Taylor Magazine

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The myth and the manufactory - Stanley DonwoodFlexing your creative muscle

Cute But Sad - Luke Chueh

Infi nite Activity - James Jean

Vince Frost on inspiration

The night shift - new ways of working

1 NOVEMBER 2013 AU $9.25 NZ $10.95

ISSUE 1

www.taylormagazine.com.au

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Thank you so much for picking up our fi rst issue. This has been an exercise in blood, sweat and tears but also a project of intense passion for myself and the people I’m lucky enough to work with.Within these pages we hope to get you a little closer to some truly creative people and learn a little about what makes them tick. If this makes you tick a little better then it’s all been worth it. Hopefully we’ll be profi ling you in an upcomming issue.I think the one thing that really comes through all the stories this issue is you should never stop doing what you love. If you believe in the process eventually things will start to fall into place.

Every artist, musician, even the burger maker from page 10, has relayed an incredible need to keep doing what they are doing, not because of the money, but because if they didn’t they would lose the one thing that keeps them sane.Lastly we would love to hear what you think. This magazine was put together with you in mind. We want to make things more accesible and possible for everyone out there. If you have some feedback or a suggestion for a future article – let us know.

Speak soon,Jane Trizzar Editor in [email protected]

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Taylor is proudly published by Maffin Publishing PO Box 564 Sydney NSW 2000.Taylor will happily accept freelance articles, illustrations, photography and other submission, however we are unable to reply or send back material. Please go to our website for details.

The Taylor Team

Editor: Jane Trizzar Creative Director: Lara Kally Publisher: Oliver Anderson Acting Publisher: Louise Barnsley Creative Assistant: George Frith Editorial Assistant: Gemma Fischer National Advertising Manager: Amanda Peters Marketing: Suzy Courdeaux Sales Co-ordinator: Margaret Onslow Advertising Production Co-ordinator: Kenneth BanksCirculation Manager: Robert Nunes

Paul Cooper was using a razor for transportation in Sydney more than a decade ago, long before this practice was anything but deeply eccentric. These days, he writes more than he rides, and works fervently on his knowledge of expensive coffee to support his trade.

Tanner Christensen is a creative expert, entrepreneur, and online marketer from Salt Lake City, Utah. For the last four years he has been researching the creative mind and how it works. See more of his insights on his blog: www.creativesomething.net

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Fran Burleigh is a writer, journalist and designer currently living in Melbourne. She’s been resisting the lure of the fashion world for a decade, and is now more than happy to let others guide her persuits. She’s hoping to never have any kind of job where she is encouraged to work overtime and in her own time spends far too much money on comic books.

Ian Terence is a 27-year-old writer who was born in London, lives in Queensland, and wishes he was cool enough to make it in New York. When he’s not writing articles for Taylor, he’s either working as a contributing editor or tending to his blog.

Ethan Denry is a Perth-based photographer who has been working in Vietnam and The Phillipines for the past 12 years. The results of his work has been published and exhibited across Australia and Asia.

Charlotte Parker lives with her partner and two cats in a warehouse in the suburbs of Sydney, where she draws and paints constantly. Spare time is usually taken up with craft matters, blogging a bit of sculpture and badly played tennis.

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9 Editors Letter

10 Food ReviewChunky Spoons, St Kilda’s favourite new Jazz, Tapas & Microbrewery venue.

12 The Night ShiftWe explore the world of the night creative and their new ways of working – using the late hours to meet deadline and reach artistic inspiration.

20 Judging by the CoverEight fresh new talents in publishing and book design explain their methods and how their area of expertise is now starting to translate into the digital realm.

27 D.I.Y. The not so humble hat stand.

31 Cute But SadLuke Cheuh takes us through his journey of art and explains the themes behind his beautiful work.

35 New MusicPeanut City, Josh Redan, Kellian, Goldyloks, CiaoTown and North Caro Border.

37 Vince Frost on inspirationThis issue the household name takes us through his thoughts on inspiration.

Luke Cheuh

Vince Frost

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40 The New Price of FameFrom the freelance zine writer, bloggers and YouTube sensations comes an unlikely fame – digitally documented reality is now costing these talented individuals somewhat. We talk to four well known success stories, and they share with us the pros and cons.

