I think that most designers who can get a Ph.D probably can’t design very well. The two things on the whole, don’t go together!
Enjoy the my interview with Master designer Phil Cleaver and please subscribe t our channel to receive further updates :
– Lefteris Heretakis
Hello and welcome to the first episode of Design Education Talks, the collaboration between the team of the new art school and the designed podcast. Our guest today is Professor Cleaver. So welcome! Welcome to the first episode of this of this podcast.
– Phil Cleaver
Thank you.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So tell us a little bit about yourself.
– Phil Cleaver
I’ve been designing for 40 odd years. I was trained by some of the biggest designers going Alan Fletcher, Bob Gil. I was a protege of Anthony Froshaug and I worked with Michael Wolff in the 80s at Wolf Ollins, and then I was creative director of Allied International Designers during the late and early 80s.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Fantastic! So this is a very long path. So tell us about about this path and how this path has taken you here? Maybe you want to go more into more detail or tell us about how your past experiences .
– Phil Cleaver
When I started, I started in design because I basically when I was about 15, my mum sat me down at the kitchen table with my dad and said, he’s got a God given Art for getting into trouble. But you can only do two things. One was cooking. The other was Art. My mum went: You can’t you can’t go into cooking because he can hardly speak English, let alone French because in that day and age you had to speak French for working as a chef. My dad said, well, maybe its very tricky going into commercial Art. Because the chances of earning your living are very slim. And it was the only time I ever heard my mum swear. And she’d she actually said you could throw that little bastard in a sewer and you come out smelling a roses. And my dad went, Yeah you are right. So I went to art school. And if you have any any good at one thing, you just stay on the path and keep doing it.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Yes, absolutely.
– Phil Cleaver
And like other things in swimming pools, in the end, you float to the top.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely. So after art school, what exactly happened then?
– Phil Cleaver
I worked at the Pentagram for Alan Fletcher as a student designer and then I then went to work for Wim Crouwel, at Total Design in Holland as a junior designer. I did a stint in New York and then I started freelancing for myself, mainly doing music books for a company called Music Subs.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Brilliant! Our main topic today will be focusing around creativity and design thinking. So do you find that this is something that the perception of has changed quite a bit over the years?
– Phil Cleaver
Yes. I think part of the problem in education is most of the kids learn all the programs, but they’re not being trained in the same way with the craft skills or imagination skills. And the level of design is slightly superficial. It all looks very good in a certain level where the level seems to be the level of whatever that mac skills are. We seem to be producing thousands of what I call “Mac monkeys.” People know all the programmes but don’t know how to think.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Yes. We’re going to be having in-depth criticism of education. Absolutely. But what I’m saying is it is about Creativity and design thinking as perceived also by the industry as well.
– Phil Cleaver
I was at a conference in China and whatched a few other well-known designers from America and Japan and everyone present, which is fascinating. But what was the outcome is there’s a lot to do with systems and processes and very little evidence of that. The end result is a fantastic graphic piece of communication. And I’m referring to branding.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So is has that changed today?
– Phil Cleaver
Yeah, I think there’s less creativity. This could be because of the whole point of can you actually sell what you produce or do you know how to produce amazingly creative ideas and get them through boards of directors? If the advantage of being the next barrow boy in London and growing up in the streets of London, is you learn that you’ve got to sell what you produce, otherwise if you can’t sell what you are producing you are not really going to survive as a designer.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Exactly. So how has that changed today? How the perception that creativity and selling what you’re producing changed compared to when you started
– Phil Cleaver
I think there is much more creativity in freedom and people were more relaxed about having slightly more images, which are different. I mean, if you look at a lot of the major logos now, we’re all basically beginning to look similar. Google looks like a Airbnb, which now looks like all the others, they are all will beginning to merge together. And it will be becoming quite typographical, i.e. just to name very little use of symbols
– Lefteris Heretakis
So this is the trend of minimalism.
– Phil Cleaver
I think it’s a trend Blandism.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely!
