustrations in your portfolio or on your site you’ll find it hard to get hired to do editorial pieces.
Art directors are naturally unwilling to take a risk so you’ll find that the only way to get out of that side of the industry is to take a bit of time off and create the work yourself.

The best thing to do is to work in your spare time and find a way of working that you like and enjoy and then take that to the art directors.
A friend of mine had an agent for Children’s book illustration. She advised him to produce work in particular styles that she thought would sell, so he followed her advice but he still found it hard to get work and he didn’t enjoy doing work in a forced style. It wasn’t until he produced a body of his own work that he felt comfortable with did he start getting serious work.
If your work is unique you definitely will get better and more interesting work.
Having said all that probably the most important thing to do is get your work out there, I went to college with a guy who does really really great work but he is quite shy about showing his work off and as a result hasn’t got half as much work as he should be getting.

What is your most favorite commercial design of our own?

Im quite proud of the recent cover I did for Luce Irigaray’s book ‘sharing the world’. Also one image I did last year for the guardian. (how to turn)

Name some designers you like the most?

jonathan harris
john maeda
nexus
andreas pohancenik
studioaka
yugo nakamura
grant orchard