Interview with: Pete Harrison
If you have followed the work of this week's interviewee, you already know of countless collaborations, tutorials, commissions and self-initiated projects that Pete Harrison has brought to live. A regular contributor with many design magazines, Aeiko's colourful aspect and super balanced compositions have excited and inspired many digital art enthusiast whilst catching the eye of new clients at the same time.Â
Pete is close to rounding off his first decade in the creative design industry, having worked across many different media and platforms, for which he is renowned worldwide. On the top of running his design studio in his hometown Torbay, Pete is the mastermind behind T-shirt labels Funkrush and SuperCombo as well as Desktopography project.Â
This is the Season One final interview, enjoy.Â
A few years ago you've written of the most popular tutorial of the recent history. Your Diffuse technique has been labeled as Aeiko style and spawned tons of recreations. At what point did you feel you had to ditch the technique and start from fresh?
I think I created an image back in 2004 and at the time was just experimenting and playing around with the different tools and filters in Photoshop. I stumbled on the diffuse technique and used it in a fashion shot, I don’t think this had been done before, but I sent it in for the Computer Arts graduate showcase and it won an excellence award. I also submitted it on the deviantart community which was really popular at the time and it got a lot of recognition there. Then computer arts asked me to write a tutorial showcasing the technique, it did spawn a lot of pieces and people re-creating the technique, but then my style started to evolve.
What is the current evolution of Aeiko style and your future plan to push your signature style?
After the diffuse technique I started looking into light effects and styles, I guess this was an evolution of my style, I was using photos and creating light effects all with the tools in photoshop like the brushes etc. It got to the point where people would be able to recognise my work just by looking at it and the techniques that I used, and yes I also inspired a lot of people, which was kinda cool to see how they used my style in their own ways. My style is still evolving, in fact in some recent pieces I have tried to strip it back a bit and create something a little more minimalistic.
After a few years working in London you moved back home to Devon. Any particular reason why? What are the work benefits of being away from the capital?
London was a great experience and I miss it, there was always something going on in the creative industries all the time and it was an inspiring place, I also got to meet a lot of designers and illustrators there and became friends, at the time I was living in London I started up Funkrush clothing and my printer and supplier were both based in Devon. Also, that is where I grew up so a lot of my friends were living down there, and my parents. I think that Devon suited my personality more, since I am pretty chilled and laid back and London was much more fast paced. Also I was getting a lot of requests for freelance work outside of my fulltime design job so it made sense to free up more of my time, and also I could work directly with my printers to ensure funkrush production was high, not to mention it was more economical.
Is there a big change in your workload now that you're represented by an illustration agent?
At first there was, I got a few sweet gigs through, in fact the Guiness work that I did was the biggest job I've had yet. But recently not so much, which has allowed me to put more time into personal projects such as my clothing label and the Desktopography project.
How do you juggle your day's work along Funkrush, Supercombo
fashion brands and other commitments?
I basically have a bunch of tasks to do for each project all the time, which means I never get bored but its just picking some sort of priority. In some respect its kind of fun deciding what to work on, my freelance design work normally takes priority since it has deadlines, and Funkrush I still consider almost like a hobby but if an order comes in I have to get it out, Supercombo I am relaunching that next week so have been working on the new site and products a lot recently. Desktopography is once a year so I don’t have to worry about that just yet, but once a year but it does take a lot of organising. Other things such as my accounts, concepts and personal art I can work on whenever, I do procrastinate a lot though.
Software manufacturers bring out new application packages on regular basis, but how important are the new features in terms of adding to creativity?
I don’t think it makes much difference to me really, since most of my styles and techniques use just the basic photoshop tools that ive been using for years, so it does not affect me creatively.
Funkrush product range steadily grows, but what
makes a successful T-shirt design?
I realised the other day that a lot of the tshirts that I print in Funkrush and also Supercombo are designs that I like personally, they are done by myself and designers that I know and love. Some are much more successful than others, and these seem to be designs with a concept rather than design for arts sake, the most popular designs are Cool clive, and 88 ghosts. Cool clive is two giraffes having a conversation and 88 ghosts is literally 88 ghosts but in the tape of a terrifying skull!
Desktopography is another example of executing a simple idea in a stellar way. Are you planning to grow the project further?
Yeah this is a great project and im so happy that I started it back in 2005, it is still growing every year, we are currently in talks with publishers about producing a book, we just have to design it, we will probably try and launch that this year, also will try and launch a new album. The website will probably remain the same.
Out of our contemporaries, I can safely say you've collaborated with the most people I've ever seen? Do you proactively seek new talent or reactively agree to offers?
Over the years its true I have collaborated with a lot of artists, I did this mainly because its fun but it also pushed me and have develop my style and techniques. Recently I only collaborate with people with Depthcore if we are working on an artwork for a new chapter, or I do bigger collaborations with members of the blackrock collective as part of a larger project, recently we did a skateboard and some card decks. I would love to do more personal art and there are still a lot of people that I would love to collaborate with, its just finding the time, I do get a lot of requests also, but have to turn most of them down due to time constraints. My favourite collaboration was the one I did with Andreas Wannestadt, it was a flash animation for the splash page of my clothing label Funkrush.
You can view it online at the website -Â http://www.funkrush.com/
We decided to make an animated intro that reflects the essence of funkrush, and that highlights elements from the designs as well as some of the featured artists. I did most of the art directing and creating the graphics and andreas worked on the compositing and animations. The final result is a mixture of urban infused graffiti street art mixed with cool, funky and unique characters. The project took us 6 months on and off whilst we were working on our own projects and client work. It was so much fun because I was passionate about the project (It is my clothing company afterall) and it was fun collaborating. It was exciting getting an email back from Andreas and seeing the progress we had made and it all come together bit by bit.
You're one of the longstanding members of Depthcore collective, having contributed to many chapters over the years. How important is your personal work and what message do you feel it needs to represent.
Depthcore is a great way to do more personal work, and the chapter themes serve us a concept to work around, in fact I think most of the personal artwork I do is dedicated for the collective. Its such a tight crew of people now, inside the member panel we all help each other out and have a laugh too, I really cant wait to meet some of the other longstanding members at the OFFF conference in June.
What's your opinion on 'creative negativity' of today?
Some people will always be negative about things, I don’t spend too much time reading comments on design blogs, recently Tumblr has been pretty good though, and everyone I have met there seems to be positive. I think everyone should be more positive, Amo la Vita!
It's known you're devoted Hospital records fan. If you could redesign your three most favourite albums from their catalogue which ones would they be and why?
Yes love drum and bass and all things hospital, it’s not only a source of inspiration for me, but I have designed for people in the industry and also sponsor them! I'm always listening to it at home too, whilst working! If I had to redesign some album covers I would do Nu:Tone – Words and pictures, Danny byrd – Ravedigger and The new album Yikes! by London Elek.
Aside from these covers, do you have a coveted product or brand you'd like to work with?
I always wanted to do something with Sony, Xbox (Microsoft) or Coca cola, pretty big brands but would be cool to get creative with!
Lastly, what is the best drum'n'bass tune of all time?
I would have to pick two! First one Netsky – Memory Lane. Never gets boring, very well produced, I think its pretty timeless! and also The Qemists – Stompbox (spor remix). This tune is played everytime before we go out, it gets everyone pumped and don’t forget that drop!Â
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Interviewed for ColourSpaces by Radim Malinic