Computer Arts Gallery: April 2010

Andy Cooke
Location Staffordshire, UK
Job Student/Graphic designer
Contact www.andy-cooke.com

As a final-year graphic design student, Andy Cooke says he's "obsessed with typography and process-led design. I dabbled in product design for a bit, but it didn't agree with me." He's generally more comfortable working in the digital medium: "While most of my work starts with a pencil and some paper, some letterpress type or just an idea floating in the ether, it will ultimately end up on screen where the majority of my creativity takes place."

Not that Cooke confines himself to typography, often dabbling with screenprinting - "I think it's the ultimate feeling of control over the print outcome [that I like]" - as well as graffiti. With such a range of interests, he's approaching post-uni life with gusto, having taken a placement with Saatchi, gone mural-painting with McFaul, and setting up some intern time with Studio Output among others.

Grey Matter typeface This font was "inspired by a youthful exuberance that is our own year group, in a modernistic vein. It's designed to appeal to the creative community - to be clean, fresh and playful." Cooke began by sketching out basic letterforms and designing further in Illustrator, employing "a lot of copying, pasting and moving around to see how they fit best. It took a while…"

Andy Cooke
Location Staffordshire, UK
Job Student/Graphic designer
Contact www.andy-cooke.com

As a final-year graphic design student, Andy Cooke says he's "obsessed with typography and process-led design. I dabbled in product design for a bit, but it didn't agree with me." He's generally more comfortable working in the digital medium: "While most of my work starts with a pencil and some paper, some letterpress type or just an idea floating in the ether, it will ultimately end up on screen where the majority of my creativity takes place."

Not that Cooke confines himself to typography, often dabbling with screenprinting - "I think it's the ultimate feeling of control over the print outcome [that I like]" - as well as graffiti. With such a range of interests, he's approaching post-uni life with gusto, having taken a placement with Saatchi, gone mural-painting with McFaul, and setting up some intern time with Studio Output among others.

Breakin' Even A poster for a club night, inspired, says Cooke, "by all things hipster and trendy - as society dictates, anyway - using 'in fashion' imagery of space and a triangle to attract a young, cool audience. The file size soon became such an issue that my little MacBook struggled as some of the effects mounted up. In the final designs for print, the eternal triangle shape was selected, copied out of the space image, then rotated, creating a stunning way of showing the logo."

Andy Mallalieu
Location Manchester, UK
Job Graphic designer
Contact www.maldesign.co.uk

A designer at Creative Spark, Andy Mallalieu has worked on projects for a satisfyingly diverse range of clients including Manchester United football club, Peter Kay's official website and Lily Allen. He graduated from Leeds University before joining the company, and now hopes to branch out with both his own site, Maldesign, and a planned new shop, DAAM Stuff, "selling cool stuff for cool kids." He says he loves "Family Guy, Lomography, Man City, Converse, Tarantino, doughnuts, my better half, Glastonbury, the smell of print, vinyl toys, Bombay Bicycle Club, Magma books, Pantone 012, Rankin and Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock. Meanwhile, I love to hate traffic jams, block foil, Southern Comfort, Call of Duty and New York City."

Untitled A collaboration with stylist Jess Stebbings and photographers Jon Shard and Gary Steer. "We all got together to create two pieces to showcase our individual skills to potential employers," Mallalieu explains. "We did two shoots - one with Jon and one with Gary - then the shots were passed to me to add the final touches. It was a nice piece to work on, as having no client at the end of it meant no restrictions on what we could do. If only we could do these jobs all the time and get paid…"

Andy Mallalieu
Location Manchester, UK
Job Graphic designer
Contact www.maldesign.co.uk

A designer at Creative Spark, Andy Mallalieu has worked on projects for a satisfyingly diverse range of clients including Manchester United football club, Peter Kay's official website and Lily Allen. He graduated from Leeds University before joining the company, and now hopes to branch out with both his own site, Maldesign, and a planned new shop, DAAM Stuff, "selling cool stuff for cool kids." He says he loves "Family Guy, Lomography, Man City, Converse, Tarantino, doughnuts, my better half, Glastonbury, the smell of print, vinyl toys, Bombay Bicycle Club, Magma books, Pantone 012, Rankin and Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock. Meanwhile, I love to hate traffic jams, block foil, Southern Comfort, Call of Duty and New York City."

Electric Boutique This illustration was originally created for a night at Manchester-based club Area51. "It was used on promotional flyers, posters and online, and also recently featured in De Fish, a Belgian magazine showcasing the work of young people."

Kyle Bibby
Location Leeds, UK
Job Graphic designer
Contact www.kylebibby.co.uk

Growing up on the Isle of Man, Bibby later moved to Leeds to study graphic design at the College of Art, and now lives there as he pursues his career. He specialises in brand identity and print design, but likes to think his work is more significant than just a few logos. "In my opinion graphic design does not exist in isolation, and I believe it is the responsibility of graphic designers to consider the implications of the message as opposed to just the presentation of the message," he explains. "Ultimately, we should hold ourselves accountable for the products, services and ideas we promote."

To that end Bibby prefers to work for small companies, charities, activists, education organisations and others who "do what they do because they are more passionate about making a difference than making money." Such organisations include the One World Centre and a number of groups that aim to dispel negative myths about asylum seekers in the UK.

2010-2011 Prospectus The prospectus for the Leeds College of Art, a collaboration with Merlin Mason with photography by Adrian Ray. "We attempted to make the content more student-focused [as compared to previous years] by using photos of students alongside their quotes, and used what we considered to be a slightly more dynamic grid and ordering of pages."

