The Journal (Association of Illustrators) - March 2004
The New Thirty

The AOI is thirty years old. Phooey, by the time that you read this I'll have turned forty. Sure, I can remember thirty as if it were only yesterday and as I recall it was a pretty big deal at the time. But forty, how do you prepare for that one? What consoles me, as I steadily approach the point of no return, is just like the staying in is now the new going out and brown is the new black so inevitably forty has become the new thirty. Which means that the AOI and myself are sharing a birthday. Convinced? Me neither.

Thirty, forty, whatever; the thing about getting older, particularly hitting new decades, is that you just can't help but gaze back at previous achievements, as well as peer forward at new goals. A mid-life crisis starts simply enough, a
time-line of previous ups and downs are re-run, re-played and re-enacted inside your head; where did things go right, go wrong or go nowhere?

Thirty years ago I was a school-boy, waiting patiently for the horrors being committed in the names of fashion, music, design and popular culture to be killed off by punk rock. It was David Carson, many years later that proclaimed 'graphic design will save the world, right after rock and roll does...' but way back then it was the combination of edgy do-it-yourself-cut-and-paste graphics and speed-fuelled punk that pushed my ambitions towards art school. Forming a band, playing a few awful gigs, cutting a record and designing the sleeve was what art school was all about. Fortunately I recognised my talents lie on the outside rather than the inside of the sleeve and soon knuckled down to the serious business of graphic design. That is, until I saw what was happening in the not-so-serious illustration studio; a bunch of pale, scrawny, leather jacket clad individuals were drawing, painting, printing, Xeroxing, cutting-up and throwing-down some seriously cool images. I was fixed.

Occasional sorties from the haze of (dope) smoke-laden studios at Peckham Road's Camberwell School of Art, on board the infamous number 12 bus, led me to a gallery-office-Mecca just off the Tottenham Court Road. The AOI was not quite the cool hangout I longed it to be but somehow every visit would inspire and impress. The floorboards creaked, there was never anywhere to sit and background music played out as if punk had never happened but there was always a range of cards and mags to browse and the world of illustration seemed to permeate the surroundings.

Around the same time I got stuck into a weekly programme chaired by Dan Fern of the RCA, for the D&AD, at the ICA, with AOI illustrators in attendance. By the end of the first session, I at least knew what the abbreviations all stood for. What I didn't know, but soon found out, was how talented the other students on day release around me all were; the names of Gary Powell, Mick Armson, Andy Lovell and Sarah Ball were all unknown and their talents as yet untapped, this was nearly twenty years ago.

A few years later I started at the RCA and once again was surrounded by a wealth of illustration talent; Jason Ford, Marion Deuchars, Chris Draper, Patrick Thomas, Toby Morison, Dan Williams, and Andy Baker the list goes on… Right place, right time perhaps, but as a group of us hauled plan-chests, desks and other assorted donated odds and sods from an RCA skip to the bright lights of Hoxton, it felt more like wrong place, wrong time. Hoxton, fifteen years ago, had a very different vibe to the cooler-than-cool-Banksy-scrawled-urban-chic it is now, back then it felt less latte and panini, more rickets and scurvy.

Big Orange, that first studio, still exists today; whole tribes of illustrators have used it as a base-station on route to the summit, but for me it was the starting point for something I was unable to finish. Heart, first of the truly contemporary illustration agencies, was created in a corner of the Big Orange studio almost ten years ago by myself and, partner-in-crime, Darrel Rees. Illustrators that stood on the edge of the discipline were part of the original line-up of ten; Ian Wright, Andy Martin, Blaise Thompson, Nigel Robinson joined key members of Big Orange in creating something that felt genuinely, at least for a while, special. For me, though, running an agency felt more like running an office than a studio, and I left the leadership/partnership for the creative buzz of education, although remaining a Heart illustrator right up until my recent departure for pastures new.

Running the undergraduate course in Illustration at the University of Brighton, I work with some of the best practitioners/educators across the discipline; George Hardie, Ian Wright, Margaret Huber, Gary Powell, Jasper Goodall, Graham Rawle and Martin Andersen. Another piece of the jigsaw, another group of key people and throughout the re-run of my own personal time-line I've recognised that during my career thus far, the constant theme of inspiration has been my very own association. An association with illustrators.

Forty may be the new thirty, if so the mid-life crisis can be put on hold for another ten years, but with thirty now the new twenty the AOI seems barely out of its teens!

© Lawrence Zeegen