Computer Arts Gallery: March 2010

Ash Spurr
Location Liverpool, UK
Job Graphic designer
Contact www.ashspurr.com
Software Photoshop

Until recently, Spurr was working at The Designers Republic, having managed to land a job there directly after graduating from the Liverpool School of Art and Design. When tDR folded in its existing guise at the end of last year - "which promptly shook the design world," he says - he was forced to go freelance. "I decided I wasn't going to be fazed, that I'd make myself stronger from the experience," he continues, "and after a few months I took a full-time position at Manchester-based studio Corporation Pop." There, he worked with a similar set of clients, such as Cream and Philips, while branching out to design for digital applications. In 2010 he's now freelance once more: "All this since graduating, in the space of just over a year!"

OCD A personal project from Spurr's final year at University. "I began experimenting and trying to understand and visually interpret Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This A3-sized catalogue and poster features every distinguishable item I owned in my bedroom at the time."

Thomas Burden
Location Chichester, UK
Job Illustrator/designer
Contact www.therewillbeunicorns.com
Software Photoshop

For reasons best known to himself, Thomas Burden's design studio is called …and there will be unicorns. It's the start of a relatively new freelance career for him.

Having graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 2007, he quickly became the fourth member of McFaul Studio, where he worked on a 200m-long mural for Liverpool airport and a graphical takeover of Carhartt's flagship London store, as well as work for "pretty much every ad agency under the sun," he says. "Having been indulged by so many big projects for big clients, I felt more than ready for something new." His inspirations, he adds, include snowboarding, cuckoo clocks, narrative taxidermy, Alpine souvenirs, car boot sales and travelling.

Retro shop window Samsung's recent 'In Style with Samsung' corporate sales incentive included a range of style-related prizes. Burden designed this A2 poster illustration and concept for it, inspired by the look of a retro shop window.

Thomas Burden
Location Chichester, UK
Job Illustrator/designer
Contact www.therewillbeunicorns.com
Software Photoshop

For reasons best known to himself, Thomas Burden's design studio is called …and there will be unicorns. It's the start of a relatively new freelance career for him.

Having graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 2007, he quickly became the fourth member of McFaul Studio, where he worked on a 200m-long mural for Liverpool airport and a graphical takeover of Carhartt's flagship London store, as well as work for "pretty much every ad agency under the sun," he says. "Having been indulged by so many big projects for big clients, I felt more than ready for something new." His inspirations, he adds, include snowboarding, cuckoo clocks, narrative taxidermy, Alpine souvenirs, car boot sales and travelling.

Free your wallet A concept and illustrative poster for the 'Free Your Wallet' incentive aimed at Samsung sales staff. "First prize: an expenses-paid trip to New York; second: to Paris; third: to London. Booby prize: Bognor Regis."

Jordan Blood
Location Surrey, UK
Job Graphic designer
Contact www.jordanblood.com
Software Photoshop

During his nine years spent in the design industry as a self-taught graphic designer, Blood worked on music promos for Elton John, Feeder and Primal Scream, designed logos for the BBC and worked on websites for BlackBerry, among many other things. In 2009 he decided to reinvent himself with some formal education. He has just finished his MA in Graphic Branding and Communication at the London College of Communication and now works as a freelance graphic designer and branding consultant.

"I enjoy the challenges and intricacies that identity design can offer," he says, "and I'm particularly fascinated with the cultural associations of colour, shape and typography." Currently, most of his time is taken up with the identity and title sequence for a short animated film, Roze and the Robots.

Orbis Orbis is a typeface based on recorded soundwaves of the letters A-Z being spoken aloud, with the poster showing all the letters overlaid. "My website has an embedded Flash application with which you can interact, showing this idea in action," says Blood.

Martin Latter
Location Sussex, UK
Job Web developer
Contact www.copysense.co.uk
Software Structure Synth, open-source utilities

"My real-world art skills are limited," Martin Latter admits. "I can just about sketch, I certainly can't paint and I gained a D grade in GCSE art." Nevertheless, he has found a different way to create mathematically-based abstract art through the use of rule sets, programming and a plethora of free open-source software.

Even Latter's career course has been unusual - graduating in ecology, he ended up as a business writer but then turned to web development in 2000. It was while he was developing his programming skills that he discovered ways to turn maths into art. "Little did I know that teenage meddling with a BBC Micro and art appreciation (thanks to a great art teacher in Malcolm Hyde) would be useful so many years later."

Inspired by the likes of Escher and Jerzy Goliszewski, his dense, complex 3D images - generally rendered in Sunflow - take their time to complete. "I find that no fast PC is ever fast enough," he comments. "My most time-consuming render took 70 hours on a 3GHz dual-core PC. If the render settings can be realistically raised, I'll always raise them to gain a higher-quality render."

Shards This image was created using randomised rules in Structure Synth, a piece of open-source software that enables the creation of 3D structures by specifying a set of construction rules. The result was rendered in Sunflow.

Tahgasa Bertram
Location Birmingham, UK
Job Illustrator
Contact www.sweatyeskimo.co.uk
Software Photoshop

Producing most of his art as hand-drawn images scanned and coloured within Photoshop - "I'm not a fan of all that moving RGB stuff" - Bertram much admires the likes of Jon Burgerman and Jeremyville, whose exuberant styles are certainly reflected in his own work. This, he feels, could be a direct result of being self-taught. "I think it gives me a uniqueness to some degree, as I don't have to worry about breaking 'design rules'. I feel a lot of students are taught things they can and can't do within design - whereas I feel I can do what I like, as long as the client is happy." Having said that, his ambition to be a professional illustrator is strong, and he is currently looking for an agent to represent him.

