Grant Gilbert lecture

Grant Gilbert.

Grant Gilbert is a designer from Manchester who started out on a design course at Stockport college before going on to do a print based degree at UCE Birmingham and then starting work at planet 24 where he designed the phone and fax number boards on The Big Breakfast before joining channel 4 in 1997 where he worked on channel idents promos and title sequences, He later moved to work for Attik NY as a Senior Designer.
He returned to London in 2001 where he worked freelance where he enjoyed working with new companies and new people, then in 2007 when he founded his company Double G Studios where he specialised in motion graphics and brand identity and also to promote himself as a designer as he felt it is stronger to present yourself as a company with a name rather than a single person, his company works as a collective where he brings people that would be the most usefull to him on a specific brief, the company made many idents and promos for new shows working witha range of different channels.

This is one of his best know pieces of work from channel 4 creating idents for there new channels and promos for there shows and events specifically "summer music" for E4, personally i really like this promo, i like the vibrant colours on black background so even when there are alot of things on screen and neon colours and cables everywhere it doesnt look busy because the black keeps all the elemnts together, the idea of using dancers dressed in black and wrapping them in cables to show there actions really works aswell, adn has a better effect than if someone had just added in the cables and lights later, this way you get the true movement of the lights and colours, the music in the piece also plaus a huge part and the best part about it is how the live actiaon is later matched to the music for example where there is the fast sequence of the same noise as if the record has skipped the dancers movements jerk to the same beat as the music.
In his lecture Grant talked about the process of the advert how it started of as mood boards and how it was really an old idea he had wanted to do for a while but a project had never come about that suited it and this shows how important it is to write ideas down, and not just throw them away becasue they arnt right for what you are doing at that moment, one thing i found interesting about his approach to the making the video was that he said he didnt have very distinctive storyboards but had a very carefully set out shot list for the filming which i thought was strange becasue i have always tried to get the perfect storyboards before filming but this way lets you change things on the day without worrying to much about not sticking to a storyboard that you have panned out even if the change would be for the better.

Ohter projects he talked about were creating ideants for a new channel being launched by channel 4 and being hired for a rebrand of the bbc and how ther two jobs were different, first was channel 4 they were launching a new channel called more 4 which was set to be more interlectual and high brow than anything there other channels were like and so they wanted an ident too match, they started off with the a simple logo design and just began too look at it in differnt ways like creating it in 3d to see it in all possible angles which i think is a good idea because you can see so many more possibilities looking at a 3d object than a drawing on a piece of paper, one thing Grant said he always try to do with the idents is make them different too anything alse on television, and after alot of experimentation with how the logo moved and what backgrounds it was placed on whether it was moving images or vibrant colours they settled on a simple solid colour on black background which is really nice and simple very clean and not over the top and so works well with what the channel was about which was to be grown up and interlectual not loud and obnoxious.


After the channel 4 idents were finished Grant was hired by the bbc after they had seen what he had doent for channel 4 to do a rebrand of there ideants and look of there whole channel, and one of the things that he said was the problem with this brief was the client themselves they were controling and set a strict breif of wehat they wanted the advert to say and had a clear message they wanted grant too send out where as at channel 4 they were very open and just let him do what ever he wanted to do and to just experiment and this is what he said is the most important thing about the industry gettign the right clients if you can, working for the people who will let you be creative and not get stuck with companys that are scared of what you will create adn will be constantly interfering, and he specifically said to us to use our time at college to be creative and try new and different things, not to get stuck into a pattern doing the same things over and over because its things like that which get you labeled in the industry as a certain type of designer, which he said he himself had trouble with, that people had labeled him as logo designer where in reality he likes to do a bit of everything, and i think this is a very important message and is something i have tried to do all along on this course, to try new things and not just settle on the first thing i like to do and give all the types of media a chance or there wouldnt have been anypoint doing a multimedia course.