Episode #5 Gord Moss: Graphically Musing Rhythms

On today's show we have the multidisciplinary Graphic Designer, Photographer and Artist Gordon Moss. With years of experience Moss shares with us what inspired him down this path. How does his love of music play a part in his creativity? Has he found a platform for the two fields to balance each other? How has he seen Graphic Design change over the years? What made him decide to develop his creativity into more of an Artistic stream rather then the Design path in more recent years? 

Join me as we go beneath the surface of Moss's creativity and how he actually became a designer. Was schooling his first choice down this road? What gave him the impetus to make this choice? What was it like starting out in Graphic Design? Was it competitive? How did design change over the years? Gord Moss shares his experiences in the design field, what were the obstacles? How does he see Graphic Design changing in the future?

Seeing himself as a Designer, Artist, Musician, and Photographer Moss is inspired by everything in front of him. He loves the challenge of learning new technology. Keeping him sharp; he has collected his experiences, from beginning at the beginning of computer design - and how it has shaped his creativity to aspire to a genuine direct honesty in form.

Podcast credits:
Gord Moss - Music Clips
Carolyn Botelho - Podcast

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creatively Thinking Podcast. Join Carolyn Botelho as she uncovers the inspirations behind some incredibly creative minds that are orbiting our local communities. Hello Gordon Moss, how are you doing? It has been a while since we've last spoken. 
 
 You are a multidisciplinary Artist specializing in Graphic Design and Music. So let's take a deep dive on how you combine these two distinct fields over your career and where it has taken you. Hi Carolyn, it's great to be here today and I thank you for having me on your podcast.
 
 So yeah, Gordon, I like to start my interviews with understanding where every Artist started from. And with this I mean, what led you down this path? Was it the love of design, working with your hands, or simply the passion you feel when working on design projects for clients? Where is it in your creative process that really drives you? I guess I first started in the West End Toronto, the Jane and St. Clair area. My father was a Set Decorator for CBC TV, which was a really great learning experience for me creatively. I think it first started when I was very young. My father was a Set Decorator at CBC television in Toronto, and he was a very creative person. I used to basically get a lot of creative materials brought home with him. 
 
 Being creative down at work, he would sometimes bring his work home with him. And I would watch him play around with signs and pastels and watercolors. And he was an Artist himself, and loved to pursue watercolors and acrylics.
 
 So I think that's where I first started learning about Art and how much fun it was, and the creativity process. Mm hmm. Yeah, it is fun, right? Especially when you're a kid.
 
 Oh, it was just an amazing, amazing upbringing. I was really fortunate to have somebody that creative. And not only was he creative, but he really spurred me on and gave me all these different ideas and provided me with all the art supplies I needed just to do whatever I wanted. 
 
 And back then, there were no rules. So it was a lot of fun. And I got into photography back then through him. 
 
 And I had my own little darkroom when I was like nine years old. So it was fun blowing up black and white prints and showing them to my friends and taking photographs and even doing 8mm movies. I remember doing a small horror movie. 
 
 It was like a five minute movie on a Brownie projector camera or a Brownie camera. Yeah. And it was all staged and we had all these little props.
 
 Make it a business, right? It was a lot of fun. So there's a lot of creativity in our household. Between me and my other two brothers, we were kept well entertained.
 
 Wow, that does sound really nice. You must have been like the real popular kid in town then. I was. 
 
 I was actually. Yeah. My father, one time he brought home a bunch of, he worked on a show called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at CBC with Jack Palance. 
 
 And he brought home a lot of very creepy things that you'd see in a horror movie. So we converted our garage. Yeah. 
 
 Yeah. We converted our garage into a little maze and we had all these different it was like a spooky house type thing. And we converted it into a, we charged all the kids a nickel to get in. 
 
 And yeah, I think I made it like I made 35 cents that day, but it was fun. We'd lead them around inside the garage and see all these make up skeletons and it was like a little house of horror. So that was a lot of fun too. 
 
 Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it does sound like a lot of fun. I did.
 