59 Flexing Your Creative Muscle Tanner ChristensenCreativity is not necessarily a sport, but you can increase your fitness and ability. We look at some tried and true techniques to boost your inspiration and conceptual skills.

62 Infinite ActivityJames Jean talks about his art and his incredible work ethic – this guy just doesn’t stop. It’s no wonder his at the top of his game.

69 It’s a Trap! We explore the trappings of fashion - faux fur style.

72 The myth and the manufactoryStanley Donwood introduces us to his strange and wonderful world, working with Radiohead, drinking too much wine and whether he exists or not.

78 Horoscopes80 Talk back83 Reviews94 The final word

TannerChristensen

James Jean

StanleyDonwood

9 Editors Letter

10 Food ReviewChunky Spoons, St Kilda’s favourite new Jazz, Tapas & Microbrewery venue.

12 The Night ShiftWe explore the world of the night creative and their new ways of working – using the late hours to meet deadline and reach artistic inspiration.

20 Judging by the CoverEight fresh new talents in publishing and book design explain their methods and how their area of expertise is now starting to translate into the digital realm.

27 D.I.Y. The not so humble hat stand.

31 Cute But SadLuke Cheuh takes us through his journey of art and explains the themes behind his beautiful work.

35 New MusicPeanut City, Josh Redan, Kellian, Goldyloks, CiaoTown and North Caro Border.

37 Vince Frost on inspirationThis issue the household name takes us through his thoughts on inspiration.

Luke Cheuh

Vince Frost

inspiration 1.0

In this regular feature we ask renowned creatives what they think inspiration is. It’s a spur of the moment answer, a stream of consciousness and hopefully an insight for the rest of us. This issue we asked the man himself,

Mr Vince Frost.

Vince Frost is what you might call

a fast tracker to success. In 1989 he

joined Pentagram in London, and just

three years later he was their youngest

ever associate at 27 years. In another

two years he’d started his own studio,

Frost Design (www.frostdesign.com.au)

which he still runs with off ices in

Australia, the United Kingdom and the

United Arab Emirates.

It’s a story of success that he puts

down to an inability to look at any job

as being a bad job, insisting every piece

of work you do should be your best,

whether it’s for a multinational or for

the hair-dresser on the corner. It’s a

theory that there’s a perfect answer for

every brief, you just have to fi nd it.

Inspiration is a real problem. Vague

nowhere mind set, a mind breathe. Hustle

and stress, a constant requirement to

deliver. To surprise, to think beyond

the expected.

Problems unresolved accumulate into

festering stress pits. Sometimes being

free of any thought creates windows,

visual windows, my inspiration comes

from the opportunity.

Eyes open breathing in pictures,

potential ideas, reference. Books,

magazines, people doing quality things.

Tight parameters, blank paper. Something

out of nothing, no budget.... I get excited

about making ideas reality.

Inspiration is normally desperation.

The momentum of years of digging,

a mind archive. Nothing beats

the feeling of the ‘click’

The body smile when

you’ve found what you

were looking for.

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You really get the feeling that Luke wants to be the best at whatever he is doing at the time. He comes across in interviews as a person who is constantly trying to better himself, upgrade his skills and move up to the next level.

He clearly likes to concentrate on the task at hand freely admitting that he stopped drawing and painting at one point so he could focus on becoming a Graphic Designer.

It was only when he moved to Los Angeles and couldn’t find work he started painting again as a way to keep himself busy while looking. In March 2003 he decided to show some of his paintings and was surprised by how well they were received, coming very close to a sell out show. As you can imagine this encouraged him to keep painting for a while and put design on the back burner.

Touted these days as one of the hottest properties on the LA art circuit you might say it was a good decision.

Looking at his work your first reaction is based on the cuteness of his Manga styled characters in their many forms of bear, monkey and rabbit.

These instantly adorable characters are juxtaposed against the ironic and slightly disturbing situations they find themselves in. A bear finding himself on fire is slightly

bemused at the fact that the tap of the shower has come off, leaving him to burn. Or the cute

rabbit that turns his back on his adoring audience to take a much needed cigarette break. It’s as if these icons of 20th century innocence are thoroughly disappointed at how the world views them and have resorted to often extreme acts to prove they have more

Cute But Sad Luke Chueh

“Luke creates a buffer zone

between the viewer and the

tortured creature allowing us

to look on from a comfortably

safe distance.”