Guitart A piece influenced by Simon King's T-shirt design for the Harrods Rock promotion. "I liked the way he merged fashion and music, so I decided to merge music and art. I hand-drew the illustration in pencil, incorporating various drawing tools into the picture, and scanned it into Photoshop. I wanted a limited colour palette, so I went with greyscale and chose to emphasise the hands, as both the guitar and drawing tools are useless without them."

Tahgasa Bertram
Location Birmingham, UK
Job Illustrator
Contact www.sweatyeskimo.co.uk
Software Photoshop

Producing most of his art as hand-drawn images scanned and coloured within Photoshop - "I'm not a fan of all that moving RGB stuff" - Bertram much admires the likes of Jon Burgerman and Jeremyville, whose exuberant styles are certainly reflected in his own work. This, he feels, could be a direct result of being self-taught. "I think it gives me a uniqueness to some degree, as I don't have to worry about breaking 'design rules'. I feel a lot of students are taught things they can and can't do within design - whereas I feel I can do what I like, as long as the client is happy." Having said that, his ambition to be a professional illustrator is strong, and he is currently looking for an agent to represent him.

Fox Hollies Forum A poster that Bertram produced for a Birmingham community group, with the brief being to get the attention of the local children and highlight the range of activities available. "The main problem was trying to fit all the activities into the illustration, so I concentrated on the activities and tools that I thought would be most attractive to them. Colour was added in Photoshop; I went for a bright colour palette to gain maximum attention."

Ryan David Seaman
Location San Diego, USA
Job Graphic designer/illustrator
Contact www.designbyrds.com
Software Photoshop, Illustrator

As a youngster, Seaman developed quite an unusual obsession - drawing golf courses. He estimates that he drew more than a thousand, including bunkers, water traps and "dark woods". This, combined with experience working in his dad's photography studio as a teenager, led him to take up painting and eventually enroll in the Art Institute of San Diego.

"I'm not sure I have a style, but if I do I'd say it's a mixture of collage, textures, line work, image manipulation and a little taste of chaos," he says. Work with recent clients such as Super8 magazine and Pacific Sunwear has seen him develop something of a hand-drawn feel, incorporating collage and organic textures. "Sometimes I'll sketch out ideas but most of the time I feel I work best trying out ideas on the computer," he adds. "I usually try to add some human touches to my work because I feel this makes it more organic and balanced."

From the depths This concept was designed for a T-shirt and printed by DesignByHumans as their shirt of the day late last year. "It's a layered, abstract artwork, based on a person going through madness and dealing with it," Seaman says.

Ryan David Seaman
Location San Diego, USA
Job Graphic designer/illustrator
Contact www.designbyrds.com
Software Photoshop, Illustrator

As a youngster, Seaman developed quite an unusual obsession - drawing golf courses. He estimates that he drew more than a thousand, including bunkers, water traps and "dark woods". This, combined with experience working in his dad's photography studio as a teenager, led him to take up painting and eventually enroll in the Art Institute of San Diego.

"I'm not sure I have a style, but if I do I'd say it's a mixture of collage, textures, line work, image manipulation and a little taste of chaos," he says. Work with recent clients such as Super8 magazine and Pacific Sunwear has seen him develop something of a hand-drawn feel, incorporating collage and organic textures. "Sometimes I'll sketch out ideas but most of the time I feel I work best trying out ideas on the computer," he adds. "I usually try to add some human touches to my work because I feel this makes it more organic and balanced."

Super8 magazine - 'Below/Learned' Super8 was a poster-magazine printed in A3 and distributed in Milan free of charge, with neither sponsoring nor advertising. Each issue was based on the number 8 and it was produced over eight issues during 2009. "The theme of every issue represented one of the eight regular Italian words which are generated by coupling a letter with the word otto, which means eight in Italian," Seaman explains. "So D8 is Dotto - 'I learned' - and this is the illlustration that I created for that issue."

David Peña
Location Berkley, USA
Job Illustrator/graphic designer
Contact www.halfasleepdesign.com
Software Photoshop, Illustrator

"I remember my first introduction to computer-based art started when I entered high school and discovered Photoshop in the computer lab," says David Peña. "Since then I've been hooked." Although he's currently working to finish his degree in Visual Communication, he initially taught himself basic design principles through doing tutorials and simply experimenting. "I like to express a stream of consciousness in my artwork, incorporating flowing shapes and design elements that I see in the patterns around me," he adds. "Music plays a huge part in my design - I almost always have something playing in the background for inspiration." Having already created album covers, band posters and flyers, in 2010 he hopes to expand into design for magazines, T-shirts and more.

Mash and Sleep A piece created while Peña was living in San Diego last year. "The imagery reflects the events of that summer meshed together into one stream of consciousness and captured on paper," he says. "I started by drawing a few focus images and then added decorative elements in afterwards. Once I had the basic drawing inked out, I was able to bring it to life in Photoshop by adding colours, gradients and glow. I experimented with different colour combinations until I found a set that resonated with me, and used the Pen tool to create paths around each shape and element."