Catherine Grossrieder
Location London, UK
Job Illustrator
Contact www.cathlove.com

CathLove, as Catherine Grossrieder prefers to be called, can claim a truly cosmopolitan background: "I hail from Hong Kong, but I'm of Thai and Swiss heritage and currently live in east London." Her BA in Visual Communications, meanwhile, was gained at the University of Newcastle in Australia. But CathLove doesn't rely on familiar ancestral themes for her inspiration, citing contemporary urban culture, the surreal, and vintage cartoons as her main interests. Her images have an emphasis on strong female figures, as well as more diverse elements such as the 'fake nail' culture, kebab shops and pitbulls.

"My favourite subjects include consumerism and impermanence, the notion that nothing really lasts in life," she adds. "It's for my own enjoyment that I create engaging visual feasts for viewers." Indeed, she dropped her search for a graphic design job once she realised how much fun she was having as an artist, although concedes that this is a much tougher route to follow, commercially-speaking. She is currently exploring ways to turn her cartoon-inspired art into vector graphics, as well as working on a collaboration with Erik Hassle of Island Records and preparing for a forthcoming exhibition.

Ice Creamia A pure vector art piece. "The love of ice cream can be compared to something salacious and sexual," Grossrieder explains. "I present that notion in a surreal way.

Catherine Grossrieder
Location London, UK
Job Illustrator
Contact www.cathlove.com

CathLove, as Catherine Grossrieder prefers to be called, can claim a truly cosmopolitan background: "I hail from Hong Kong, but I'm of Thai and Swiss heritage and currently live in east London." Her BA in Visual Communications, meanwhile, was gained at the University of Newcastle in Australia. But CathLove doesn't rely on familiar ancestral themes for her inspiration, citing contemporary urban culture, the surreal, and vintage cartoons as her main interests. Her images have an emphasis on strong female figures, as well as more diverse elements such as the 'fake nail' culture, kebab shops and pitbulls.

"My favourite subjects include consumerism and impermanence, the notion that nothing really lasts in life," she adds. "It's for my own enjoyment that I create engaging visual feasts for viewers." Indeed, she dropped her search for a graphic design job once she realised how much fun she was having as an artist, although concedes that this is a much tougher route to follow, commercially-speaking. She is currently exploring ways to turn her cartoon-inspired art into vector graphics, as well as working on a collaboration with Erik Hassle of Island Records and preparing for a forthcoming exhibition.

Dog City Fineliner on paper. "Living in east London, I see a lot of kids with pitbulls, so that became the sole inspiration for this piece."

Han Mosley
Location Manchester, UK
Job Illustrator
Contact www.hannahmosley.co.uk

"At the moment I'm enjoying doing work in a variety of contexts, from 'zines to gig posters and menus to apparel," says Han Mosley. Nearly all of her illustrations are a jumble of traditional media drawings, marks and textures, assembled in a digital environment, which is now her preferred way of working. "This started because I didn't have enough space to do 'real' paintings in my new home," she says, "but it has also given me the opportunity to be playful with my compositions in a way that real media never could have." That said, she also likes to keep involved with gallery work, graffiti and murals, "because sometimes you just need the fun and the mess that only real paint can provide."

I Examined Her Entire Body A piece from Mosley's 2009 degree show, inspired by a line from Shelley Jackson's short story, Sleep. "The story describes a surreal world where sleep falls from the sky in golden crumbs, which can be used once in a lifetime to create a substitute of yourself, and a single opportunity to escape your life. The story itself is so surreal and dreamlike that it naturally led to a series of symbolic vignettes exploring the themes of the narrative."

Han Mosley
Location Manchester, UK
Job Illustrator
Contact www.hannahmosley.co.uk

"At the moment I'm enjoying doing work in a variety of contexts, from 'zines to gig posters and menus to apparel," says Han Mosley. Nearly all of her illustrations are a jumble of traditional media drawings, marks and textures, assembled in a digital environment, which is now her preferred way of working. "This started because I didn't have enough space to do 'real' paintings in my new home," she says, "but it has also given me the opportunity to be playful with my compositions in a way that real media never could have." That said, she also likes to keep involved with gallery work, graffiti and murals, "because sometimes you just need the fun and the mess that only real paint can provide."

Hummingbeard "This was a direct personal challenge to add a bit of variety to my folio, character-wise, as it gets a bit overpopulated with monsters and beautiful women at times. The illustration is a nod to some members of older generations I've met, and the vibrant lives they lead. The image is quite typical of how I currently work: a collage of real media drawings, experiments in painting and mark-making, brought together in Photoshop to create a cohesive whole."

Elliott Grubb
Location Brighton, UK
Job Graphic designer
Contact www.anotherexample.net

By day, Elliott Grubb is a senior designer at fashion-branding studio DRY; by night, he works as a freelance as Another Example for various fashion, music and entertainment clients. Born in the UK, Grubb worked in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium for brands such as Diesel and Levi's before returning to the country and setting up Another Example.

"Since its inception, Another Example has created designs with a strong focus on apparel, typography and bold graphic shapes," Grubb says, "for the likes of Nike, Levi's, the Reading Festival and T in the Park festival, Beams T Japan and McFaul Studios." He also takes part in the Will Paint For Beer mural sessions, creating hand-painted type "while trying to stay sober alongside some great illustrators such as MegaMunden and Ede, at various venues across Brighton."

Air Play T-shirt Grubb describes this design job as "a great direct brief from Nike, with the theme and style being left very open. The only condition was that the final artwork needed to say 'Air Play' and feature music or footwear elements. The artwork was extremely time-consuming to create and was all done by hand."