Transcribed with Otter.ai
Guest Jonathan Barnbrook
Speaker 1 0:02
Hey everyone, welcome to unique ways with Thomas GIRARD in audio podcast, we have a really great guest on today, and I’ll describe him briefly. He’s a British graphic designer, filmmaker and typographer. He trained at St Martin School of Art and the Royal College of Art, both in London. Please join me in welcoming Jonathan barnbrook, welcome.
Speaker 2 0:22
Thank you. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I’m looking forward to answering these questions, because I’ve decided not to look at them that much before. So my own answers as well as hopefully you want to know my answers, that’s going to be interesting.
Speaker 1 0:36
Great. And normally I say, are you ready for 20 Questions.
Speaker 2 0:42
I certainly am ready for 20 Questions. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1 0:45
question one. Tell me a little bit more about yourself. What do you
Speaker 2 0:52
do? That’s a good question. And I listen to a few of the other podcasts, and a lot of people take it as work. But you know, when you’re a creative human being, the work doing other things, separation just just doesn’t happen. So all the time you’re thinking about creativity. So suppose what I do is try and be authentic and honest in what I want to say, that form takes graphic design, generally, sometimes it takes music, but that authenticity is the most important thing. I mean, I tend to work when I do graphics in the cultural area, because I still believe that design, music, art, still has a very positive role to play in society. When you look back, you know, it’s not the bankers, those kind of people, which which denote an era. Of course, they’re important in the shaping bit, but it’s the art which shows the spirit of the age. So I’m very happy always to be involved in that thing.
Speaker 1 1:57
Great. And just to know, for our audience, if you’re interested in the most popular episodes, check out the episode with Eric speakerman. It is our most popular episode. So question two, what’s a key piece of knowledge that makes you different?
Speaker 2 2:15
Well, I mean looking or listening to the questions. I mean, there’s a lot that’s about me, me, me, you know. And I’m not that kind of person, really. I mean, when I was maybe 21 of course, I was trying to push my creativity and my worth on to people. But I now at 57 I just don’t feel that need. So I don’t have any big agenda to say why I’m different from other people. I’m only different in the sense that at this moment in this time, I’m a summary of all the experiences, all the people I’ve met, all the creativity I’ve done, all the books I’ve read, all the films I’ve watched, all the TV shows, every conversation I have, and that makes me different from everybody else, but then everybody is different. Everybody’s a unique being, a certain second, second in time. So I I don’t have those feelings of superiority. I just think that every human being has to has that within that uniqueness and that difference, and that’s a very, very celebratory thing. Rather than having an ego, which makes me feel like I I’m a unique person as well, that simply isn’t the right way to view it. Don’t think. And I think, of course, when you’re young, it’s quite important to push your own agenda, but I but as you get older, it’s very important also to change to for your own personal happiness and to find your place in the world. I certainly don’t do the same design work or creative work as when I was 20, they were much more motivated and full of principles that were black and white. Now I’m much older, I would say I see the world in shades of gray, and I’m a little more, bit more human and understanding it’s less about me, it’s often. It’s more about a positive response in the world and negative response, which I think can happen a lot in a lot of work that I’ve done past, which is political, I think, so I try and look at the better part of the world, rather than shoving the negativity down people’s throat all the time. So having said I’m not different, I’ve just explained how I’m different. So that’s the contradictory nature of existence. I love it.
Speaker 1 4:51
Question three, why this? Of all things? Why do you do what you
Speaker 2 4:57
do? Because my art teacher. Told me to when I was 15 or 16, I come from a very working class family, and it was normal to hate your job and to get yourself really dirty, covered in oil and grease in a car factory. And I didn’t realize you could actually do a job that you enjoyed. Yeah, you had to hate it. You had to do it for money. You had to resent the people above you. There would be no way of advancing, really. But suddenly learning about art when I was 15 or 16, the whole world opened up to me of different ways of looking at the world, of having a point of view, which is very important, because generally the poor don’t. I come from a poor, working class family, and the poor are not listened to. So to realize that I could say something and more that people listen to it, and I could put it into work, and I could enjoy that process. Was a revelation. By looking at different 20th century artists that my art teacher showed me, Mr. Lewis, I should thank him.