By Charlotte Par

ker

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depth than the average toy. While some of the pictures are

clearly quite horrific, Luke creates a buffer zone between the viewer and the tortured creature allowing us to look on from a comfortably safe distance. An idea that appeals to many in our voyeuristic society and is demonstrated most prominently by the way his art consistently sells. A bunny chopping his ears off in muted silence is the perfect conversation opener for guests to your house… unless of course they have small children with them (in which case you’ll probably be seen as the devil incarnate for purchasing such an upsetting piece of art let alone actually putting it on your wall).

The themes stem from Luke’s unhappy childhood of growing up as American Chinese in a minority intolerant community. Seen as a commodity by the other kids you can see direct parallels to the loneliness his creations show.

Not fitting into a world that demands stereotypes the animals can take their frustrations out

in ways that Luke was never able to. Luckily he has chosen to turn those frustrations into inspiration for his art and although the

pictures insist you feel empathy for these melancholy forms they also provide humour based on the irony that horrible things happen, no matter how cute or harmless you are.

“The themes stem from

Luke’s unhappy childhood

of growing up as American

Chinese in a minority

intolerant community.”

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STANLEY DONWOODBy Ian Terence

The answer to the question of ‘who is Stanley Donwood’ is quite an easy one.

Stanley Donwood / ‘stån lee donn wud / 1. to be a prolifi c artist/writer best known for work with Radiohead since release of ‘The Bends’ circa 1995. 2. Credited as 6th member of Radiohead. 3. Published two books of short stories and one detective novel • verb (-ing) 1. To win international acclaim through awards e.g. Grammy Award for Best Packaging/Artwork (Amnesiac Cover).

The more diff icult question is ‘whether he exists.’

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Now this isn’t just some gossip magazine’s scoop, but it could

well be. The amount of internet

sites devoted to the belief he is

Radiohead’s alter ego is worthy of

sitting alongside a Bradgelina story.

Against him existing

1/ His writing style is incredibly

similar to Thom Yorke’s.

2/ He never does any interviews in

person, always by telephone or email.

3/ He is never in any studio photos.

4/ His voice has never been

caught on any recordings.

For him existing

1/ Thom Yorke already has

an alter ego (Dr. Tchock).

2/ Why would they bother?

I mean, why would they bother

pretending someone else is doing the

artwork? Radiohead is seen as a very

artistic band anyway so if they were

doing the art themselves surely it would

be in their best interests to have

the public know. Still I had to ask…

Do you exist?

I think so. I have not been very

public with my existence, and anonymity

has seemed quite important. I watched

Radiohead becoming famous, and although,

as Thom once said “it’s better than

working in an office”, it also seemed

to be quite an undesirable way to

live. I imagine the free champagne

must dull the pain somewhat.

How do you feel about all

these websites then?

I’m pleased that there are websites

denouncing my existence. That’s exactly

the kind of fame that I aspire to.

Would you consider yourself

a designer or an artist?

I was, and still am, more interested

in painting than graphic design. I

studied fine art and English literature

at college, and ended up using computers

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when I was on the dole after that. I

couldn’t afford screen-printing materials

and had no space to work in anyway.

I pretended I was still a student

and used the college’s computers in

the town I accidentally moved to.

What are your influences?

My early influences were the sorts

of things that get made into biscuit-

tin lids and jigsaws - John Constable

paintings, the moonlit scenes by a

sentimental Victorian painter called

Atkinson Grimshaw; things like that.

Most of them were not attributed to

anyone but generally I like the older

stuff; Robert Rauschenberg, Breugel,

Bosch, on and on. I forget names easily.

How did working with

Radiohead come about?

I have told so many lies about this

that I’ve practically erased whatever

the reality may have been. The short

of it is I’d known Thom at college

and he just phoned up and asked if

I fancied a go at record covers.

What’s the long version?

I like to think it started when

my friend Jim and I were hitch-

hiking around England, doing a fire

breathing show in various towns for

whatever money people would give us.

