Our Crowdsourcing design agency has the magnificent graphic designer/illustrator Chris Wharton to present this week….Based in London and hugely passionate about design, he was awarded ‘best in show’ at D&Ad for a delicious promotional poster collection of sayings, eaves dropped conversation pieces, quotes and foreign proverbs. Chris has a diverse and accomplished portfolio that showcases great style uniting type and image.

What comes first Illustration or Graphic Design?

For me they are a happy and equal marriage of creative differences. They
both perform roles within the creative field, offering different skill sets
and producing different results. I find both challenging and I don’t
consider myself to have a particularly distinct style in either.

For me illustration is as close to artistic expression as you can find
within the commercial artist sphere, its an inherently revealing and
personal process, producing images from scratch and imbuing them with your
own sense of identity and authorship.
Graphic design on the other hand, is naturally a creative process, but
equally its also about working within and responding to an external set of
stimuli (brief, client, constraints etc). Graphic design can be flamboyant,
sober, clean and simple or simply chaotic, but more often than not its
tempered by the brief.

This is just how I see the them, and I enjoy them equally for both their
restrictions and their freedoms. Its great to sit down with pencil and paper
and pour things out and equally as fulfilling to work meticulously on a
piece of design.

What are your visual inspirations?

I think like most people they are varied, I go through fads and have long
term love affairs, and meticulously hoard away images from blogs, and other
ambient sources(ctrl click save as…). Right now today though I really like
the work of  Cody Hudson (I think he balances design and illustration
beautifully), Yusaku Hanakuma a comic artist of the very funny Tokyo Zombie
and master of the ‘Heta-uma’ style of illustration (translates as ‘bad, but
good’), Mary Blair who was a principle artist at Disney, Tomi Ungerer a
French illustrator whose work spans decades, Antoine Girard another French
illustrator. Design wise; Karlssonwilker a couple of Europeans working in
NY, Yokoland, Julien Vallee papercraft madness, some of the classics -
Robert Brownjohn, Paul Rand, Alan Fletcher, Bruno Munari.

I am a big fan of ‘Freitag’, I think their logo is very simple and a
counterpoint to the random element of their products, and also in terms of
brand experience I think they’re great. If you were unaware of them, Freitag
manufacture handmade bags made from truck tarpaulins, tyre inner tubes and
seat belts 100% recycled, each bag is individual in colour and design. Not
only do they have a great product which they are forever bringing out new
versions of and new lines, but they also have unobtrusive and usually funny
advertising , they also have great photography and tight clean design in
their publications. I think think they offer a rounded experience, great
product, advertising and tone.

Favourite band, I don’t usually do favourites, but at the moment it has to
be Saul Williams a hip hop spoken word artist. Others would include Battles,
The Amps, Sigur Ros, QTSA, The smiths, Be Your Own Pet.

The perfect night out?

Although I live in London, I am a country boy at heart. Perfect night out;
drinking and eating on a beach into the wee hours.