Unknown Speaker 6:14
And
Speaker 2 6:16
really, that’s what set me off on this. And it is a wonderful journey, and it makes you different from other people in the sense that you really there’s always something that’s at the center of your life pushing you on that center is a creativity and appreciation of The world.
Unknown Speaker 6:40
So that’s why I do what I do, great.
Speaker 1 6:45
And some people struggle with number four. And the question is, what does your future look like?
Speaker 2 6:52
Why do they struggle with it? What’s the reason is, it’s, I think, the Yeah,
Speaker 1 6:58
common perceptions about the future, the struggle about the future, the struggles, I think,
Speaker 2 7:08
I mean, what I worry about is, when people have difficulty with it, is that they’re afraid to look at their own mortality. You know, I’m 57 obviously I’m not going to live as long as someone who’s 20 years old, and who knows how long it be, hopefully more than less. But the future looks happier than it did when I was 20, when I perceived how 56 years old is? It looked quite miserable. But when you’re that age, you’re actually quite appreciative of life, of the things around you, much more, and of people, and just the process of doing and the moment now, whereas when I was 20, ish, I would have raced, you know, the work would be the most important thing, getting the best work and then sacrificing stuff for that, sacrificing family life, sacrificing social life. But now I often stop and say, Isn’t this great what I’m doing? And that never happened before. So however long my future is, if it’s as good as it is now, then I’ll be very happy. And if I pass away, then I would have had a great life where I was people listened to what I said. I got to travel around the world. I got to meet some amazing people. I’ve got to collaborate with some amazing people. So what does my future look like? It looks like I had a great past. Therefore, I have a future which is appreciative than what it takes. So nothing to be afraid of, nothing to get anxious about what will be. Will be it may be short. Maybe so.
Speaker 1 9:10
Number five is unique to this show, we say. And the question is, let’s talk about location. How does the notion of place play into what you
Speaker 2 9:21
do? Well, I live in London, and it’s I’ve lived here since I was 17. It’s 40 years, and I absolutely love this city. I mean, I love the idea of cities. It was always very strange when my family was wanting to go to the coast when I was younger, and I just wasn’t interested. Of course, nature is interesting, but all the beauty, the happiness, the energy happens in cities. For me, the culture, the lack of culture, the violence, the love, everything is there. And London, absolutely, is the base of my work. It’s the color palette, the grazed. Blues. It’s the there’s the word vernacular, which means building from the materials around you. And my typography, the language I use, the atmospheres I put into work, are all from London. The music I love, generally, is from London, and it wasn’t something that I really understood until reading people like JG ballalogg or Ian Sinclair and the term psycho geography was coined. It’s about how for me, it’s about how a place emotionally will affect you when you’re there, and it’s not the conscious things.
Unknown Speaker 10:43
Go to a beautiful building and
Speaker 2 10:47
you know, you’re overwhelmed with the beauty. It’s more you go past a piece of signage from the 1950s and it’s juxtaposed with something from the 1970s and you’re on a long journey, and you’re tired, and the weather is dark, it’s all atmosphere, and it all affects your psychology, and it all feeds into your work. So that kind of thing is extremely important to me. And one of the things I just absolutely love doing is going on an aimless walk in whichever city. I mean, I do it in London once or twice a week, just you don’t know where it will take. You don’t know what people you see. You don’t know what details for a designer. Detail is everything, of course, is a big concept, but how a street sign was painted, and in the 1920s the production methods used, how it is aged. These are all elements of beauty and psychology, which which some strange way go into your work, great and atmosphere. I mean, one of the worst, worst things about being a design is walking down the street and seeing all the typographic mistakes made. But one of the best things is seeing typographic mistakes, which happened in an era where you don’t understand why they made that typographic mistake, and maybe that could feed into your work.
Unknown Speaker 12:10
So for me, place
Speaker 2 12:14
is absolutely everything. I’m a product of the city, and of course, I’m a product of my time.
Speaker 1 12:25
Great. So six is about beginning. So if you had to start from the beginning, what advice would you give your former younger self?
