Practitioners Report - Damien Gascoigne and Gillian Blease

For this section of my blog I am going to compare and contrast the processes and practices of two design practitioners who both gave lectures at Stockport College, they are Damian Gascoigne and Gillian Blease.

I chose these two because I felt they gave two of the best lectures over the past academic year, I thought they had great styles and relevant pieces of work and I thought they had a lot of interesting points to say. Gillian Blease was on the 17^th October and gave a very professional and down to earth lecture and Damian Gascoigne was on the 13^th March and gave a very funny and informative performance.

The first similarities I picked up upon from the two practitioners were their backgrounds, where they both came from print based design courses; Gillian Blease took a Typography course here at Stockport college before moving on to MMU to study a foundation in Art and Design. After completing this she headed to Newcastle University to concentrate mainly on Fine art.

Damien Gascoigne studied graphic design at Kingston polytechnic in 1984 (and later went back to lecture there on animation) but when he finished and worked as an illustrator for 5 years he decided that unlike Blease, he wanted to move into moving image. In a way I have taken a similar path to Damien because I started out in graphic design too but felt I wanted to move into moving image as I found that more exciting and interesting.

After her education Gillian spent 6 weeks living in Japan that she said highly influenced her work, and then moved to London to try and make a name for herself and managed to get a contract job working freelance for the guardian thanks to the help of ACME, which is a support group for artists looking for residency in London.

Gillian explained in her lecture that sometimes collaborating with different people on projects sometimes leaves you with no creative freedom as she found from working on the South Bank Literature Festival in which she says she "felt like a puppet" because the creative team already had a strict idea of what they wanted. I similarly have come across this problem first hand in my old job producing posters and magazine layouts for a company that already had (very dated) set templates for how they wanted things to look. I found that you just have to accept the fact and just do the work how they want it, even if you think it looks bad!

Similarly Damien Gascoigne worked as a freelance illustrator, but unlike Blease who liked working alone, he missed the buzz and dialogue of working in a team so after that he moved in to animation and worked as a freelance director for the company Picasso Pictures. He mentioned that after 25 years working for himself, he wouldn’t be able to adjust to working for someone else. I think this is an interesting issue that I need to think about for my career because I have thought about trying to go along the freelance director route but I think I wouldn’t be able to do that straight away, I would definitely need to get a few years experience under my belt first, also I would rather work with other people in a studio like Gascoigne does at Picasso Pictures because I think working with others around you is more productive and more influential as people can comment and give advice on things.

The two lecturers process of researching and finding inspiration also shows some similarities, Gillian mentioned that over the years she has collected a ‘library of visual information’ that she stores in big filing cabinets in her studio, and uses it for references when she needs inspiration.

Gascoigne has a wonderful way of finding and collecting inspiration as he refers to it as ‘working without working’ he says that something interesting happens all the time and that he just takes in ‘life’ all around him. He loves taking photos and especially loves drawing and doodling things in sketchbooks and notepads, he says he keeps a post-it pad by the phone because it is interesting to see what you doodle when you are not concentrating on it! And also he loves watching people, especially their hair, and their posture! He mentions that these features are very important in character design which I fully agree with after doing my project using little cartoon characters.

I thought it was really interesting to find out how professional designers do their research as it is something you don’t usually get to see, and I always thought that when I finished college and university I wouldn’t bother keeping and compiling research because you don’t exactly get marked on it like when you are on a course, but recently, especially after hearing Gillian and Damien talk about their methods I feel I will try and do more and be inspired by Gascoigne to make sketchbooks full of my random thoughts and doodles as you never know when they could come in useful.

Both Damien Gascoigne and Gillian Blease have picked up awards for their work along their careers, Damien’s film ‘Careful’ (2005) won first prize at the London Animation Festival (2006) and was shortlisted for best film at numerous other festivals including the Australian International Film Festival in Adelaide.

Blease won a competition for her piece "lists found" that won her her very first computer and which meant she could learn and experiment using the program Adobe Illustrator. Her progression from fine art/illustration to more digital inspiration spawned from this and I think definitely in a good way, and has got her commissions with big name brands like Barclays, Waitrose and the Guardian.

Where Gillian Blease liked to produce images using the computer, with a smooth, colourful and simple style, Gascoigne had a different view on how he produced his work he says “A computer never gave me an idea!” and likes to use hand drawn methods as much as possible in his work. I personally like to use both of their styles in my work, possibly because I don’t know what my distinctive ‘style’ is yet or maybe just because I like producing a range of different things that have different feels to them. I don’t think either of their work is better than the others because they are so different, they are both very good at what they do.

I think that overall I have compared and contrasted the practices and processes of the two designers, I have found that even though they may have ended up in different fields of design they both generate idea's using very similar methods, and that the way they execute those ideas are very different. I was very impressed with both lecturers and I think I have absorbed some of the knowledge that will help me in my researching and production and making decisions in my career also.