Johnny Hardstaff was our first visiting lecturer of the year...I was not aware of his work before hand but looking at work he has produced there are pieces I recognise such as the MTV 'Cherry Girl' and the Orange adverts.
Hardstaff is a director and designer. Represented by Ridley Scott Associates (London) and Little Minx (Los Angeles), he has directed and designed innovative moving image work across a broad spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. Mass media clients include Sony, Radiohead, Orange, Toshiba, Sony PlayStation and the BBC amongst others.
"Amongst his most notable works to date remain 'History of Gaming' and 'Future of Gaming' (two politically provocative short films designed to first engender then test corporate patronage, now inducted into the National Film Archive), the Radiohead film 'Like Spinning Plates' (long format two track experimental music video), and increasingly a contemporary raft of innovative design based commercials (Sony / Toshiba / Asics / LG / MTV etc)."
"Amongst his most notable works to date remain 'History of Gaming' and 'Future of Gaming' (two politically provocative short films designed to first engender then test corporate patronage, now inducted into the National Film Archive), the Radiohead film 'Like Spinning Plates' (long format two track experimental music video), and increasingly a contemporary raft of innovative design based commercials (Sony / Toshiba / Asics / LG / MTV etc)."
The talk from Johnny was inspiring for us to generate our own work in any media that we are comfortable with; Johnny graduated with no software skills and made his first piece of motion graphics 'History of Gaming' using Photoshop....this just goes to show that you can produce any style of work using whatever skills you have, you just have to work hard at it! I really loved Johnny's sketchbooks, each page was crammed full with notes and sketches showing his thoughts and ideas....I like the fact that the pages were full which is something I always try to achieve but not as good as Johnny's! He talked to us about his experiences in industry working in the corporate sector and his battle between producing visually appealing work and the meaning of the work....there is a big responsibility when you put work out there, you have to think about what is does to the people who view it, what is it intended to do? what does it do? It was also refreshing to hear that some elements within his work were there purely because they "looked good!"
Digital work is not something that usually appeals to me the fact that i recognized some of his work means it must be something that catches my eye, although I did not understand the meaning behind all the work Johnny produces he is a very talented designer and it is always great to hear from people within the industry.
MTV Cherry Girl
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