 So I learned in your credentials that you started with George Brown College with Graphic Design. Did you see this? Did you see this as a crucial part of your creative journey? How did you, how did you find that it has truly benefited your practice as a designer? Oh, it was great being with a lot of other people that had the same ideas and the same love of design and passion for art was amazing because all of a sudden you're out of high school. Everybody in high school went different ways, but when you got to college and you signed up for, it was called a Graphic Design Technician program back then you signed up for that program and everybody in your class had the same design sense and the same drive, I guess you could call it, for designing all the, for learning design. 
 
 So it was great and I met a lot of people and to this day I still have a number of people that I keep in contact with that. I mean, we're, I'm 62 now, so I'm not getting any younger, but I still keep in contact with a lot of my college friends. So that's kind of good. 
 
 We also learned, we learned a lot of things that in college that were basically everything without a computer. So we used, we learned from the basics, from the start without any computers at all. Mm-hmm. 
 
 It's part of your just understanding of things and you just, yeah, you just, you see it, right? Things like letting, kerning of type and letting, you don't see that nowadays with the use of computers. You see a lot of the big large spaces in between the lines of the letters and stuff and it kind of drives me crazy because I've learned how to do it the proper way at the start, but I think times change and design changes also, so maybe that's not as important as it used to be, but it's still, when you learn it in school, it kind of, you kind of get it embedded in you and you recognize it wherever you go looking at signs outside. Were there any initial breaks that you came across when you first started in graphic design or did you find it was more a do-it-yourself, find-your-own-work type of mentality? That's right. 
 
 Where you had to think on your feet. Yeah. Where you had to be sort of pragmatic about searching out projects.
 
 I was really fortunate back then. George Brown had a great placement agency program internally within their school. The moment we got, we finished, we got our diploma, they had a bunch of people come in to interview us for jobs and look at our portfolios. 
 
 Back then, they weren't online portfolios. They were the big binders where you'd open up and you'd show them all your work that was pretty well done in felt pen and on paper and you'd flip through the pages for them and I met a hiring agent for Sears National Advertising Program by the name of John and he hired me on about three days after I finished college. That was a bit of a break and I started working at Sears two weeks after on the eighth floor on 222 Jarvis Street, their National Advertising Program. 
 
 We worked in the newspaper ads were on one side, on the national newspaper programs from Vancouver to Newfoundland. We did all that and the catalog was done on the other side of the building. I was basically a type setting artist where you'd actually take type from Photoshop, not real Photoshop, but an actual photo print shop that would deliver the type in the galleys and I would put them on a board with a waxing machine and then they'd actually take a picture of the ad once I assembled it and it would go off to to the various regions for printing. 
 
 So back in the day we didn't have the luxury of computers but it was a very interesting way to start out. It was all hands-on. How did you find Graphic Design as a field when you first started out? Was it competitive or did you find there were organizations and institutions for? Well I think the people that I worked with at Sears after I got out of college were much like a team that you'd see anywhere in a well-respected company today. 
 
 We all basically worked together as a team and I met a lot of good friends, a lot of good, very talented independent Artists that would actually come in. We'd give them samples of clothes to draw that Sears was selling and they'd go out and they'd actually hand draw a lot of the models in these clothes and hand color. These people would work for hours and hours doing line Art for fashion and line Art for various different hard lines, categories, hardware and whatnot.
 
 So we got to know a lot of different Artists out in the field that were freelance and became quite good friends with a lot of them. So it was more or less a team. I never really noticed any competition with the area that I was in but I'm sure there was more competition higher up with the people that looked after us.
 
 I guess there was that old saying where Eatons doesn't tell Simpsons everything and they're both gone now. Well no, Eaton's is still around, isn't it? Well, Eaton's is still around, yeah. Well, Eatons Center and all that but Simpsons is long gone. Oh, I still see the sign for Simpsons. Oh, do you? Yeah, well, it's in the subway. Oh, wow.
 
