Ken is a Graphic Designer and creative lead working at 1721 Studio in Portchester, just outside Portsmouth.
Ken explained a colleague of his, who’s background was in the Illustration but had turned to Graphic Design, when illustration work hadn’t been as lucrative as needed. It’s very interesting to hear a case study where two people are working together on the same projects, with the two different backgrounds that I am researching. Ken explained to me the big difference between their initial approaches to how they start a project. The illustrator would be straight into the project with sketches with lots of visual outcomes, research and thought processes. Whereas Ken, trained as a graphic designer, would work more with words and ideas in a text based form. He would work through ideas before visual solutions even came into the thought process.
These two approaches are interesting to think about. The Illustrator, called Dave, would take a word and ping off of that with an idea, and then ping off of that with another idea and spread out from that central point. Whereas Ken, and I consider myself to be more like this, would be what he calls ‘more analytical’ (even thought he doesn’t consider himself an analytical person). This would result in maybe more avenues of progression that could be explored.
I asked him the obvious, yet understandably annoying, question of what do you think is more effective and did he ever wish he was able to work like that. The answer he gave obviously explains why it’s better to have lots of people working at an agency on one problem, because sometimes one way works well and sometimes the other does. Most of the time, both work well together and the strengths of each practise give different solutions to the problems.
I asked Ken what his opinion was on one of my original questions at the start of this project - Is it easier for an illustrator to become a graphic designer or vice visa? Ken explained that it depends on the person. He knows lots of people that have done both things, and admits that maybe it is slightly easier for a designer to learn illustration, as I am attempting. Where there is a lot more theory and strategy with graphic design, the people he knows that came from illustration don’t have this. One reason for this, Ken suggests, is that the term Graphic Design is very “broad”. There are lots of areas to specialise in, work on and get good at, and you don’t necessarily need to know all of them to do any of them.
It’s going to be very interesting to speak to Dave, Ken’s illustrator based colleague, about how he felt transitioning to graphic designer and what he feels is the ‘easiest’ path.