Speaker 2 12:36
I don’t know how I’ve been advanced it, but I mentioned somebody here said this is I wouldn’t give myself any advice really, because making mistakes is all a painful process at the time. Is probably a retrospect one of the most enjoyable things, the the way you solve a problem when it arises is one of the basic fundamentals of creativity. Ma, well, maybe I would have parted a bit more when I was of my degree, rather than worked hard. But apart from that, I would have fully thrown myself into all the mistakes that I I made.
Unknown Speaker 13:23
Because so many interesting situations arose.
Speaker 2 13:28
You know, meeting people by chance and making the wrong decisions work, that kind of thing. But always something happens, and always you learn something, and in the same way, you can’t control what people think about you, what people say about you, so don’t bother. I think you can’t control how your life was, and those decisions, if you made them differently, may not have been much better at all. So looking back in that way is not something I ever really worry about. I don’t worry about my legacy either, and the mistakes I’ve made in relation to that. What’s more important is, again, what I said at the beginning, which was the element of authenticity. Have you been true to yourself? And if you haven’t been true to yourself in the past, and there’s no need to regret it, the best time to do something is now always so that’s why I tend to set a center on rather than giving myself advice. I mean, I don’t know what advice to give to other people, so it’s even more difficult to know what to give myself. Complete, completely relative. I think
Unknown Speaker 14:45
great. And what’s a day in your life like these days?
Speaker 2 14:49
Uh, what’s day in my life like? I mean, not terribly interesting. It’s quite normal. You know, I’m at home with my wife and cats, and we you. I get up and we have breakfast, and I come to work, and of course, I could fill in all those little details there. We sometimes talk about the dreams we’ve had over coffee, which I know a lot of people don’t do, but are both interested in psychotherapy and union psychology. So those things are quite important to us. We have a band as well called fragile self, where we which is constant thing we think about, but how we make music, how we link the visuals to the music. And that takes over our whole lives, really, in one sense. And there are lots of pragmatic things. When you see a creative person, you see their creative output. You don’t see all the little details of the day, the dealing with, I’m talking about, through history, not just today, all the things that go on to you know, how they have to deal with the mundane, how they what they have to eat, all those kind of things, stuff that takes up their time. There’s no concept to it when you see pieces of creative work. But of course, those are all there.
Unknown Speaker 16:12
I mean, being a human being is quite
Unknown Speaker 16:17
well difficult is the wrong word, but it’s quite
Speaker 2 16:20
a complicated thing. So my day is normal, but it’s very difficult and very interesting and very wonderful at the same time as everybody else’s I think
Unknown Speaker 16:36
what’s that kind of answer you’re expecting? Or yeah, no,
Speaker 1 16:39
fantastic. I love it. So eight is around lifelong learning. It’s a popular topic, how do you stay up to date?
Unknown Speaker 16:49
How do I stay up to date? I mean, I think the lifelong
Unknown Speaker 16:53
learning, you tend to think of
Speaker 2 16:57
it being completely an external input into you. But to me, lifelong learning is looking inwards in the sense that what drives existence, what can make you a happier person, what can fulfill you creatively. I don’t tend to look at lots of other graphic design. I mean, I don’t collect graphic design. People tend to think, if you work in one area, you’re kind of quite nerdy about it. But I would rather bring in things like literature, painting, and that sounds quite pretentious. What don’t mean is necessarily that there’s direct influence, but more you get an idea or feeling from reading a book or there’s a sentence, and somehow it’ll come into your work, and it will, for instance, if I was drawing a typeface, there would be a word that would key, be key to thinking about the way language was used. Or maybe there’s a line from a book that would promote me thinking about the name the typeface. So it tends to be not looking at other people’s portfolios are people’s work. I also don’t like that kind of comparison, because it tends to make me I think it tends to make human beings generally quite unhappy they compare themselves to other people. So I think it’s quite important to first look at the self and find out what your soul really needs in terms of staying up to date again. It goes back to this thing of, if you do the same work as now, as when you know 20 years ago, then you’re not being honest with your soul. Staying up to date is how you find peace, really, rather than how you look at other pieces of design.
Speaker 1 19:09
Work. Great. Nine is around tools. Do you use digital and analog tools?