In Oxford we ended a long hot day of

making no money by trying to do the

support slot for a band called ‘On A

Friday’. We were refused permission

to perform due to some piddling fire

regulations, and ‘On A Friday’ sensibly

changed their name to Radiohead.

This story, unbelievably, is true.

You’ve done all their

releases since ‘The Bends.’ You

obviously enjoy doing them?

I think it’s extremely cool anyone

can buy some fantastic music and get

a load of art with it too. It’s very

democratic. It’s not tarred with the

same elitism that seems endemic in

art galleries or concert halls.

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England has a lot of snobbery

and class restrictions compared

to the rest of the world.

How big do you normally paint

the pictures knowing that they will

have to be reduced to a CD size?

The cover for Hail to the Thief

is actually huge - one and a

half metres square, painted with

acrylics, blackboard paint and

textured wall covering. They’re

normally about that size.

Some people assume that I’d hate

to reduce them but I enjoy painting

them, so it doesn’t bother me to

shrink them right down for covers.

That’s something that happens

after my work is done anyway.

How do you come up with the

artistic theme for the albums?

I’ve almost always worked on the

artwork whilst the band is rehearsing

the new material, so hopefully whatever

I do reflects the energy and ethos behind

the music. This applies most directly to

the sleeve artwork, to use an archaic

term. The merchandise is normally a bit

of light relief after this, reflecting

what’s going on with the current

record, but this isn’t always true.

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About your writing, how do you

do it? Is it spurts of energy,

done quickly without changes or

more thought out and crafted?

This is the plan: I’m feeling

miserable, and there’s a bottle of red

wine on the table. Tobacco, papers,

perhaps a little hash. I drink the red

wine whilst writing. I have to stop

while I smoke the hash, which is when

I read over what I’ve written. Then I

have the rest of the wine and rewrite

whatever needs rewriting; or, more

usually, I delete the lot and stare

at the television, feeling even more

miserable than I did to start with.

So then it would be fair to say

that you enjoy the painting more?

Or does one inspire the other?

They’re

quite weirdly

separate, as

if there are

compartments

in my skull.

Writing is

a sort of desperate thing to do, an

escape from having black clouds in

the head. I started doing it when

a recurring dream, or rather, an

episodic dream was approaching what I

knew would be a dreadful conclusion.

I tried to stay awake for a long time

and eventually I wrote everything down;

the dream didn’t return. Painting is

something more elemental and possibly

more fun. Although not always.

Your books ‘Slowly Downward’ and

‘Tachistoscope’ are collections of your

short stories. Do you think you could

explain your stories to the uninitiated?

I don’t know that I could explain

them; they just are what they are. Most

of my stories are dreams, or perhaps

nightmares. I think if I write them

down and let other people read them it

spreads the awfulness out so thinly

that it becomes harmless entertainment.

I couldn’t cope with it on my own.

What about your other book

‘Catacombs of Terror!’?

It’s about flesh-eating pigs who live

in, er, catacombs. It’s a detective

novel, sort of. I wrote it as quickly as

I could one cold long month in England.

Polyester Books in Melbourne said they

would sell it, which was nice of them.

Have you got any plans to do more?

I think I’m going to make a book

of some kind about my couple of weeks

in Australia last year. I’ve got

a lot of notes, but unfortunately

most of my photos are of the tops of

skyscrapers, or blurred shots out of

aeroplane windows. I’m a terrible

photographer. Truly bad. Anyway,

that’s never been an obstacle, so

yes, a little book about Australia.

Is there any Radiohead stuff

you can tell us about?

I’m designing a tea set - teacups

and a teapot, with blue and white

pictures of bears and Minotaur shooting

each other with big machine guns. Its

got to be one of the weirdest bits of

merchandise a band’s ever put out.

And there we leave the supremely

talented if slightly sombre Mr Donwood

to his musings and thoughts.

Take a look at his website

www.slowlydownward.com for some

great artwork, merchandise and his

incredible (I don’t use that word

lightly) writings. Covering everything

from ‘Dracula’s theme park’ to ‘men

who think they’re pigs’ - the stories

have an amazing ability to constantly

surprise and charm.

“I think I’m going to make a book of some kind about my couple of weeks in Australia last year.”