Sean Freeman

Interview

Super talented graphic designer Sean Freeman creates fonts and type to die for. This, mixed with his passion for photographic treatments, make for a very interesting and bright future for this young designer. His next projects sound extremely progressive and give us a glimpse into the mind of a talented type enthusiast.

- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

S: My Grandfather was an architect and my Grandmother is a very well-established watercolour painter. I would spend the summer at theirs painting and this gave me a good foundation and passion for art. I then spent two years dong Graphic design at college, graduated and started working in Graphic Design and Advertising agency for 3 years, left that and have just started a new job in another agency.

- Any direct/indirect influences in your work?

S: This is probably a standard answer with everyone but music has a massive influence on me. Little lines of lyrics spark off new creative ideas for me and I keep a sketchbook with me wherever I go filled with snippets of lyrics that I use to try and create new work. Other than that, my friends, like Craig Ward will push each other to try out new ideas and how to work in different ways. We all try to keep our eyes open to what’s going on in the scene at the moment, like chunky typefaces coming back and Helvetica being more popular a couple years ago. I think designers like Non-Format are pushing the boundaries with their chunky type and it will probably be very popular soon, so I will probably doing some versions of my own for clients.

- Can you describe�your typical design process, from�your client's needs and how you work together.

S: It all starts with a sketch, with the Art Director giving me more specific ideas of what elements should be incorporated. I then try to add my own personal touch to the work as I feel that you should try to be individual but at the same time not do anything too extreme that your client may not like. In the commercial world, it can be difficult to stray too far from the given brief.

- Tell us about some of your work and your concepts in terms of specific projects you have worked on?

S: I really enjoyed working with Accept & Proceed design agency. I did some type treatments for them using the letters A & P. The cool thing was that they asked a bunch of really awesome illustrators and designers to do their own versions of a letter A and a P.

They got people like Kerry Roper, Si Scott & David Shrigley to submit and it enabled me to meet a lot of these great artists.

Another recent project I had was creating a racehorse made out of butterflies for a sports betting company. They wanted to encourage more girls to gamble and the catchphrase was “Have a Flutter”, hence the reason why the Art Directors asked me to make the horse using butterflies against a black background and to use really vibrant colours.

I also did some Paul Smith speculative work, where I made around 50 different designs, from perfume bottles to swing tickets to display boards. This was really fun to do and I got a lot of good feedback from it as well.

- Your conceptual work with Paul Smith had some humorous undertones; is this something you try to achieve in the rest of your work?

That project was a little bit different from my usual work and I tried to make the image suit the personality of the Paul Smith brand. Usually, my work tends to be a lot less humorous and not as quirky. But maybe this is something I should try and inject in my future projects!

- What are the future plans�and are there any new projects we should be looking out for?

S: As I work 9-5 at the agency, when I get home, I really want to push my own work and ideas and my sketchbook is full of loads of ideas. It’s just hard trying to find the time to do it all. My next big thing I want to do is trying to create some type treatment made up of snapshots of white ceramic plates smashing on the ground with a black background. I also want to work more with mixing paint in with milk and taking photographs of ripples in paint caused by me banging a paint tray from underneath. I really like the idea of working with movement and taking elements of this and inserting it into the type treatment.

Eventually, I would like to do more fashion-based work. I like the idea of working with great fashion photographers and doing my own treatments to their photos.

Sean Freeman : http://www.thereis.co.uk

Written by Selph