Forget studio portraits and sensible photoshoots; we cast an entirely new light on leading creatives.
We've featured a lot of designer interviews over the years on Creative Bloq, but a lot of the time we end up with very similar photographs. Here's a designer sitting at his Mac with Illustrator open and a bunch of vinyl toys on his desk! Here's a designer in her studio, with lots of inspiring artwork on display! Here's a designer leaning against a wall! And here's Stefan Sagmeister with – put some clothes on, Stefan; you'll catch your death!
We fancied seeing something a little different, so we asked a bunch of top creatives to delve into their archives and send us pictures of them as we've never seen them before. Here's what they came up with...
Jeffrey Bowman spends as much time as possible in the great outdoors
Designer and illustrator Jeffrey Bowman has always been a devotee of the outdoor lifestyle, and spent 2013 living and working in a log cabin in the Norwegian mountains. "I'm constantly looking for the next peak to climb or the next slope to ride down," he says. Here, though, we see him in a slightly more relaxed mode, fishing in the Lake District. "That was Buttermere, with High Stile in the background," he tells us. "Sadly didn't catch anything though!"
Matt H Booth asked friend and fellow tattoo devotee Ollie Munden to design his hand ink
We featured Matt H Booth in a previous feature on designers and their tattoos; since then he's acquired some new ink that he's keen to show off. "I've wanted to have my hands inked with something for quite a while now, but what to have on them?" he says. "My arms are almost completely covered now and recent tattoos have harked back to the old school style. So I decided to combine this style with my boys' names: Oscar and Noah.
"Now I had a style and theme, it was time to decide who to design them. There was only one person I wanted and that was designer, friend and fellow tattoo lover, Ollie Munden. Various emails went back and forth with ideas, colours and so on until we simplified the design to two different swallows with the boys' names incorporated in a ribbon.
"There was only one person I trusted to tattoo such a visible part of my body and that was Louis Molloy, who has inked the majority of my tattoos over the last 17 years. An hour in the chair and a little pain later, they were done. I just need my hands filling up with some more ink now."
Kerry Hyndman is a qualified snowboarding instructor
When she's not illustrating or creating bespoke maps, Kerry Hyndman loves to grab her snowboard and get to the mountains. This action shot of her catching some sick air was taken a few years ago in Switzerland.
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"I was training to get my snowboard instructor qualifications at the time," explains Hyndman, "and then worked out there doing a bit of teaching afterwards. I try and get out to the mountains as often as I can these days, and still have a pipe dream of moving back out there again..."
James Oconnell's self-portrait captures how busy he is at the moment
Manchester-based designer and illustrator James Oconnell has been working on a new style of late – you can see the results of his experiments on Dribbble – and he's used it to create this striking self-portrait. "The image represents how busy I am at the moment," says Oconnell, "Snowed under with work, hence the buzz lines around my head, and a tired crossed eye!
3D artist Jeremy Kool, creater of stunning iOS animated adventure The Paper Fox, came up with this gorgeous self-portrait in which he's turned himself into a Muppet. "I've always loved the Muppets," he tells us. "I was watching an old episode and was inspired to create a CG felt puppet. I created some materials and displacement maps that worked well simulating felt – but the problem was I didn't know who or what to make. Eventually I decided to make a self-portrait, I think it turned out nicely, but I'm certainly goofier looking in real life."
Next page: five more candid photos of designers!
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Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