– Phil Cleaver
Blandism is a word.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So how can that how can that trend be overturned or how can also design students improve this? What do they need to know in order for them to improve this?
– Phil Cleaver
Well, I think, you know, if you’re thinking about branding nowadays as a logo and some corporate colors and you stick with same thing on everything you you’re thinking even 19th and 20th century nowadays, it has to work on smart phones. It has to be able to work exceptionally fast. And he’s got to have a lot of different ways of operating.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So this Blandism, how can we reverse it? As both designers and helping design students to think about reversing Blandism.
– Phil Cleaver
I think one thing is to start it’s just for people to turn the computers off and actually think and start playing and cutting bits of paper out and working in a creative way. I’m not against the computer because they are fantastic, they get rid of what was three or four systems. But when you go in a library and you look at the subject, say you want to look at different horses, you look for hundreds of books for horse. And at the same time, you see thousands of irrelevant images. And it’s looking in that system where you see all these different images which you don’t need or don’t want, which brings in things into the into your mind, which creates concepts and different ways looking at things, whereas if you just researching on Google, you just get what you look at. So if you put in the word horse, you only ever see horses. You don’t see lots of Art. If you know, go and see how did Picasso paint a horse. You do it because you are in art books, in catalogues, you’re looking at different things and you may start bringing ideas together. So like image, which you’ve got to feed the mind, its like a sponge.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So you’re saying spend more time offline as well. So balance the offline and the online time.
– Phil Cleaver
Yeah. I think, you know, you get ideas walking around street markets, you get ideas doing everything. You don’t need to be starring at a computer.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely! So tell us what are you doing and your creative endeavors now. What is it that you’re doing now?
– Phil Cleaver
We’re just finishing the branding of a bank in Malaysia and we’re starting the visual analysis of a bank in Vietnam. So I’m now travelling to Vietnam. We’re working on a number of quite prestigious books for different photographers. And we have ongoing things such as the book collector. So as busy as normal.
– Lefteris Heretakis
You just finished your exhibition of a book-object-art.
– Phil Cleaver
Yes. Could everyone please buy it! It’s available at impress hyphen publishing dot com ( http://www.impress-publishing.com/book-object-art.html ). The book is a visual tool with very little words. It’s about over a hundred of the folded books which are collaged. It’s sums up that period of the last four or five years of work in that field. So although I’m a commercial graphic designer, I’m also an author, I have done about four books now and I’m working on a couple more. And at the same time, I’m a fine artist, so I have three strings to my bow.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Fantastic! So where is th art and the book going from here?
– Phil Cleaver
I don’t know yet. It will go the way it goes. I don’t think I just work from the body. I design and do art and everything from the body, from how I feel, not from using my head. If I use my head I get awfully confused, because I’m so dyslexic, once I sort of try to use the brain, I know I’ve lost it. The energy you put into the work comes back. The energy comes from the body and the heart not the head.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So combining all these experiences, how did you get into into teaching?
– Phil Cleaver
Well, I think I gave my first lecture in Gritfield Art school in Amsterdam in nineteen seventy nine (1979). I was asked by someone: Could you show your work? Because it’s very unusual typographic work. So that was my first lecture. But most of my life I’ve trained designers, I’ve always had juniors and interns. So I’ve spent a vast amount of my life training people by nature of how I was trained by working with a more experienced designer and therefore education and talking about why do, is something I’ve naturally done over the years. It’s just increased. I’ve been an external examiner and then I was approached about becoming a professor. Because of all we experience and time I spent designing some projects. I mean, I love working with young peoples and I love teaching. I love the energy from all that. And it’s a good place to begin to hopefully give back to what’s given me a long career.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Yes, of course!. And you talked about how to bring hall this into the classroom. So how is it that you want to sort of help students today with all your experiences to fight blandism?
