Lauren Moriarty/ContainerPlus
In this essay I will be looking at two very different practitioners Lauren Moriarty a textile and product designer and Louise from her company ContainerPlus a multidisciplinary art and design collective specialising in creating fantasy worlds across a range of 2D and 3D platforms. I will be comparing and contrasting not just there work but there working methods there presentation and how they get there work. They also have there simalaritys as they both work for themselves so both have the oppotunity to decide what jobs to take on although they differ considerabley on there decisions on taking the job
On the 5th of March Lauren Moriarty came for a visiting lecturer. She works as a textile and product designer with a focus on materials experimentation and combining craft and industrial making processes to create textile concepts for products and interiors. Her work has featured in national and international design and lifestyle magazines. Her work seems to be more experimental than design although early on she did want to be a product designer. ContainerPLUS is a multidisciplinary art and design collective specialising in creating fantasy worlds across a range of 2D and 3D platforms. The designs are mainly illustration based.
Both the talks where really good and similar in the fact they went through there work progressivly showing early work to more present work while explaining in detail the hows and whys of the piece. I found that Lauren Moriarty seemed a lot more confident in her work and during the presentation and seemed happy with all her work. Her work lent more to the experimental art, kind of museum style where as the container plus where quite consumer based. One thing that I did find interesting was the way they had been kind of pushed or influenced to use other medias such as motion graphics and lighting. While both gave us good advice about and both really pushed the idea of collabarating with other designers in different areas and medias and how this creates more contacts in the industry giving you stepping stones or even just contacts in helping out in the shows. Lauren stressed how, in her field, how important it is to work well with magazines. She explained that they will often contact you for an article and expect images to be sent straight away. If you communicate well with them and be prepared with images etc there is far more chance that they will contact you again for further articles. Both designers have made good use of these contacts in various projects and show that, despite the pathway, good people skills are required. They where also very welcome to do any design job they where offered even if they have no idea how to create them web design for example. Where Lauren Moriarty is a solo artist and doesn't take on the work as much if she isnt comfortable.
ContainerPlus are made up of three designers two are illustrators the third a photographer and they discussed about creating a good working relationship. They discussed how although the three are friends they keep there life and there work relationship separate and this they said was the key to getting work done. As they had previously had three other employees but it just hadnt worked out. In comparison Lauren Moriarty was discussing about working alone but still mentioned about getting good relationships with clients and other designers. She discussed how while working for a client you have to make compromises, as there is always more than likely a problem with the design and always be aware of how much the clients are willing to spend as this will impact on how your design will finish.
A nice piece of advice she gave us was to make sure you keep the element that makes your piece of design work special as there will be more than likely there will be issues. There was also there working methods that differed while ContainerPlus where given a brief to work to an create from. They also stressed that you should take good or bad work when it is offered to a certain extent and how they would take on jobs even if they didnt have the appropriate skills. Lauren Moriarty would do quite the opposite and create the design before she thinks about what it would be used for or how it would be sold. She would also turn down jobs as she saw fit.
This can be seen when comparing the diversity in there work. Where lauren seems to stay quite narrow with her work compared with ContainerPlus who have a wide range from shop windows to photgraphy to website design taking these jobs on even if they didnt ave the required skills.
I enjoyed both lectures I found it both very useful and interesting to compare and look deeper into there work and methods and how they differ. I have found some interesting differences between the pathways that cannot only be applied to the two practitioners but the design world in general. I found Laurens and Louises talk about te industry and how they go about getting jobs very interesting.
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