Me

Some time ago I got an email from Michael, a Graphic Design student from Linz, Austria. He asked if I wanted to do an interview with him about my work. I agreed because I felt flattered and I am vain, of course :) Yesterday I received a print proof of the magazine.

What I didn't know that it was a double interview. And... Oh boy! The other guy happens to be Thomas Schostok.
That's weird. I'm familiar with his work. I bought one of his books and bought some fonts that he made. And now we're in a magazine together. I'm not worthy... And I learned that I should cut the crap and need to focus on painting again.

I'm not sure if I am allowed to publish the interview with him so I won't. It's good reading and as soon as I know if I can publish it, I will.

Read on to catch some of my thoughts on art and design stuff.

PETER BOORSMA UND THOMAS SCHOSTOK, ZWEI GRAFIKER (ODER WAHLWEISE KÜNSTLER) IM INTERVIEW ÜBER GRAFIK DESIGN MIT FOUND FOOTAGE UND COLLAGEN. ÜBER TRASH UND GRUNGE ODER WIE IMMER MAN ES NENNEN WILL. ÜBER VERÄNDERUNG UND ROUTINE, ÜBER SELL-OUT UND CASH-IN. ÜBER STIL UND ÜBER IDENTITÄT – ÜBER KUNST UND ÜBER KREMPEL.

AS A PROSPECTIVE GRAPHIC DESIGNER YOU’RE OFTEN ON THE LOOKOUT FOR YOUR OWN STYLE AND IDENTITY AS A GRAPHIC DESIGNER. SO, HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR WAY TO WORK / YOUR OWN PERSONAL STYLE?

Well, first of all I didn’t study graphic design. I left the design department after six months because the teachers (and students) there were too bound to rules in my opinion. Especially typography rules. As you may know a lot of Dutch designers and therefore design teachers are heavily influenced by the ‘less is more’ principle. Well, that’s not my cup of tea. After lots of discussions with them I concluded they were a bunch of extremists I couldn’t talk with. So I left and studied painting instead. I found a lot more freedom there and when I made paintings I started learning about who I was and what I wanted to tell people.
 After finishing Art School someone gave me a copy of Photoshop wich gave me the opportunity to work quicker. When you are working on a painting and make a mistake, it takes a lot of effort to make it undone. Photoshop changed all that. After a few years I learned that I really liked my mistakes over perfectionism so I went back to paint, ink and glue, resulting in my own personal style. My work consists of combined mistakes. The more mistakes I make in a project, the better the results become.

In my art school days I was spending a lot of time studying other people’s work. I learned that I have the terrible handicap that I don’t seem to forget images I have seen somewhere. The problem is that all this imagery is floating somewhere in my subconsiousness, resulting in bad copies. That’s what I thought. Because I found it very frustrating that my own work was becoming influenced too heavy by other people, I stopped reading magazines and books about other artists/designers. It’s been ten years since I graduated and now I’m beginning to think I am getting somewhere. I try not to think too much but just do it and see what happens. These days I feel confident enough to watch the work of other artists without fearing to become a copycat. I just don’t care anymore. My influences (some of them): Francis Bacon, Steve Albini, Thurston Moore, people over the world who made this cut’n pasted xeroxed punk posters without having learned about graphic design, Jasper Johns, David Yow, Wayne Coyne, George Baselitz, Francis Picabia, Gerhard Richter, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Yes, a lot of musicians.

WHAT TRENDS DO YOU SEE IN YOUR WORK (MAYBE COMPARED TO WHEN YOU WERE A STUDENT)?

Because of internet it’s easier to have a look at other people’s work. Trends are picked up very fast. I guess the ‘grunge’ style is one of that trends my work fits into. That’s a coincidence though.
I always used handwriting, found imagery and I don’t like to make things perfect. Most of the time because it is cheap. Besides that I’m a very impatient guy so I need to work quick. When I was a student I was taking design and art stuff very seriously. Now I just make things, let things happen. Letting things go is a trend. Imperfection is a trend. If you surf the net you will find thousands of people who are doing just
that. Collect them, order them and voila! there’s your trend. The trend within my work is that I’m working more and more in ideas instead of results. At the end it doesn’t matter how it looks, it matters what it says or does to other people. Appearance or intensity is more important than aesthetics. Because of that I stopped looking for paying clients. I found it very frustrating that clients are expecting that you make things like you did before for other clients instead of wanting something

WHAT DO YOU THINK? HOW IMPORTANT IS THE IDEA BEHIND THE VISUAL IMAGE?

Images are obviously very important because they are universal. I’d rather see a woman’s ass instead of a written description in Chinese or any given language of her ass, don’t you?

WHAT COMES FIRST? THE IDEA OR THE DESIGN? OR IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SEPARATE CONCEPT FROM DESIGN?

I’m not sure. When you are visualising an idea, the design becomes the idea and the other way around. And you can’t design something without an idea. So I guess they are linked with each other.

LOOKING INTO THE PAST AND THE BEGINNINGS OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, ONE COULD SAY THAT WORKING WITH FOUND FOOTAGE AND THE RECYCLING OF VARIOUS MATERIALS APPEARED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE ERA OF POP ART. DOES YOUR WORK HAVE ANY LINK TO A BYGONE ERA?

If I said I wasn’t influenced by Pop Art I would be lying. Pop Art changed the whole western world. I never understood why Andy Warhol made such a huge amount of silly screenprints. In my opinion one was enough. But I was thinking from a creative point of view. Warhol was more a salesman than an artist. Andy Warhol changed greed from a negative thing into an artform. That’s a huge accomplishment. Damien Hirst recycles that idea. I love the cynicism in that.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THESE DEVELOPMENTS / CHANGES?

It’s great not to spend energy on thinking what other people think of you. Uhm… That’s a weird sentence but you know what I mean.

I BELIEVE THAT WORKING WITH FOUND FOOTAGE AND RECYCLING OF EXISTING MATERIALS IS A FAIRLY EXPRESSIVE AND INTUITIVE WAY TO DO GRAPHICS.

Yes it is. Alltough I tend to create my own found footage more and more. I recycle my own work. There is always a bunch of unfinished work lying around to use in other work. The blessings of being impatient and not finishing stuff.

OR IS MODERN GRAPHIC DESIGN MORE ABOUT SALES THAN ART?

I think it’s more about sales. A lot of designers are milking their original idea. I have no problem with people who are cashing in, but selling out on your personal style affects your creativity. The biggest problem with that is that other people are following you and copy that style, causing yet another trend. The only thing the original artist can do about it is yelling ‘I was first!’. Keep trying to reinvent your style is a less frustrating way to achieve things I guess. More satisfiying too. Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke are good examples of artists who care more about their artistic development then about money. They are the lucky ones of course.

ARTIST OR ADVERTISER?

Artist, obviously.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADD?

If you are a student and your teacher says you are right on something, you are not...