 Yeah, it's like this little tiny plaque kind of thing. Really, yeah? Between the... It's probably a monument or something for Simpsons. Yeah.
 
 Some sort of little monument. Is it a brass plaque? I think it might be. It was like a dark metal.
 
 I think, yeah. And it's really small. It was only, I don't know, like three, four or five inches wide and then only probably four or five inches tall. 
 
 But yeah, it's between the stations. Is it? Oh, wow. That's really interesting.
 
 Yeah, it's really... I don't think everybody sees it. It's really small and it's... And that's... Yeah, I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly where it is. Maybe I should take a picture of it and see if it's still there, right? But... Yeah, I remember Simpsons used to have the best Christmas windows. 
 
 We used to go down as little kids and peer into the windows and they used to have all these automated trains and children and people and people throwing snowballs. And it was just magical to us back then. I think we were probably five or six, but I still remember it to this day. 
 
 And the windows are still there, but I think there's not much in them nowadays. Well, the bay does a lot of that, the window stuff too now. Yeah. 
 
 Now they do, yeah. So you are an avid Musician as well. How has this influenced your creativity as a Designer or vice versa? Has being musically inclined inspired you in your design projects or has your design work informed your musical interest? I think it went hand in hand. 
 
 Music's an art form, design's an art form, creative art, everything around there is basically a way to express yourself. And my art abilities, actually, it's kind of funny because I met this singer-songwriter that I'm touring with across Southern Ontario right now. I met her actually at a job.
 
 I was a Graphic Designer. I was a layout artist for a company called Lansing Buildall back in the day. They've long since gone.
 
 The company was basically purchased by Rona, Home and Garden. And anyways, I met this person. She was actually a Copywriter and we worked producing these flyers once weekly for Lansing Buildall. 
 
 And shortly after about two years, I think she left the business to raise a family. And about six or seven years ago, we were on Facebook and we both noticed that we were both became in touch again after all those years. It was about 20 years since we'd become in touch.
 
 And she had raised four kids and my son is now 22. So I had a little bit more free time than when he was a child. So we got together, we realized, we got together for coffee, first of all, to sort of say hi again.
 
 And we realized that we were Musicians. She was a Singer-Songwriter, just starting out back then, about six years ago. And she lives in Hamilton. 
 
 Her name's Laura Keating. And we realized that we both played percussion and drums, and she played guitar. So we got together a few times just to have fun to see how it would go. 
 
 And it worked out quite well. There was a big learning curve. She's an amazing Songwriter.
 
 She's probably written well over a hundred songs, I would imagine. And she's all original songs. She's produced one CD.
 
 And since then, we've been touring. Now, to tie that in with graphic arts, I basically do the art and the visual presentations for her. I designed her complete CD with this one. 
 
 This CD had a booklet, so it was an eight-page booklet. So I designed this CD to coincide with the music, all the words in the music she'd written in it. And I designed that.
 
 And now I'm producing all the advertisement for where we're playing. So it's kind of fun, because I get to work on the visual side and the graphic design side. And it's a little less pressure than... It's more fun to me because I've got more creative freedom than the structure of Sears Advertising or, you know, something like that.
 
 So it worked out quite well, because I get to still exercise my creative graphic design and still get to play music with her. So it worked out really, really well. Yeah, it's like the skill set you have for Graphic Design, and then you use it with your music at the same time. 
 
 And one thing we both noted is just because it's the two of us playing music together, it's a lot easier to organize places to play. You don't have to go through a complete band. You know, it's just the two of us. 
 
 She phones me up, are you available on this date? And I say yes. And then she sends me over the information. And then within a day or so, there's an ad produced for her and for myself. 
 
 And we put it on all the major platforms, Facebook and Instagram. And that's the way we advertise. And then she sends out a mailing to all her friends. 
 
 And that's how we promote ourselves. So it's worked out well. We haven't really used an agency at all. 
 
 It's just self-promotion. Yeah, that's good when you don't have like a big band where you have to coordinate everybody's schedule when it's just the two of you and you're kind of got a lot of free time. It makes it a lot easier, right? Yeah, it works out well. 
 
