I started out in design a long time ago. My dad was a printer and I grew up in house that was largely given over to his letterpress workshop which was meant to be confined to the garage but had seeped into most rooms of the house. My first five years in a studio environment were before the arrival of Apple Macs. In 1989 I went to art college, and whilst studying at Central Saint Martins I began working regularly for art director Alan Aboud.
I worked with Alan and his partner Sandro for about five years on and off. Two whilst still at college and three after graduating. Their work was almost exclusively for Paul Smith, but with occasional projects coming in from elsewhere… Channel 4, Oliver Peoples, Lowe Howard Spink and others. It was a lot of fun working on Paul Smith projects and I got a lot out of it but after five years I felt I had achieved all I could there and went into other avenues. An ad agency, where I helped set up a design company under the agency’s umbrella, then on to a corporate identity specialist, then back to fashion as a creative director of brand communications.
One charcateristic defined the period between the mid nineties and the early two thousands: Companies were bought and sold, merged and relocated, or dropped into liquidation in the first recession of the new millennium. This fact, coupled with the growing domination of the digital approach, meant I began to lose my love of the once very physical and mechanical design environment. I began to gravitate towards graphics as illustration, rather than graphics as design.
Before that happened though I took one last position with a small but growing independent branding agency who had been selected to pitch for a major UK brand redesign. My previous experience with large financial brands at two of my previous companies meant I was the ideal candidate to run the project for them, as they had not done anything quite as big before. I ran the project successfully, and being in charge I was able to do things the way I believed they should be done. We worked with a tight, focussed team and we kept a very fast paced development schedule with regular client presentations. The entire re-brand was taken from pitch to concept sign off well within six months.
I felt I was happy there. Then the news came, they too were selling up to a large global parent company and as a result they were to be merged with a rival company. I decided not to remain for the merger, and instead set up a studio with a colleague from one of my previous appointments.
Together we worked mainly for the music industry, with some fashion work too. One of the first projects we pitched for required a series of linked, but essentially different illustrations. We won the pitch and I found myself creating the illustrations as well. That was in 2003, and around that time I made the decision to retire from graphic design in order to become an illustrator.
Since that time I have worked under the name Spookytim, or Studiospooky… just plain Spooky to you.
The project that allowed me to jump disciplines was the Scissor Sisters debut campaign which I art directed and illustrated. When that was finally completed, I officially retired from design and became an illustrator, running Studiospooky. I have undertaken a few design projects since that time, and lately I’ve started to get a yearning to do some more design work.
The selection of work available is not a showcase or a portfolio of my design work shown in the best possible light. Its more of a snapshot of some of the projects I was involved with in my days as a designer, for nostalgia’s sake as much as anything else. Of course, if somebody out there sees the work and feels like the might want to discuss a design project with me I’d be delighted.
The work shown is an archive of the remnants of my previous career. Things that are stuffed away in boxes or long discarded with only some old 35mm photographs taken at the time as a record of my work. Of the things I have photographed for my section, I have shot them where I found them, using available light and any available camera at the time. If they are yellowed and crumpled, marked and scratched, then that’s how I’ve shot them. Some of the work is approaching 20 years old.