GGstudios: Grant Gilbert

Grant was not part of a company as the name would suggest or even a collective of designers. He used his initiative and added the "studios" he said just to sound to a potential client like he was more professional and give the illusion that he was worth investing in. He is totally aware of the benefits a group of people has to offer and exploits this using his knowledge he obtained when first working for channel 4. He realised that these kind of people take other "companies" more seriously that just Grant Gilbert and his sketchbook of ideas.

Having said this he does also work with other people hiring them when he needs specific skills to help him complete a project. He seems to have got himself into a good position having the flexibility of freelance whilst giving off the professionalism a studio or collective has to offer. In essence he is a director much like the role described in my visit to Paul Butler at Sky only doing it all freelance off his on back. He said this does have draw backs as you don't get paid for pitching ideas to big clients. Sometimes you can put in months of work and no even get the paid job at the end of it all.

Grant showed us some of his past failures and successes, i thought this was good as he was able to explain why they failed and where they went wrong. I think his success lies in the experience gained from working for big clients giving him a very good work ethic and obviously in the long term bettering his freelance work, and giving him the confidence to want to approach the bigger clients. This is something i should bare in mind when considering a job in house, the experience would be invaluable.

When Grant gave examples of work he had done the strongest in my opinion was the work for More4. Part of me has a hatred for this field of design such as branding for telly where all to often there is excessive use of 3D but i was drawn to this because of its simplicity and playful interactions with the shapes much like Tal Rosners work only more modernist in approach. It was simple but not sterile like these things can all too often look like. It was just a playful interaction between the logo and the medium it was to be used in.

Grants re brand for the BBC was a similar brief set out for More4 he talked us through the development of the project/re branding. He shown his research in to the history of the BBC indents and explained that he went back to the basics for the BBC re brand, revolving everything around a circle to symbolise community and unification