 Actually, we're playing in St. Jacob's next, this Friday coming up at a place called Block 3 Brewery. Oh, that'll be nice. Yeah. 
 
 So anybody out there listening, join us at St. Jacob's this Friday. More advertising, right? More advertising. There, I snuck it in.
 
 Yeah, no problem. So that, what you just were saying was, it's kind of like the next question, which was, have you seen any examples where your love of music and design have overlapped any projects you have worked on, which you just mentioned? Right, exactly. And if so, how did you incorporate the two as they are very distinct, very distant sort of, very, they seem very distant creatively, but as you just explained that they can be sort of combined, no problem.
 
 Right. Yep. That's basically what I answered.
 
 Over the years, I've seen you at some Artists' collectives. How has being a designer inspired you to submit your work as a visual artist? Do you see a distinction or has your experience opened doors you didn't expect? I really, really wanted, once I got out of college, actually through, I was busy through work for many years. And as work became less and less as a freelance Artist, I realized I had a little bit more time and I really wanted, it was on my bucket list to do a gallery show.
 
 And the opportunity came up. I did a Gallery show and it was very, very successful. Not only for, well, it was successful for me and just good for my, it was good to know that I could do that. 
 
 It was a lot of work, but it was, it was a challenge and it was a great challenge. I had a lot of people helping me out in a lot of those, my first exhibit. And I really, really enjoyed it. 
 
 And I want to in the future, I've got a few ideas lined up, so hopefully I'll have another one within the next couple of years and we'll see how that goes. But there's a lot of things rolling around in my head right now that I want to do creatively that now I have being sort of semi-retired, I have the time to do them. Yeah. 
 
 Yeah. That's always nice. Yeah. 
 
 That gets me thinking, well, what, what inspires you? But then I guess that's a whole other podcast, right? And we'll be right back. Well, I get inspired by lots of different things. I think my love of Photography, walking down the street, even looking at Street Art, Graffiti inspires me a lot. Taking photographs of graffiti and, and just turning them visually into something different. I've been, you know, pretty well extensive in Photoshop and I've even gone back to a program. I don't know if you remember this one, but it was called CorelDRAW. 
 
 But no, this was called CorelDRAW and it was a company based, I think out of Ottawa, one particular. So that's one, that one I remember more, but then now it's fancy. Oh, I thought you were going to say QuarkXPress. 
 
 I was like, don't say that one. I hated that one. I did that one too.
 
 Yeah. Well, I just have a hatred towards QuarkXPress. Oh, QuarkXPress. 
 
 Yeah. Well, we worked on, we worked on QuarkXPress a lot in, in Advertising at some of the local hardware stores that I worked for. So, so that was a big thing, but I moved on in design and, and, you know, somebody once said, I won't say who, think different.
 
 So I was looking for a different platform and I've just basically through the pandemic time, I pretty well learned everything that CorelDRAW has to offer and I'm kind of fluent in that. It's bigger in India, Asia, Europe. CorelDRAW, they use it a lot for package design.
 
 Okay. I took it on. I thought, oh, it'd be fun just to try it. 
 
 I, I had it a long time ago. I had the program in my, my computer in younger days, CorelDRAW, and I always liked the program. So I went back to it. 
 
 I finally went back to it and learned it all. And now I'm using that pretty well for Photography and for designing too. So as long as it's a PDF to the client, people really don't worry about how it got there, but they worry about a nice PDF that they can use. 
 
 So it doesn't matter what platform you're on nowadays, as long as it's a PDF, it goes anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. 
 
 It can be translated into anything. People don't care, but that does sound like a better program than doing the Adobe suite, because that's, that's getting expensive to, to just have it every month. And I'm like, every month, I'm like, should I have this? I don't know if I'm using it enough. 
 
 Right. Yeah. You've got to really make money off it to make it productive. 
 
