conscious designer
By Matthew Strong
6 Aug 2007
Matthew Strong is an English freelance Graphic Designer specializing in motion design He is also a VJ in nightclubs, festivals and events across Europe.
What kind of designer are you?
I'm an off-key Broadcast Designer and VJ.
Fragile, handle with care should be on my birth certificate.
What did you want to do for a living when you were a kid?
Well, not in any order of preference : R.A.F. Pilot or R.A.F. Ground Crew Engineer, Zoo Keeper, Tramp, DJ...I really didn't understand the concept of any of these guys, I hated sports but loved art and creative things...that's all I knew.
What is it about your design work that makes your photography better? And vice versa? Where do you see parallels between the two?
Experimentation is the only solution to any problem. When I started making images, it was just holiday snaps, but I liked them, it wasn't really until I was a college, that I really just started taking more and more, to use within my design work, I liked to mix video stills with ink marks, and 35mm negs stuck down with masking tape, then scan that in, print it out, photograph it, re film the thing and then add type. None of it made sense, but what that period of creativity did was to unlock a way of seeing that freed me up to the world I wanted to see, so when I had to start making money in the commercial world of design I had a good background to build on and to become a fully equipped maker, with an artists approach, which of course causes problems, when dealing with people with smaller visions than yourself. Being a designer doesn't make me a good photographer, but it sure helps, I'd like to say that i have a fast processing brain for editing and rearranging the images around me to crop them in my viewfinder, and a huge urge to imprint them onto film. Design is communication on many levels and making photography also communicates with people, images have been argued that they can be more powerful than words. For example of what its like to be tuned into so many interests, recently I saw a piece of moving image work, that was so amazing I was like, how am I ever going to think of something like that let along make the thing, it must have taken ages, it literally had me rewind it and watch it again 3 or 4 times, then I saw a photo of the recent floods in India, and it pulled the strings on the otherside of my heart, and it must have taken only a few seconds for that photographer to see, aim focus and push the shutter, and the image was around the world in seconds, and it is that current state of technology that we are in right now and right here, which is what drives me to do, make and to see, as much as I can.
What do you find most challenging about your work?
Finding the projects that I really want to do, getting clients to go with my ideas and to find people on the same frequency, getting people to believe in my work, and seeing projects through to the bitter end, and after that the satisfaction of the reaction of the people for whom I make these things for, I don't make work for other designers, what's the point in that ? I make work for people from any background and age, and if the people don't like my work, it doesn't matter really because its come from inside me, and if a project satisfies me, then that is the key. At the end of the day its just design, I'm not that important to the world and anyway there will always be another way to express yourself, sooner or later.
Do you have design heroes? Photography heroes?
Film makers more than still photographers as a visionary inspiration, have always inspired me, I don't like going to the obvious sources of inspiration it makes me uncomfortable, but of course I'd be lying if I say that I don't look. I just don't see the point in always looking at the same things that millions of others have already looked at, to follow the herd is not me, I try to keep fresh, as that's what its all about, it's hard you know, with the already overcrowded creative industry to really stand out and to stick to what you believe in, not what the guy that is paying you want's. My heroes are the ones that say what they want, make what they want and how they want and aren't afraid to go to point D, before even reaching B, but will end up at A anyway.
Name some unexpected sources of inspiration you've had.
The ever changing playground around me, and my mind.
Do you have any regular habits/exercises that make you a better designer? Photographer ?
To keep trying, to keep strong, to keep healthy, to keep wise, to keep some ideas back for own amusement, to keep looking up, to keep walking on by, to keep dreaming.
