At last George and I met in person at the recent “Meet the Graduates” event, and he brought me up to date with his life and work at Proof Studios in Leicester.
He recently gave an interview to Lire magazine about his #Laptoptag Vimeo project:
“ I wanted to explore how deeply rooted technology had become in the World. Most of Western society doesn’t fully appreciate how many people in developing countries actually do have technologies such as laptops – which is why when I started receiving submissions from places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt and Ghana I was so happy!
All the submissions had a great feeling of wonkiness and spontaneity to them – as if someone had just shot, uploaded and sent in a submission whilst walking to work, making lunch or sat in the park. They’re people I’ve never met and I don’t really even know their names. I don’t know anything about them.”
George also told me he appreciated our alumni event:
” I thought the graduate event went really well and I was very impressed by the confidence and eagerness of some of the students who approached me for advice. I really felt as though I was able to offer a lot of help afterwards, especially in warning them of the post-graduate-pitfalls which stung me when I was in their position. LSM should definitely keep going with events such as this, and I hope to play a part in them in future as I find young creative talent such as I witnessed yesterday to be incredibly fascinating and uplifting.”
George also picked up on one Question Time discussion:
“To be honest, I felt it was a little misleading when some of the graduates spoke about how “it’s important that your site looks pretty” which I found to be a half truth. Personally, I feel any aspect of a student’s creative portfolio, be it a CV, a business card or indeed a website, should above all be representative of the person it’s promoting. To say that it should look good is correct, but more importantly it should be a reflection of character.
From running a branding company for close to a year now, I find 90% of our work is spent breaking down the clients personality and problems. After we’ve profiled them like this, we will begin designing something that is symbolic of what we’ve learnt about them – with the appearance and general attractiveness of a website merely being a biproduct of the client’s character. Anyway, my overall point is that it’s important to encourage student portfolios to be both attractive on the outside and intelligent on the inside and not just “pretty”.”
Finally, George reminded me of our conversation about Vimeo:
“….. it is a huge source of inspiration for me and has taught me a great deal. I think you should consider setting up your own LSM Alumni Vimeo Channel which can feature work from Lincoln Uni, this will give both exposure to your students and encourage them to further explore Vimeo as a source of inspiration.” https://vimeo.com/staffpicks
Seems like a good idea George.
George’s previous posts.