Speaker 2 19:15
Well, the digital is where I bring it all together as whether it’s design or music. But you know, physicality very important. I don’t do letter press so much these days, the old metal printing method, but to me, it was being able to hold the letter physically in your hand and understand it and touch the actual service, which may sound a bit ridiculous, but also it couldn’t be infinitely adjusted. You couldn’t spend your time reducing or adjusting a letter form by one point 2.3 point you would really have to say, This is it. And deal with it, and those restrictions on any kind of technology, I think, are quite important. So that physical element topic was born when using musical instruments. This is the same thing. It’s the physicality of turning the dials on a synthesizer, as opposed to working in software, which is quite important, but it’s all together under digital because that’s a good way to collate it and edit and what tools do I specifically use? Yes, computer. Am I digital nomad? Do I run around doing work? No, I quite like sitting in the studio or sitting at home. I like the atmosphere which puts you in the right psychology for doing something like that. So although theoretically it’s possible,
Unknown Speaker 20:55
I don’t go out of my way
Unknown Speaker 20:57
to be like that,
Speaker 2 21:00
I’m I’m sure, actually, the best answer there is what tools to use? I would say my brain. They’re not, you know, it’s most important thing, and that’s all the other technology. Technique is in service of the brain. What is trying to achieve
Speaker 1 21:17
perfect halfway? Number 10, how do you deal with work, life or life work balance.
Speaker 2 21:25
I think firstly, creativity just bleeds into everything you do, whether it’s, you know, going out and going to go for a walk in the park and seeing a piece of old architecture which will inspire something, going to an exhibition which still feeding into work, but still would have some kind of aspect of freeing your mind and not thinking about it. Creative people don’t have that work life balance, although what I think it’s important to do is to
Unknown Speaker 22:04
definitely
Unknown Speaker 22:07
think about nothing quite often,
Speaker 2 22:10
just whether it’s through meditation, whether it’s doing something quite banal, it’s important to empty the mind of the problems It solves, to get rid of the chatter that’s there, just to let things underneath come through, because that’s what we will need. And there are various reasons for that. One is, of course, solving your own psychological problem, but also allowing creativity to come through for that spirit of the age, the spirit of the moment, to kind of ferment and be there. So you never stop being creative person. But also you have to realize that absence is a very important part of creativity. Space is very important.
Speaker 1 22:59
Perfect number 11 is, if you weren’t doing what you do. Now, what might you be doing?
Speaker 2 23:06
Well, it depends if you mean, I was doing, I wasn’t doing what I was doing now this podcast,
Unknown Speaker 23:14
yeah, we working.
Speaker 2 23:18
But generally, you know, I have a, of course, we all have frustrations in life, but I feel like I’ve been true to myself and generally in life, got to a point where I’ve done what I wanted to do. Obviously, the soul is always searching for something new or something which makes it peace, and moving more into doing my own work and to do collaborative work with my wife, I think it’s been really important because graphic designer often it’s someone else’s content. Now, often that content is amazing, fantastic, working with people like David Bowie. Of course, it’s a amazing piece of creativity. But the last piece in the puzzle, doing, say, an album cover, would be to make the music yourself. You’ve controlled the vision, you control the graphics, you control the type of, then to control the content in kids, the ultimate thing, of course, there’s, you know, there’s beauty in restriction as well. There’s beauty in solving a problem. You have to design an album cover, you have to design a signage system. How do you solve that problem? But in terms of purity and kind of absolutely saying what you want to say and what you want to deal with and doing your own projects is very important. That’s what I’ve moved towards, and what I will continue
Unknown Speaker 24:57
to Antoine, what would you not like to do with your career?
Unknown Speaker 25:01
What I like not to do my career, I
Speaker 2 25:06
don’t know. I’m always open to working on new projects. I mean, when I was younger, I was very worried about selling out of
Unknown Speaker 25:19
working for the wrong people. That’s still a concern.
Unknown Speaker 25:24
So
Speaker 2 25:26
I tend to think ethically when we work with clients, I think that’s very important, and it’s on some the forgot in them, in the maelstrom of general media in that as designers or as artists, choosing to work with someone, choosing to be commissioned by someone, is a political choice, even if the content is political, even being a graphic designer is a political choice. You can send to be part of the market economy. So you have to be extremely careful about your responsibility. You know, ethics and design are very complex. This company owns this company. They commission this, but they’re funded, funded by this. They were bought by venture capitalists. You know, 50 years ago, whatever.
