Alexis Jamet creative report responses

 Alexis Jamet creative report responses

You have described your work as 'poetic, abstract and narrative, soft and bold'. How did you come to develop your style as a creative, and how has it evolved throughout your experiences within the industry? 

I think for my workmates it wasn’t really the case.

I never knew if it was a question of Ego or not but sometimes working for agencies or studio can be frustrating for me. It happened that I worked on a project for A to Z on my own for a studio and never be mentioned. Now some studios are more grateful to their team and mention people involved but I was sometimes felling like a ghostwriter.

For my own description I don’t remember where I said that but I think I wanted basically to express the fact that abstract/narrative or soft/bold can be the opposite but can work together.

You've spoken about how you branched into the design industry through skateboarding, creating zines, videos and board designs for local skate shops. Do you feel like this element of community influenced the way in which you approach your design? Is collaboration something you value as a designer? 

Yes maybe. I do love collaborating with people I admire wether in skateboarding or design.

It’s definitely a value to collaborate because it’s a way to make your work evolve in my opinion.

And it’s just nice to work or hang out with people with same interest and same approach.

I really admire how your portfolio balances a combination of consistency and versatility; in conversation with It's Nice That, you discussed how you become 'bored very quickly' which influences how your work constantly evolves. In regards to this, how do you approach your clients in a way that welcomes new ideas and experimentation? Have you found it difficult that you are creatively restricted with your commission or more commercial work? 

When a client comes up with no ideas about what they need but they just know they want to work with me that’s usually the opportunity to kind of surprise them and « renew me ». And sometimes clients come up already with an idea or a moodboard so I’m just following the brief which can be relaxing also and as well exiting if for example they ask me to draw something I never tried to do in the past.

The best solution for me if I get too much frustration through commissions is to make self initiated projects, these are always the best things to me.

What have your experiences been like working in studios and agencies? Do you prefer these environments in comparison to working alone with freelance work/ personal projects? 

As I mentioned before working in a studio is not the perfect fit for me at the moment but I definitely had great times. The last studio where I worked was Lyon and Lyon in Sheffield and the team was lovely and some of the projects were nice, and on top of that they were very trustful.

It’s more exiting for me now, because I meet a lot of different people and can choose the direction I want to go for. In studios I was just seing my workmates and rarely the clients or collaborators.

But who knows maybe in some years I’ll be tired of being a freelance and we’ll be back to an agency position.

What advice would you give to a designer starting out in the industry? Are there any hurdles you have had to overcome throughout your career so far? 

It really depends of what a designer want to do. I’m not a very good example because I’m a very lucky person doing things I love. For example for a designer who want to work in a corporate studio or an add agency I don’t really have advices.

Maybe the obstacles I had was to fight with the self impostor syndrome because I’m not graduated from a prestigious design school, or also sometimes improvising new skills while working on a project.

Over the past few years, you've had the amazing opportunity to work for agencies based in France, Spain, North America and England. I'm interested in how you got to the position where you were able to do so; how were you able to branch out your contacts globally? Would you credit the internet for this, or was it a case of contacts and connections within the industry? 

Definitely the internet. I had my first job position in Los Angeles through Behance. The creative director just found my work on this platform and asked me to work with them in the US.

Then for the other jobs I just sent emails showing my interest to some studios and polishing my portfolio where they could understand what I do in a few seconds.

Your work consists of a 50/50 split between digital and analog design, with a lot of your designs and illustrations using nostalgic textures and elements of printed matter. Do you think that in todays' heavily digitally orientated environment that this element of physical design is crucial within the design process? In light of this, would you say that you begin your creative process digitally or physically first-hand? 

It’s a tough question for me because I work this way for more self oriented reasons. I’m not informed enough if digital or print is the worst for the planet at the moment. But like many graphic designers I love to get my stuffs printed.

And again it depends on the project but for example for more visual oriented project I usually start by writing down ideas on a post it paper and then I drop images and references on a Illustrator artboard and I see what I can do.

You have previously mentioned how you take a lot of inspiration from the internet, skateboarding, magazines and animated movies. Before starting out as a designer, you initially wanted to study film; I'm a big film-lover myself and want to know how much film influences your work and in what way? Outside of the design world, what films have impacted you as a creative or struck a chord with you personally? 

It’s veery wide. I love animated movies like Studio Ghibli’s or more experimental ones like Vince Collins with Jazzy Alphabet also titles that Saul Bass made during his carrer, and my favorite Georges Schwizgebel for his experimental movies.

And my tastes for movies go for all the Hitchcock movies (I love the title openings). Also the French nouvelle vague especially Chabrol, Godard and Truffaut. 

I take a lot of screenshots that I save for no reasons.

Now more than ever, Instagram and social media is a massive influence in the design world, yourself even discussing how when you hit a creative wall, you look online for inspiration. Despite this, do you think that the design industry has become too 'trend' based; are designers becoming reliant on heavily stylised and 'trendy' designs? If so, do you agree with designing based on trends? 

I think it depends where you look online. If you are looking for inspiration on Pinterest for example, I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you listen to a podcast or read an interview from a designer or watch an interesting project and try to understand how the designer ended up doing something that’s better.

But to the opposite, I also just watch random images. I follow a lot of instagram and Tumblr accounts posting anything but graphic design. These platforms can be like a big flee market with a lot of random images.

Of course there’re trends and I’m conscious my work is becoming trendy. But trends exists since centuries. To me a good design needs a good balance between trend and audaciousness. Then it needs luck to have your work aging well and still interesting 10 years later.

Finally, heres just a fun quick task for you: create a 'starter pack' meme of yourself. This can be a collection of images associated with you and yourself as a creative (definitely expecting a lot of grain, haha).