 Otherwise you feel like you're digging yourself deeper into a hole with the, you know, like, why am I using this if I can't make money from it? So with Quark anyways, they charge you a yearly fee. And it's one year, you can decide after the whole year, whether or not you want to use it again. And I always end up using it. 
 
 And my company has been very successful and I'm not really worried about reusing it now. So it's... So how have you seen the Graphic Design field changing over the years? Has it stayed consistent and predictable or have you seen it evolve in new ways? Has it surprised you in how it has changed or has it been expected how its trajectory has moved into the present? It's surprised me dramatically, like, you know, just incredible. The changes that I've seen over the years, back when I first started, computers were very, very, actually, when I started college, we didn't have computers back then. 
 
 That's how old I am. But it's really, it's really changed. I think it's the immediacy of the way people design now and the speed and the way things are transmitted. 
 
 There's no more courier trucks taking boards of artwork off to a printer to have them printed in a newspaper. Everything's so immediate, design is so immediate. It's almost, I've noticed a big difference, I know, with probably creativity. 
 
 Things seem very linear now, as opposed to having more of a natural, humanistic approach. Back then it was more humanistic with actual line drawings that people would actually draw on a board. They'd storyboard it.
 
 They would, there was so much more creativity from even like a fine art standpoint, because the fine art sort of blended in with the Graphic Design back then with Artists that, I think there was one Artist called Ernie Chelko, and he was a fine Artist, but fine Artists would not make a lot of money back then. They would have to resort to other ways that they could demonstrate their skills and being used in catalogs and newspaper ads for Sears and for other companies. Lansing back then also used a lot of line art.
 
 They would hire these fine Artists on, and the steady income every week doing new art of the products that the company sold. So it was a great thing for them. Every once in a while we'd be invited to one of the shows that one of these Artists would be providing art for us, and it was a real education to see how skilled these people were in fine Art, and I think I started to get into sort of the Gallery approach, and I went around to a lot of Galleries downtown when I worked at Sears and observed a lot of the fine Artists, both older and the new up-and-coming Artists.
 
 So OCAD was amazing. I remember going to a few shows there. Very, very amazing shows that I still remember to this day, and that was probably 35 years ago. 
 
 So I hope that answered your question. Yeah. So have you seen your creative career change over the years? Have you seen it as a necessity for survival or as part of your evolution as a creative professional? How were those changes to your creative practice? Do you still see them continuing to happen in the future? Oh yes. 
 
 Yeah, the evolution of the computer from day one when I got my first Macintosh computer. It was beige in color, and it just stood with a black and white screen, and it crashed every 15 minutes. Some of the programs that were made for that early Macintosh computer had an automatic save on the program itself, so it would save it every five minutes. 
 
 So if you forgot to save it, it would save it, and then you'd have to reboot your computer, but it was a slow process. But just the evolution of computers, I've seen the vast difference in the way things are, first of all, designed and, as I said before, the way people collaborate too. There's a lot of back and forth without even talking to the clients. 
 
 I have a lot of clients that use me, and sometimes I don't even talk to them at all. From me starting out with a rough idea, sending it off to them, getting feedback, to actually producing the final copy, to sending it out to print, and the printer sends it out to them, and basically you don't even see anything. Even the checks that you get back are all electronic too, so without the computer you can't be in business, that's for sure.
 
 So what about the, like, you were mentioning collaboration, and you've seen the evolution, has collaboration increased or decreased? Well, it's definitely increased. Well, that is good. I thought it would have been the opposite, now that everybody's just in front of their own computers and on their own, so they're just doing everything by themselves, so you don't, like you said, you're not even contacting the client really.
 
 Well, I think I tend to collaborate probably more with the client as opposed to other Artists, so the client has a lot more input because they can see what you're doing pretty well on a daily basis with the projects they've given you, and I think because of that they have a little bit more input. It's not like drawing something on a board and it's harder to change once it's done. Now it's a lot easier to change. 
 
 You can erase it just like that. Yeah, you can just erase it on the computer screen. Yeah, or copy and paste it and then start over with a new background or start over with different colors for type and even shapes. 
 