Unknown Speaker 26:24
So you have to make your own
Unknown Speaker 26:27
decisions about
Speaker 2 26:31
who’s well, who want to but generally you should be consistent. It’s fine for some people. Some people have no worry at all about working with corporations, but always have, so I tend to keep away from that kind of thing and try and mainly work culture I feel does a lot less damage. And do you
Unknown Speaker 26:54
have a favorite word, quote or sentence?
Speaker 2 26:58
Um, this is the only question I really looked at because I wanted to make sure I got the quote. But I love Herman Hesse, and particularly the book Steppenwolf, which I read first when I was 19 years old. And to me, when I read it, I couldn’t breathe. I really couldn’t, because the words just spoke to me absolutely and there’s one of the things the book does, really, is gives you hope in life. The main character is in despair when the book starts and he learns, even though he’s a, let’s say, a sensitive human being, even though he’s opposite of mainstream society, he learns how to enjoy life and to laugh and to be in the moment. And I can’t remember the exact moment in the book that this quote used, but it says eternity is a mere moment just long enough for a joke. To me, that’s that’s really beautiful, because it’s about the heaviness of existence, but it’s about the lightness of living
Unknown Speaker 28:21
and the small amount of time we have,
Speaker 2 28:26
but also the the laughter of the soul in soul doesn’t age bodies age. It just really, whenever I read it, I smile with a beautiful phrase, it is, and now I’m going to say something quite strange. I met Kanye West at a play through one of his CDs. It wasn’t just me. There’s quite a few people. There hundreds of people. He insisted on
Unknown Speaker 28:58
at the end of the playthrough of
Speaker 2 29:01
shaking everybody’s hand when they left. And so I thought I must say something to him, which I think is important. So this quote came into my head, so I said to it to him, eternity, to me, a moment, just long enough for a joke. He looked at me and he laughed, and then one of his security guards just pushed me out the way. So that was the last time I used that quote, what a beautiful thing. It is.
Speaker 1 29:29
Lovely and least favorite word, quota sentence.
Speaker 2 29:34
I mean, I don’t have one. I did try and think about that. You know, there are obvious people in the world whose voice
Unknown Speaker 29:42
irritates me.
Speaker 2 29:44
I mean, I can’t listen to Trump speaking. I can’t listen to Putin speaking, talking about today, you know. But I think we should all be open minded. Even the words we don’t want to hear are important words. Words to hear, to understand either why someone’s saying you or where we should go with our ethics and morals. So there isn’t a least favor, word, quote or sentence. For me, everything is permissible you choose to accept or reject it once you’ve heard it, not immediately go against it. So, yeah, very important that we don’t sense it.
Speaker 1 30:35
Okay? And one word to describe yourself. What word do you choose?
Speaker 2 30:41
What word do I choose one word to describe so, I mean, I don’t care. I mean, I can’t be bothered, in a way, because it’s not an issue. Why would I describe myself? I mean,
Unknown Speaker 30:57
it sounds quite egotistical to try and describe yourself.
Unknown Speaker 31:02
Ma, so I can’t Okay.
Unknown Speaker 31:09
16, what keeps you up at night?
Unknown Speaker 31:12
Well, the practical answer there is our cat Lou,
Unknown Speaker 31:16
because he’s always
Unknown Speaker 31:18
trying to sleep on top of me,
Speaker 2 31:23
that space where you’re half awake and half asleep so interesting, it’s very emotional. You problems are magnified. Creativity comes to the fore, even bad things are good things. Everything is relative. The night time is a really interesting place. Our band did a song called the hour of the wolf. It’s from a quote from a film by Ingmar where he talks about the very late night between three and 4am where most babies are born, people die, and our biggest nightmares aren’t realized that psychology is so interesting, so things keeping you up at night, it’s actually very healthy. I think like to be kept up at night. I mean, I mentioned before that just discuss our dreams. Think they’re amazingly fertile creative things to take. And that psychology where you’re half asleep, it’s one of those creative is again, it’s about absence, where you have that space where you’re not being externally stimulated, and you can just have your mind
Unknown Speaker 32:51
wander, and you have a dream you’re chasing.
