Si-Scott

Si Scott is a talented Graphic designer currently living in the UK but wants to eventually move to a place like New York City in the USA. Si Scott is an artist with a unique and futuristic style and in consequence to his amazing talent with the pen he has worked for big well-known companies like Matthew Williamson, Vogue, Nike, Tiffany & Co and Sony. His work has been really recognised lately so he decided to take the next step and have an exhibition around the world in countries like Tokyo, New York, Brazil and Sydney.

Working for big companies like those already mentioned you would think that a person like Si Scott would change in his views and ideas but he likes to make it clear to everyone that he will treat every job/project the same way. If it’s a project for a junior company to the big ones he will always try to do his best for every single one and that’s what is different from his work to other artists or graphic designers work. He says in an interview with Charge: “I design from the heart, a lot of passion and time goes into it and a lot of designers design from the head”.

At the age of 16 he left school to go to Leeds College of Art & Design to study a BTEC in Graphic Design and after completing the course in college he went to Buckinghamshire Chilterns University to study a degree in Graphic Design. Still to this day a lot of people confuse Si Scott to being an illustrator which he doesn’t really care or mind but he considers having more of a graphic designer background rather than illustrator.

We would all think that an artist like Si Scott is always 100% satisfied with his work and always happy with every single design! But Si Scott thinks quite the contrary he is never one hundred percent satisfied, he always feels like he could do better and that what’s amazing about him and his work which is also one of the main reasons why his work keeps on getting better and better over the years. Unlike a lot of artists Si Scott does all of his work by hand (90% of his work to be exact) and only uses the computer to place things together and retouch his designs. He also believes this makes his work more unique because he thinks a lot of designers don’t draw anymore and uses the computer to do everything. Si Scott also states that he has always drawn for as long as he could remember, practice is always good to perfect your work and discover your style and it means you have put time and effort into discovering who you are and what kind of artist you want to be.

Si Scott says he always wanted to be in a band because he always loved music a lot and his main inspiration now to design is music, he says: “Most of my ideas come from music I enjoy lyrics and stuff like that. I’m really into words and listen to lyrics quite a lot.” He really enjoys music from Interpol, The National, Tom Waits, Bjork, Joy Division and has been listening to a lot of those artists lately. As much as he loves music his true passion is design and one of his latest challenges in graphic design is to go from the 2D perspective of his work to creating something in 3D form.

In my personal opinion I think his work really is amazing with so much detail and interesting shapes, you can really see the passion and time he puts into it and even after years you can kind of see that he stills experiments with his work and always wants to improve and get better. He has his own style which makes him different from every single artist in the world. I think he puts a lot of thought when doing a project and it’s probably the reason why all his projects are different from one another even though they have the same style. I like the way he thinks about art, he does it because he loves it and not for the money or because he thinks it’s cool to be a graphic designer and so on. A bit like me he gets most of his inspiration from music and its lyrics. My favourite work of his is the animal ones because I think they have a lot more detail and texture to it and I’m all about how detailed a drawing is. Overall I think Si Scott is a great artist with a great point of view and imagination.

Useful websites: all visited on the 21/09/2014.

http://siscottstudio.com/

http://bonexpose.com/featured/si-scott/

http://news.gestalten.com/news/si-scott-0

http://www.typeforyou.org/2006/08/30/si-scott-interview/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuZW-u4c_3A

Ben Eine

  
    Ben Flynn most commonly known as Ben Eine is a street artist based in London, he is most notable for his alphabet lettering in the streets of London.

Eine says that what originally inspired him to become a graffiti artist was when he first laid eyes on a New York City subway car transformed into a canvas for a graffiti masterpiece. He also says that crews in the Bronx began tagging “wild style” graffiti on trains he credits them for launching his career as an artist. Eine says this about photographs of paint on the sides of trains: “you could show these to people and they didn't look like trains until you noticed the wheels on the bottom of the carriage. It was one of the craziest, most insane things I’ve ever seen. I kind of made it my mission to do that.”

The core essence of graffiti to Ben Eine is the study and stretching of letters. Eine got really frustrated with graffiti because his long hard work kept on being covered up and so it eventually got boring. He considers graffiti to be about exploring the form of letters, the form of words, how letters can change when put next to other letters – just wrenching, moulding and stretching letters as far as you can.

Ben Eine has worked with many other street artists, most notably Banksy. They met in a bar in London and Eine still remembers how some of his street artist friends used to make fun of Banksy for using stencils. They then became really good friends and began collaborating, travelling to Palestine, Australia, Berlin and elsewhere.

According to Ben Eine street art is not made to last, he says when he was younger he painted plenty of pieces and almost everything he has ever painted on the streets has been covered up or cleaned up at some point.

    

     In my opinion Ben Eine does have great ideas and the way he thinks is unique and interesting just like Banksy he believes that art shouldn't be sold but told. I personally don’t think his art is really that interesting, I find it quite boring to do alphabet letters because I don’t see a story/message or anything interesting behind it, I don’t hate or dislike his work I just don’t mind it.