– Phil Cleaver
Well, I think typography and a lot of graphics is a trainable system in the same way that you become a craftsman, known as trade. I think Graphic design is a trade. It’s not an Art. You’re not an artist. You’re tradesperson. It shouldn’t be your stamp on the work, you should be the thing when a client has a problem. You are the vehicle which can absorb what he wants to do and visualize it. So it comes out looking exactly like the answer to his brief. Not, this looks like yet another one of Phil Cleaver Cleaver’s design jobs. So I try. You are the thing in the middle, which translates the problem and solves it to give a solution. It’s just communication. But it’s not about you personally. It’s like designing a book. If you look at fantastic book you should be able to pick it out, look at the book, enjoy it, put it down and don’t even realize when its finished finished. It’s not been designed.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So you want to help students create an impersonal approach while at the same time, having a personal approach to it.
– Phil Cleaver
I think there is two things. And I think also teaching, you know, typography is not taught in the same way anymore. I mean, when I started your work, you had to handle all the time. You had to mark up in the language the compositors would understand. And then it went off to a compositor and he typeset it and it came back, as repro, for you to lick and stick to him or it was printed completely letterpress. It was a completely different world.
– Lefteris Heretakis
But do you think it is trainable? It’s trainable, of course. But do you think that needs to be the initial ability? How can somebody know that they have that initial ability?
– Phil Cleaver
If you dont like doing the arts, you’d would be mad to go into. I do think you have to spend your life doing what you enjoy doing. And if you don’t enjoy doing the arts, it’s not the right profession to go into. Because your chances of success are very slim. You have to have a degree of artistic talent.
– Lefteris Heretakis
And did you find now that these criteria are being recognized? Or do you find that the sort of people are coming in more blindly into this one or more less knowing? Even though they do have access to more information?
– Phil Cleaver
To a certain extent, If you get rid of art and graphics in secondary schools and you start getting rid of it at A level, then the students are going to have less experience when they come into degree courses. And also, the hand and eye coordination movement you learn from drawing tyoe or working with pencils in the old ways, trained your eyes, so you could spot when things where wrong immediately, which you tend not to get nowadays because we it’s not taught in the same way in schools.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely!. So how do you see all this situation today becoming a career for designers, turning into career?
– Phil Cleaver
What do you mean into? Because there’s so many facets of design. I mean, in moving image and everything to do with that is going to become a moving and sound and put them together is going to become basically much more important than it has previously. It’s the whole experience of a brand, not just what it looks like.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So students and prospective students need to be focusing more on the brand experience and emotion.
– Phil Cleaver
I think students need to actually stop worrying about being designers, relax and play, because when they play, when you play, you produce more creativity and not worry about being a designer is worry about solving the problem. And what better way is there than playing to get a fantastic solution?
– Lefteris Heretakis
Yes, more play
– Phil Cleaver
More play!Yes definitely more play! Its fun. Fun, its a fun thing to be doing an experiment and do things. If you don’t experiment and make mistakes you will never get anything right.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely. Absolutely. So all with all the experience and design education, how how can we do Design education differently? What would you add? Replace or remove?
– Phil Cleaver
One of the interesting things about going backwards to go forwards is that you actually learn, learn to hand and eye skills. Early on! It stands you in good stead as you go forward, even if you never draw again. Or you draw type, or how you use things and also about actually understanding visual language. Everything’s got a visual language, you’ve just got to understand it once you can understand it you can manipulate it and then you can put two to things that would not ordinarily be connected together! I think you would need a diverse sector. I mean, one of the advantages of art school is by the time they get the third year, they’ve tried loads of things, but I think a year and industry is also a very good idea because you learn a set of skills which are great for you to use in your last year at Art school. But you also learn that the third year is probably the last time you’ll ever really create anything where you want for at least a few years. And that’s building a portfolio which represents you, and is about you, which gives gives the chance to actually excel in what you want to become. Whereas with out that year and in industry, or nine months in industry, you still don’t really know where you are walking into.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely! You’re talking about apprenticeships. And would you say that right now it’s more of the responsibility of students to ensure that they have an apprenticeship because it’s also becoming increasingly tricky
– Phil Cleaver
I think he’s apprenticeships/internships work well, but I think you are better off doing internships when you’re a student.