Speaker 2 32:55
It’s a dream you’re chasing. I’m not chasing any dreams whatsoever. I mean, I’m completely not interested in in that aspect of of life at all, and I don’t think I could say to be happy, but I don’t think that’s a dream. I think that’s that’s an ongoing process. I mean, even being happy all the time, it has to be relative to being unhappy or evolving so not chasing any dreams whatsoever.
Unknown Speaker 33:28
What inspires you,
Unknown Speaker 33:31
what inspires me now,
Speaker 2 33:34
everything, every single second, every single detail, every smallest animal, largest animal, every human being, every particle of Earth, how it all fits together. And I know I’m sounding terribly hippie in some way, how it all fits together is incredible. I’ve, I think I’ve never, ever been bored. I walk to studio. It takes 30 minutes, and every single day, I see something different, and I see it on a wider level, but I see it in every footstep. And so I’m inspired. I I use that time to think. I use that time to just observe the world. And I never understood people who don’t look at their surroundings or entertainment for inspiration. They go around blind, because everything is unique, everything is wonderful, and everything is inspiration, good or good or bad. So everything is the answer to what inspires
Unknown Speaker 34:44
great and last couple here, any advice you’d like to share?
Speaker 2 34:50
I mean, I’m not presumptuous to think that I have knowledge to impart to people, but I suppose there are a few practical things i. So if you do have a particular thing you want to do, it’s very, very easy to get distracted. And you won’t get distracted in a this won’t be possible kind of way, necessarily, or be in a little diversion. For instance, if you want to be a graphic designer, and then you start working in an associated place where you’re maybe not being as creative as you want. It’s it often happens that’s very difficult to divert back. Once you do something like that, you move into management or you move into a technical side. So you must keep your focus in the short term and in in the long term, because life will have a way of putting other stuff in it and making it more difficult to go back to what you want to the other thing is to you need to have a sense of humor about yourself. If you take yourself too miserably, mis you take yourself too seriously, you will be miserable. If you take yourself too miserably, you will be serious. I tend to worry about mistake, but it still works. The funniest thing in the world is yourself, and if you can’t see that, you can’t see the biggest joke around you can’t control what people think of you. And
Unknown Speaker 36:23
to deal with situations, humor is very, very important.
Unknown Speaker 36:28
So just a little bit of distance and being able to laugh.
Speaker 2 36:32
Um, yes, I think those are fairly fundamental bits of advice.
Speaker 1 36:38
Great. And finally, number 20, how can our listeners keep tabs on you? What’s their call to action?
Speaker 2 36:45
Wasn’t quite sure what you meant by call to action. Kind of thing.
Unknown Speaker 36:49
Is there a direction we should go in? Is
Unknown Speaker 36:54
there a direction
Unknown Speaker 36:57
you mean to find out what I’m doing that kind perhaps, yeah,
Speaker 2 37:03
um, on a very pragmatic level, you could visit our website, www barn.net but you know, how do they keep tabs on me? I mean, the best thing always is kind of meeting people by chance, or you’re in a different country, and somebody who knows your work will come up to you and start talking. I know that’s not necessarily a very practical way, but it’s the best exchange that happens
Unknown Speaker 37:36
that direct energy. I mean, it’s the same with work,
Speaker 2 37:40
when you have 50 people in between you and an artist or a musician, it reinterpreting what the artist wants or reinterpreting what people it tends to make a job worse if you talk to the artist directly. And that’s what happened. I worked with Dave Bowie. It was very direct its human room, then a sense of energy is created. And the fundamental thing for all creativity, or for all civilization, is that direct energy between people. That’s what creates culture. So I think if you see me in the street, then bother me. I wouldn’t mind at all. Enjoy them. Enjoy the conversation, the discussion.
Speaker 1 38:24
Okay, well, magical episode. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Speaker 2 38:30
I enjoyed it. I, as I said, I didn’t follow the questions too closely when you send them to me, but I’ve learned quite a lot about myself here as well. So thanks for asking. I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai