Description:

Palminder Kaur interviews Gavin Strange, brain behind Bristol graphic arts brand JamFactory and designer at Aardman Animations.

Gavin Strange is a 26-years-young arty guy from Leicester who has made beautiful Bristol his home. He works as the Senior Online Designer at Aardman Animations by day, by night he indulges in his graphical obsessions of design, web arts, photography and vinyl toys under the name JamFactory. I gave him a right old quizzing about his Bristol life. This is what he said.

‘I still walk into work in the morning and think to myself ‘Oh my God – I work at Aardman this is the best thing in the world!’.

‘Me and everyone I work with are all fans of the company so we’re all excited to be there. We feel passionately for it so we all push ourselves and work as hard as we can but there’s also a lot of laughing and being silly. Sometimes you might glimpse a giant morph figure being rolled past your window or decide to pop over to see what’s happening on set. No two days are alike.

I was born, raised and went to college in Leicester where I studied graphic design for 2 years. I was a junior designer in an agency for just a few months and this guy who was in charge of New Media said ‘how about we teach you to be a web designer?’ And it all started from there.

I met a lovely girl there who was coming to Bristol to go to university. I had previously been down here and I thought ‘wow this place is really pretty!’ so I packed my bags and have never looked back since.

When I got here I started going to art shows and making friends with like minded people and I used the internet to my advantage, including the Bristol Media Website. After joining that and not really giving it much thought I received an email saying ‘Hello from Aardman. We’ve seen your work and really like it. There’s a big project coming up with Channel 4, we think your work would be well suited to it, fancy coming in and having a chat?’ It was called Formations and was about showcasing people’s animations online.

A typical day at Aardman involves an awful lot of tea. We’ve got a fantastic canteen that regularly serves flapjacks which is an important part of our day! When I started it was still a really new department with only six of us there – the feature film department is the biggest and most famous part but they also have huge commercials department and there’s the broadcast TV shows.

They started a digital section to start doing websites and flash animations. Over the last year it’s just rocketed. At one point I was a senior designer on my own – so not really being senior to anyone! I design my own projects but also do some art directing on other projects.

With my personal JamFactory work I’m particularly fond of my vinyl toys. I’d see toys around and after stumbling into playlounge store in London I started a collection. I always thought it would be fantastic to have one of my own. I didn’t know how to do it – so cheekily emailed someone saying ‘Hello, you make toys! I like designing stuff. Can I have a toy?’ Luckily right place, right time and I got an opportunity.

I always forget there are people who don’t know anything about vinyl toys. They’re basically grown up toys that don’t do anything. They are 3D sculptures almost, they are very contemporary and there are a lot of different artists out there that do them.

There is this huge collectables world for these things. They’re for serious collectors, and also people just having them on their desk. They’re pretty toys not to be played with for grown-ups. My second series was launched just a couple of months ago and you can get them in the 50:50 store just off Park Street.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t really go out. Although saying that I do love going out on my bike. No computer screen – just me, a bit of metal and some wheels, that’s really nice. I don’t really veg out – but I am a big gamer and I like taking the time to catch up with friends. Really though if I’m talking to someone who’s not interested in art, design or anything creative I’m probably incredibly boring.

So that’s what I do by night. Anything from graphic design to print design, vinyl toys to photography, video editing to pretty much anything I can get my hands on really! It keeps me out of trouble. I’m very lucky to be able to do what I do, let alone be paid for it in a day job. I honestly don’t know what else I’d do otherwise. I’m very lucky to have the opportunity to do it and keep making stuff so yeah. I wouldn’t wanna stop.’

You can see more of Gavin Strange’s work at www.jam-factory.com