GRAPHIC INSPIRATIONS

SHANE WALTER: FOUNDER, ONEDOTZERO

REBEL WITH A CAUSE

I never went to college unfortunately, because I didn't want to go where the people at school were going. I didn't know what I wanted to do - but I knew what I didn't want to do, and I made sure I didn't do that; that distinction was important. So the first thing I did was make sure I knew about desktop publishing.

FIRST STEPS

The first proper job I had was in magazines. It was a newsletter about computers, and the director left and said that if I did her job I could actually earn some money. I took the newsletter to magazine status. I was involved with the sales and marketing side as well. Computers were taking off and people were chucking money at it, but I was 20 and I felt like I was 45, so I stopped it.

JOBLESS WONDER

I didn't have a job to go to; I was interested in film but couldn't afford a camera, so they wouldn't let me on the access course. I became a stills photographer. The girl I was living with had a small theatre company and I helped out backstage, and did some stills photography there. Soon I was doing all the publicity. I started my own theatre company, which spawned The League of Gentlemen. We were quite progressive - we used music and video; we worked with operas; we worked with Scanner in 1993. I learnt about lighting. It didn't take me into film, I but did learn about branding and PR.

ONEDOT YEAR ZERO

All of these things were great, but didn't make me any money. I got into multimedia selling software, but the guy who set that up then sold the company and started a new one, and asked me to start an online magazine. So I became a multimedia producer - worked a lot with technology companies, a lot of our clients were in the game industry. All of that informed onedotzero. Actually, at one time I was a media producer, had a theatre company and started onedotzero.

FESTIVAL SEASON

Ten years on, the festival is still at the heart of our activities. I see myself as a producer rather than just a consumer. Production has always been an important part of onedotzero, but when we started all the stuff we wanted to see wasn't out there. People like Tomato, Chris Cunningham - Andy Martin put out their first video at the festival - these people were known in other areas. We've commissioned short films, animations and recently we've been involved in installations.

TOUR FEVER

Over these ten years we've charted the development of that medium, and picked out some key developments and key talents. We have a national and international remit; we’ve been to 65 cities around the world. There's a huge audience for this - I like the fact we haven't always gone to the obvious places.

MAKING IT BIG

Onedotzeroindustries came from the knowledge we had in this area; people started asking for information and phone numbers. We were getting unhappy about how they were treated, so we represented some of them. People started asking us for pitches. Sony approached us: we wrote the brief, then pitched it and ended up producing it. We were asked by big bands like U2 and George Michael to help with their onstage visuals. It's still about pushing boundaries, doing something different.

INTO THE FUTURE

Collaboration is the key to Web 2.0. I think your value now is in how you share your ideas. If you're good at having ideas, you should have another one. Be excited about what you want to do. I know people don't always have the option of choosing, but you've got to do at least some of what you love.

EbOY: BERLIN-BASED DESIGN COLLECTIVE

VIRTUAL REALITY

We all work in different places, but we iChat every day. We meet once a month in real life - we are very much a virtual office. We first started to exchange ideas by collecting and exchanging postcards; then came the fax machine. We worked on computers as well and printed it out and faxed it.

FAX OFF

We used to design for a big design company - that was the time of the fax machines. Then we started doing stuff only for the screen, and we worked with Photoshop. We put it on a diskette, and gave it to our friends and hoped they'd copy it. It was like a magazine; you could click through pages, so it was an easy way to publish - no costs. Then we started to do stuff together.

START SMALL

We did stuff for small companies doing posters and letterheads, but decided not to show that on the Internet. We decided it would stand on its own. We started with the personal and it became commercial after. It just happened. We had a lot of jobs in the company we worked for and outside, like adverts for our local beer house. We were asked by advertising agencies to concentrate on something - we didn't go out looking for an agent or anything.

GUNS 'N' GIRLS

We stuck to doing guns and girls and things we liked, for ourselves, which we displayed on the website. We only showed what we really liked, so clients would only ask for that. One of our first projects was in Pico - the idea was to make pictures that could fit easily on the site. We do pictures like you do Lego. The most fun isn't doing the pictures but the characters. The city is one of our most important pieces: when we started doing art together, it was just natural. We all work at fitting things into the city so in the end it’s an EbOY product.

SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE

Because we use the same perspective in the layout, we can use the same parts. So we started an archive. It's like building your own toy shelf. When we finish a product we put them in different collections - flags, signs, and so on. Research is one of the most important things: supermarkets are a great place to find things. When we travel the first place we visit is the supermarket.

EXPLOSIVE MAGAZINE

Our main jobs are for magazines. Last year we did an illustration on Web 2.0 for Fortune magazine, which had a lot of interest when we posted it on our site. We are also looking to make real figures, with Kid Robot - it's always nice to see 2D work formed in real life.

BIG IN JAPAN

We had our designs on t-shirts and bags and other clothes for Paul Smith. We went over to Japan and they’'re mad for Paul Smith over there. It was a really crazy place. It's a dream for any designer to be on all these things - we just designed the images, not the clothes. It's a worldwide market; you have a lot more competitors, but also you have more clients.

BOB SANDERSON: LONE WOLF GRAPHIC DESIGNER

EARLY YEARS

I studied at St Martins, then went to Amsterdam and got a job at a music magazine. There was a brief spell there before I was offered a job with Designers Republic. I was quite wary when I started the job, as my work was nothing like theirs. I think they were looking to change the face of what they were doing. From there I moved to London and worked with Big Active and Wein, then set up Sanderson Bob shortly after. I’ve got studio space with some friends and we work loosely under that banner.

STUDIO PEOPLE

We do a lot of work in the studio, which is important. When you're doing a brief, it's exciting thinking about all the thousands of different people you can call - that's why the job's so interesting. It's important to craft your own way of thinking and working, not point in the same direction as everyone else. You need to bring people in all the time to freshen it up.

MULTI-PLATFORM

There's so much you can do to get your message out there these days; not just a poster, but something interactive. Sanderson Bob is myself; I know I'm not great at moving image, so I'm not going to take time struggling with it. It's a case of talking to those that are trained in it, asking people who have knowledge to give it life. Being outside this can be an advantage: you can think outside any known restrictions.

LOVING IT

You can tell if someone enjoys what they're doing, and you're not trying to force it on a brief. People love that; it has a quality to it. You can dip into it, but no-one should be telling you what to design. It depends on who you're speaking to. I've done government stuff where people don't understand what you're doing; it's too much, so you have to tone down your portfolio. Someone like Nike is more interesting. They're creatives: it's just a case of showing them that there's a little twist or spice - not to scare them, just to say you want to push it as far as you can take it.

LABEL ABLE

My own label work is a great thing for me. At the moment we've got some jumpers we're working on. It's good thinking about side projects; you can do what you want but take tiny steps. It's a form of R+D. You can't just jump into it; you need to work with people to get that real knowledge.

TAKE YOUR TIME

I think it's important to craft something, even if it takes months and months - you can tell the difference. It does go massively wrong sometimes; you just have to keep delving into your pot and you'll get to something. I just keep a massive library.

WAIT WATCHING

You don't have to wait for these people. Do it yourself, and you don't have to beat these people. Don't think they're the golden touch to beat; there's no reason why in ten years' time your dream might not take over. For me it's always new - there are endless possibilities. Never stay the same all the way through.

LINKS

www.onedotzero.com
www.eboy.com
www.sandersonbob.com

Text: Dan Davies