Humphrey Weightman

Humphrey Weightman is an graphic designer, who came into college today to speak in front of the class. He showed his work and did not show a power-point and it was interesting to hear from someone who works in this business. He started by speaking about when he was young and how he developed in an interest in graphic design. He also said he was good at many other things such as music and fashion. He also mentioned he worked in women's fashion early on in his career but had always wanted to stick to being a graphic designer, although he kept going into different things. He is now a graphic designer and has been working as one since the 1970's. I found his album covers from the 1970's very interesting, he had used a photograph of a woman looking up in black and white. He said for this cover he took the picture rolling apples to the woman and in the image she holds one apple. This picture seemed quite modern so it could work now, though as he said the typeface he used was "very" 1970's: this album sold 15,000 copies. In this part of his career he said everything was hand done, the letters had to be at the right measurements and it would take hours (8 hours) to get this right. He mentioned letters would have to be cut out, which I can't imagine as everything now is done by computing. He said that this business is very "labour intensive" and would include maths and counting. He did work early on in his career as a sales man having people working for him in a studio but once the computers were created he can work from home and he also did not like this responsibility of taking care of other peoples careers and wages. He worked for chicken farmers in the 80's designing uniforms, he claimed he did not like this work but also said "If you come to a fork in the road take it" which makes sense. Unhappy with his job at this time he went to Spain and became a musician for a short time before going to America, where someone had asked him to work. In America he claimed that he had to work eight hours a day to get work done often working to get work done in a short amount of time (such as 3 weeks on a project). In the 1980's Humphrey along with those who he worked with created software along with a mainframe. Humphrey said it was important to use fashion in work as it would always be up to date and also to incorporate style as-well. This meaning customers are often looking for the most current design.

What it takes to be a graphic designer:

• Flexibility, being able to work at many different things and times.
•  Hard work, otherwise the work won't get done.
• Not to do it on your own
• Back up information, businesses fail if things get lost.
• Keep Organised 
• Get into working environment 
• Carry a camera to take pictures, not a phone one
• Keep work in a separate room

Graphic Designers are not likely to have fame and are likely to earn 25,000 a year, they will have to pay a lot to keep up with technology change and buying current software.

It was Interesting what he told us and it can be done in any field of design. He showed the class some of his different works including the disabled rights handbook which I have included in the post. He had designed two of these books in the past and had only a few weeks to create them in. The books are also very thick with a lot of text with in them. In his other works he uses photos he takes and includes them. In terms of typefaces,he uses Times New Roman and also Frutiger similar to Helvetica. I have included an example of Frutiger(another was Univers).  He mentioned the difference in covers in books and leaflets and quality such as gloss and matte and how these relate to fashion

Humphrey mentions too save work at least 4 times and back every-thing up, I lost work before on the computer so this is a good idea.
Fires and losses are often what makes a business fail from losing information.

He showed us how he keeps organised using some scheduling which looked very confusing. Humphrey mentioned how a young student was able to create the road signs in the UK and how they were very simple. I agree that these road signs work well because of the simple readable text used and the colours also used.

Some More Tips for Graphic Designers:

• Don't become friends with customers or suppliers
• Charge by the project
• Not to loose temper with a client, They can make you pay to redo work!
• Use bold colours, he mentioned red, to distract from mistakes.
• 3 is a good number when showing the customer work, and making them reject one. ("humans are programmed to reject")
• Do not tell the customer what to do

He also advised graphic designers to buy Adobe Publishers, a white board a good scanner and a Mac or PC 

The talk was very interesting as I learned a lot about this career, but it did not attract me to this career as it sounded very complicated creating the design. He said it was complex but now easier because of computers but still I don't think being a Graphic Designer would be right. I did learn a lot that can be included in my art work including typography.

I liked much of his work, most of all I like the very simple white covered books, one had a glossy white image but some I found a bit too simple. I know that is the point however and his style. I was glad he was able to come in and talk to the class.