– Lefteris Heretakis
But how would you advise a student to go about finding one? . Because also many of the doors are more closed today
– Phil Cleaver
I think part of this is a myth. I mean. All the doors in design have always been closed. You just got to learn how to kick them down! That’s quite funny, cause as I said you kick the door down someone’s hammering on the door downstairs. It’s never been easy to get a job in the design world. And you got a kick on a lot doors. You got to work out! I mean, by the time you left art school, you’ve been trained on how to look at problems, solve the problem or work on the problem. This is just yet another example of how to take that understanding and do it for yourself.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So would you say perseverance would be something that is useful?
– Phil Cleaver
You have to be a complete optimist to be a designer. But it’s always the next job I’m interested in. Making moneyhas never being the reason I became a designer or an artist. Money is the byproduct of being very good at what you do not the reason you get out of bed in the morning. I get out on the bed in the morning because I want to solve some amazingly tricky problem or I want to design something. That’s what floats my boat.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So you’re saying that to focus more on the enjoyment of being a design rather than the financial reward?
– Phil Cleaver
Oh, yeah. Because I think if you’re happy within yourself and you’re doing what you love, then it’s actually worth a lot more than a large amount of money. But the art of doing what you want to do, obviously, is obviously a lot trickier than doing what you paid to do.
– Lefteris Heretakis
But also, one needs to be able to understand that the kind of great freedom comes as a great responsibility in a way. How do we make students aware of the kind of responsibility that that kind of freedom comes with?
– Phil Cleaver
By training students properly. It’s it’s also the history of graphics isn’t very old. I mean, it doesn’t take long to learn how everyone else has tackled similar problems to the ones you are getting. But no one seems to actually study, the history of design. I don’t think it’ll give you any ideas, but what it does do is it’s fantastic to watch how everyone else does things. I still read every design magazine I can find and look at wherever is being created. I’m just as fascinated by looking other design companies work as I’ve always been. It’s now easier because it’s all on the web. You can see it all on the web.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Absolutely! fantastic!. So what advice would you like to leave us with? In conclusion, both for students and for design educators.
– Phil Cleaver
I think typography needs to be if a compositor at seven years training to set time and to learn his trade. I dont think type, but basics of producing really good typographers is inherently trained in art schools to take out that. The fact that we’ve absorbed that profession and the knowledge of print is less. And if you pick up an antique book on the whole, its very well typeset and produced. And a lot of that standard is disappeared. I think books are becoming Art objects. And I think now we have to design books, which not only just give you information, but actually fascinating three-dimensional objects in our own right. And also, you can wait fold them up afterwards, and collaging with all the stuff we’ve collected over 40 years as a designer.
– Lefteris Heretakis
So for students, you’re you’re saying treat more design as way of of looking into art, looking into the craft and enjoy!
– Phil Cleaver
Yeah! And even if you stuck doing the boring job, continue doing your own design work. Absolutely.
– Lefteris Heretakis
And for it for art educators and for the future of Design Education?
– Phil Cleaver
I think Art schools have always survived on having external living, working designers come in. And I think that’s very, very important. I also think that most designers, who can get a Ph.D probably can’t design very well. The two things on the whole, don’t go together!
– Lefteris Heretakis
So focus less on the theory and more on the craft.
– Phil Cleaver
Yes. I mean, the fact you need to train your visual side of your life, not the writing side, although writing is awfully important, but it’s just another visual just of communication or expression of communication.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Superb! So where can we find more about you working when find more information about you?
- Phil Cleaver
- I’m good at hiding. There’s an et.al Web site ( http://www.etal-design.com)My art books, are under www.Phil Cleavercleaver.com and a lot quite a lot of the print work is under http://www.impress-publishing.com/.
– Lefteris Heretakis
Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you ever so much for a very insightful interview!
– Phil Cleaver
Its a pleasure and fantastic. Thank you. Thank you!
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