practitioners report

Practitioners report

As part of this section of my blog i have to compare two of the practitioners who have given lectures at Stockport and compare two designers looking for similarities and differences between there working methods and also in there backgrounds and where they are in the industry today.

For my report i have chosen to look at Tal Rosner and Grant Gilbert, i chose to write about them because they were the two practitioners that work in the part of the industry which was closest to the type of work i do on the multimedia course.













Both grant and Tal started there careers on graphic design courses, Tal on a BA graphics course where he worked on posters,magazine layout and compositional based work and grant began with a graphics course at Stockport college before moving onto a print based degree at UCE Birmingham, after this both designers developed interest in motion graphics and started into the area of moving image, Tal particular spoke of his reasons fro making the move saying he wanted to translate graphic design flow into actual movement, turning the flow of a magazine layout into actual moving image this shows that the two had the same instincts and both had the same ideas of wanting to give movement to there graphic design work, and this is something I can relate to up to this point in my career as i had only ever worked in print based mediums since school doing art courses and a foundation degree in graphics but eventually finding my way into moving image and wanting to experiment in other mediums than 2d.

After finishing there degrees and courses the similarities between Tal and grant continue when they began to look for work they both believed to have found there dream jobs, Tal got a job in post production at a company in London and grant got a job at Attik new york but both encountered the same problems leading them once again in similar directions, while working for the company's they realised there dream jobs were not what they wanted, the both found themselves working to other peoples demands and not having any creative control and this is something neither designer could Handel and this lead to them both quiting and starting to work freelance.
This is where the similarities between the two designers start to end in the way they work freelance Tal stressed in his lecture that he likes to work alone, he goes out and just films for himself and doesn't really like to have anyone around him when he works and this is how he created films such as doppelganger which is an experimental piece of video using mirroring and compositional editing accompanied by a piece of music and this is the video that got him where he is today, the style of the video lead on to getting more jobs purely on the look of that video, he was first approached by a couple of french pianists who had seen his video and wanted something similar for there music video and this is something he would not have been able to do if he had stayed in post production he wouldn't have been able to experiment and create the videos that have become his signature style, and now most notably he creates the title sequences for the extremely popular skins series.

Grant on the other hand after working freelance for a while but eventually set up his own collective company double g studios so while still working as a freelancer this title gives the large company feel to clients when hiring him and instead of working alone like Tal he brings in designers he feels are best suited to help him on particular briefs, where Tal has created a reputation for himself with his films grant has continued to experiment in all types of mediums and taking on different projects so he has been able to broaden his portfolio and has also built up relationships with many different clients such as channel 4 who he started off creating idents for and eventually was hired to completely re brand one of there channels which lead to him being hired by even bigger channels like the BBC where he was hired to completely re brand there whole channel which in itself is a mixed blessing as the size of the channel gets his work seen all over the country but also he said they were not the easiest clients to work with.

I can completely understand the reasons for the two leaving there "dream" company's to go freelance but personally i think that it is something that could have easily gone wrong at such and early point in there careers, and i think that i would like to get some experience working for company's and getting a feel for that kind of environment and make some contacts before trying out on my own especially after some of my portfolio crits where i was told about the difficulties of going freelance and the importance of making contacts and establishing some kind of name for myself first because companies are less likely to hire a designer with Little work to there name compared to a company or a freelancer with a large list of clients.

Overall i think that both designers have come along way in there careers and i think that i have shown that even though you start of in exactly the same place and study the same things the possibilities are completely different and that we can all go in different directions much like Tal and grant depending on the choices we make along the way, while both paths have good and bad points to them i personally i feel that the route i would take is that of Grant Gilbert i think that his choices were more professional where as i think Tal got some luck in his career that he maneged to create something people loved because if doppelganger wasn't the success it was his freelance career would have gone a completely different way where as grant was always going to be building up clients and trying to get the work not going of a reputation to begin with to get work.