My name is Niall and I am a graphic designer in Leeds, West Yorkshire.
I have been a graphic designer with qualifications for 4 years but have been a practicing graphic designer for the last 10 years with experience in many fields including theatre, branding, poster designer and set design. My areas of specialism have now changed and developed after 10 years and after studying, but my roots are still key to my story and my work.
With a BA Hons degree in graphic design from 2013-2016, I was able to find what it was I wanted to do in the creative world and where I stood, learning my visual and creative voice. The completing an MA in graphic design in 2017 allowed me to bring those skills to life and allow me to develop on a deeper level what design means to me and what I can bring to the design world.
As a creative designer, I do not like to be pinned down to one specialism. I like to move round and be able to experiment with tools, materials, concepts, visuals and ways of creative thinking. Doing this allows me to get a broad sense of the creative world and reach new people all of the time.
My specialisms are within the areas of typography, posters, print, Risograph and screen printing, with new skills being added all of the time. I am a quirky designer and am not afraid to get stuck in with any computer programme and learn and make mistakes along the way. At the same time, I am in my element when I am not on the computer and can get my hands dirty, using all types of materials to create tactile handmade pieces. I am a designer that believes that great work can be married together from a sketchbook to a computer with the help of analogue tools along the way.
Projects
- Distorted A&R ZinesDistorted A&R zine is a typographic exploration and experimentation into how the human mind sees and perceives typography and just how much we recognise through universal shapes. During my MA graphic design year at Huddersfield University, I wanted to try and experiment and push my boundaries and push my creative thinking further than I did in my BA degree. One section of design that stood out to me during BA years was that of typography. With each piece of work that I create, the typography always takes pride of place and takes up a lot of my time and passion. With the Distorted A&R zines, I wanted to push the human perception of recognition of typography and how far I could deconstruct the letterforms before we can longer read or recognise them. Using only analogue methods to create the zine, I created paper sans serif letterforms and began to fold them in many different ways to create different letters out of them. The more I folded them, the more distorted the letter forms became. After scanning the letters in onto the computer, I wanted to create a printed artefact that I could use as a final product as well as an exploration piece. To do this, I turned the scans into a zine which explores the destruction of each of the characters. This was a simple process which allowed the shapes of the letter to be seen more than any other detail on the page. The zines were simply printed with a Risograph printer to keep the zines simple and as cheap as possible and to keep the handmade aesthetic of the project. The Risograph also allowed the pages of the zine to all look very different from the last and would allow each copy to be its own unique copy of the project with all different marks, scuffs, creases and misprints. The covers were printed onto “champagne” 250 GSM coloured paper to allow the cover to stand out from the colour of the pages inside but not overtake the content of the zine or the cover. The cover of the zine had the original letterform printed onto the front which allowed the viewer to see the letterform in its original state before the manipulation. The zine then had an acetate cover made for each copy which had a folded version of the letterform printed on it. This was to allow the unfolded and the folded to have a relationship between each other and match up on the cover, giving an abstract hint fo what is inside. When testing this concept out whilst at university, my work was on my studio wall along with my years projects. When one of the other course users brought her daughter into the studio, she took one look at all of the distorted letterforms tacked on the wall and could interpret each and every character no matter how manipulated they were, proving the original theory to the project.
Work history
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Graphic DesignerOff the cuff Theatre
Leeds, United KingdomFreelance
Branding and identity for Off The Cuff Theatre Company. This is an ongoing relationship
Freelance Graphic DesignerXXY Magazine
Leeds, United KingdomFreelance
Freelancer in my own company //XYXY*
I would be looking to make this a full time company sometime in the future
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Skills
- Posters
- Creative Typography
- Custom Typography
- Illustration
- Graphic Design
- Branding