Patrick Thompson

Patrick Thomas was born in Liverpool, England. After setting up a studio with fellow graduates he relocated to Barcelona he said this was partly because of the upcoming Olympics and the buzz around the event and city. He divides his time between directing the studio, working for the International Press and producing silkscreen prints. His collaboration with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, has given him more than 150 Jobs usually the front cover. Other clients include The New York Times Op-Ed, Book Review and Weekly Review-sections.

He spent along time going through his design work images – published work, personal work, influences and found objects – giving us a huge insight into his work and the thought behind it. Editorial work is notoriously short lived, and Patrick's simple work is suited to this, the core of his work is the simplicity of the message being relayed.

One thing that struck me and my new found love of knowing what i like within design, was a lack of aesthetic beauty. He agued, in a very modernist approach that it was just the message that needed to be conveyed and the aesthetic is just an after thought. He made a point of this by reproducing allot of his work in just black and white, trying to make a point that the message is still clearly communicated. It was but I was very unhappy with this and began to despise him, weather it was the hangover or not, im not so sure but his blatant disregard for the way his designs looked pissed me off, pixelated internet images for collages, his crap use of colour; it seemed it would be the kind of thing that if brought forward in one of my own tutorials the aesthetic would be mocked, "nice idea but it looks shit". And yet there we were making him believe that he was some sort of design guru. Perhaps i was just jealous of his life style and home, but i didn't like his work, i felt a little alone in this thinking especially after looking at his client base. I don't feel the work looked good aesthetically but his integrity lied in the way the message was conveyed his adept ability to do this means that he can afford to not pay so much attention to the way in which the designs look, although i feel it wouldn't hurt to try out both.