 I mean, that's something we couldn't do back then, so that evolved. I think that really helped the industry a lot because it provided the client with a lot more ease to change things that they thought would work better for them, and the client was always right. Yeah, and there's like a sense of transparency between the client.
 
 That's right. Yeah, so I think that that's one of the biggest evolutions is the collaboration between people and a lot of the programs out there now. You can go down a workflow system where you can actually send it over to somebody else who's working on a different page of a magazine or a different page of a catalog and you can actually see what everybody's doing pretty well virtually at the same time. 
 
 So it's an amazing tool. Yeah, that is really good. Yeah.
 
 Well, I was really fortunate to have a brother who was a television director. He was educated at Ryerson in Toronto. Back then it was called Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, I believe.
 
 Now it's a university. But he, my brother Wayne, went through radio and television arts through Ryerson. From there he worked his way up in CBC to TV Director.
 
 Started off on the floor pulling cables for cameramen and worked his way up to a well-known director in Toronto. Became independent and through a few leads that he had, he got a job working for Jim Henson, who came from New York City, set up Fraggle Rock in Yorkville in Toronto at a place called VTR Studios. And Wayne got to do the studio directing for Jim Henson, which was a real break for him. 
 
 Such a professional place to work in. He phoned me up one day and he said, I got something for you. He says, I don't know if you're interested, but it's going to be really creative. 
 
 It's building all these, they had these little green men on this Fraggle Rock show, they were called Doozers. I don't know if you've seen the show. Yes, I have. 
 
 I do remember the show and I used to love it. Yeah. I can't remember it now, but I do remember really liking it. 
 
 Yeah, it's a really good show. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's great.
 
 So he said, we need somebody to build all these Doozer constructions. And basically what these Doozer constructions were, these little plastic extrusions that they build square boxes out of and they'd make constructions out of them. Oh, yeah.
 
 And it was kind of an ecosystem at Fraggle Rock where the Fraggles would eat the doozer constructions like candy canes. So it would keep the Doozers busy making all these constructions. And they were like construction workers. 
 
 They all had green hard hats on and would build all these constructions. So I was actually the person that built all these different constructions, kept me busy for a good year. So I worked at VTR Studios in Toronto.
 
 They had no room for me. So I worked out in the hallway, which was kind of great because I got to meet so many people going by that I kind of idolized when I was growing up. I mean, these people on The Muppet Show and we had special guests come in to actually see the show done.
 
 One time we had Sally Ride. She was the first female Astronaut in space, I believe. She came down to see the show. 
 
 So I met her. Jim Henson and NASA had a big friendship. The Astronauts love the segment on on The Muppet Show called Pigs in Space.
 
 I don't remember that, but they did this little segment and all the NASA Astronauts loved that segment. So they became friends with Jim Henson and he had them over. So when they were in training for the space shuttle for the robotic arm, which was designed and built in Toronto, they would come in and train on this robotic arm for the actual space shuttle. 
 
 They would come over and they got to see Jim again because he was in Toronto doing Fraggle Rock. So I met all these different people that were historic. Well, Jim Henson was an icon back then and still is today. 
 
 He's still predominant. I remember shaking his hand and it was like, wow, this is Kermit the Frog, right? That was his hand, right? But it was sad he died too soon. It was a real shock to all of us.
 
 But anyways, I built these Doozer constructions and I finally progressed into some electronic Muppets. They were, well, Fraggles. They actually called them Gaggles. 
 
 They were electronic ones were called Gaggles and they worked off radio-controlled electronics. So a person offset could actually control the mouth and the neck of the puppet itself from offset in a mitt. He'd put his hand in this mitt and the Muppet on set or the Gaggle on set would mimic his actual hand, the way his hand moved. 
 
 So it was like somebody was operating the Gaggle on set, but you could have been different areas now that you could never do that. There didn't have to be a hand coming out of the electronic puppet itself. We had them off like on the ceiling. 
 
 We had stalactites and stalagmites and we had them hanging off these big giant stalactites and there was no hand on them, but they could actually move. You could see them move and sing songs up in the air within the hand control. So it was really innovative back then. 
 
 Yeah, it does sound like it would have been because to be so separate but yet still control it from another area. Oh, it's just amazing. Really advanced. 
 
 Yeah, wow. That's right. It was advanced for the time, yeah. 
 
 Now it's a lot more CGI, so you don't get a lot of that now, but back in the day that was cutting edge because CGI wasn't even around back then. Computers were just coming in, but they weren't as advanced as they are now to create something like that. With music and design being as connected as they are, can you distinguish them individually when you are creative or do they blur and become one when you are consumed with your creative practice? That's a good question. 
 
 I think I pretty well, I think they pretty well blend together, especially when I'm doing ads for promotion of music of our shows and whatnot. I kind of think about where we're going to play and it's interesting to see how they, how I sort of kind of tailor make the ad to the venue that we're going to play. Golf courses or whatnot tend to use a lot more greens and a lot more colours for that, so I kind of tend to take away from where we're playing the music, the venue itself, and try to incorporate it into the ad to give it more of a flavor of where we're going to play. 
 
 So I think it kind of blurs in back and forth with music towards art. I've always loved, back in the day I've always loved music videos, the ones on MTV. I still watch them today. 
 
 They're very creative. They were in their infancy back then, creatively, they weren't all done in 4k, that's for sure. But people like David Bowie, David Byrne from The Talking Heads, had some amazing videos that he incorporated with his music. 
 
 And I grew up in the MTV age where you'd actually, where everybody was being introduced to these videos, and you could actually see the Artist. Yeah, you'd have the experience of the Artist as well. Then you just put out an album and you just listen to them, but with incorporation of MTV, you could actually visually see what they were thinking and also visually, creatively, their artistic form and the presence that they had was just something that opened all our eyes. You could now see these people singing and doing what they were doing. But yeah, David Byrne was a big influence on me, still is today. He's a highly creative guy. 
 
 He was the lead singer for The Talking Heads. And if you ever get a chance to get on YouTube, type in Talking Heads or David Byrne and you'll get some pretty creative visuals, creative video. It's very interesting.
 
 And we'll be right back. How have you found logistically being a Designer and an Artist can function creatively together? And by this, I mean, Graphic Designers are very organized and motivated and great at sort of coordinating and planning. But to me, this is kind of like the exact opposite of a traditional Artist.
 
 So how have you found a way to make that these two very different stereotypes function together? I think sometimes I try to coordinate a little bit of both. I think I've been fortunate enough to be brought up from a sort of a fine Art. I'm not a fine Artist per se.
 
 I'm more of a, I think I enjoy a lot more Photography, but I look at Art and I like to, I look at Graffiti and I like to take photographs of it and use it as sort of a backdrop for something. And now you can do that and you can take pictures and totally manipulate them around. And so you don't even know that it's the same photograph. 
 
 And I find that's been a real inspiration to me. And I find like, even from the fine Art standpoint with Graphic Design, you tend to use your computer all the time. And I find like fine Art has come to the computer also where I've got a drawing tablet that I use on the side.
 
 It's like a, it's a really large tablet that actually shows you the screen of the computer on the tablet, and you can use various programs to create fine Art. And a lot of these programs now are emulating a lot of different ways of different mediums, like acrylic and oil-based paints. There are a lot of programs out there. 
 
 They don't, they're not meant, I don't think, to compete or to emulate real oil paintings, but I think the technology is there. It's almost like a CGI for fine Artists pretty well, where you can actually try to produce something that looks like an oil painting that really isn't. But you're given, all of a sudden, you're given all these different tools on your computer to play around with different types of fine Art.
 
 And the benefit for that, actually for me, is that you can erase every mistake that you've made. It's a little easier than a start over or a watercolour. So, I mean, it's a good tool to learn, too, because the mistakes that you make, you don't have to live with. 
 
 Although some of the mistakes out there for fine Artists are probably one of their best, their best attributes to some of their artwork, because Artists, what happens when you put it down on a piece of paper, too, right? They call them happy accidents, right? That's exactly right, yeah. So, but I find I've incorporated a lot of fine art things in my computer that I've just used. It's a lot cleaner, too. 
 
 But it'll never, it'll never be, you know, it'll never be the same as actually taking a brush to a pad. For me right now, it's incorporating me, it's giving me a little bit of a stepping stone between Graphic Design and fine Art and Photography. So, I have them all on the same basic platform. 
 
 And, you know, you can basically take a photograph and you can trace it and draw it on this tablet that I have. Yeah, it's like a giant iPad. And you can draw the outlines and sketches and stuff. 
 
 And then you can be creative once you get all your composition correct, and sort of visually have an idea of where you want to go. You can elaborate with it right on screen. So, I find that's a lot of fun, too. 
 
 So, I think that's how they sort of all marry up together. They kind of sort of blend together because they're all on screen. And that, to me, is a very interesting thing, just from the creative process. 
 
 And they are very easy to change, too. Colours are easy to change. But, I mean, that's not taken away from the true classic fine Art, which is an art in itself.
 
 I just find that probably only on this planet for a number of years left, I'd like to explore technology as much as I can, because I've seen it from the infant stage. And I've seen it develop. And to be actually a part of graphic design, to be a Graphic Designer, I've had to keep my education up every year. 
 
 I love learning about new technologies. And I find that it keeps me alive, keeps me going, keeps my mind sharp. And it's learning about new technologies that are developing every day pretty well now. 
 
 Keep me going, too. I'm very interested in technology and the way it relates to Photography and Graphic Arts and fine Art. Yeah, it's weird how, like, they are all different, but they've all got a lot of similarities and a lot of overlap, right? There is. 
 
 There is a lot of overlap. But I don't think it'll ever compete with a traditional painting. But you never know.
 
 There's a lot of amazing things that are happening. And the future takes a lot of turns from a technological side, that's for sure. And we never really, never to this day could I imagined what I have in front of me right now. 
 
 I've got two giant monitors here and an illustrating pad and I've got an iPod and I've got all the all the tools I need. Got all the toys, all the toys. Yeah. 
 
 Yeah. And music walks, too. I've got a complete music studio in my basement where I can record digitally. 
 
 And it's a it's a great process. A lot of fun. When you mentioned about OCAD, because when you were talking about how in college at George Brown, I think it was the George Brown question, and you were saying how being surrounded by all the other students and then just how it made you made you feel more creative and you just, you know, with like minded people kind of thing. 
 
 I kind of just wanted to pipe in there, which I didn't, but I just wanted to say now that I remember when I was at OCAD, it was like the exact opposite. It was the way they made it seem. I had this feeling that it was just we're all competing for the same jobs. 
 
 So don't really talk to people because you're competing for the same jobs and just, you know, do your own work. And so, like, I never really got that connection with all the other students because I kept thinking, oh, wow, that's interesting. We're all competing. 
 
 I shouldn't really talk to people. Yeah. Wow. 
 
 Mm hmm. I think it was probably just how I was seeing it, or maybe maybe it was like that. I'm not sure. 
 
 But but yeah, it seemed very competitive. Well, yeah. Well, that's interesting that it was that competitive. 
 
 We're all competing for the same job and that, OK, well, just, you know, just get the work done. And I think I was also stressing myself out, too, just with trying to get all the work done. And I was trying to do illustration for graphic design.
 
 There was probably more of a market back then for a lot more Graphic Designers and fine Artists. Right. Mm hmm.
 
 Mm hmm. I know that the college that I went to was very demanding work wise, you know, staying up, you know, till four o'clock in the morning doing projects that were due the next day, not because I was lazy. I love doing all these projects. 
 
 I love getting immersed into all these different projects that they had us do creatively. It was it was so much fun that I'd wake up early and go to school early every day just to be a part of it all. Because I was in the in the course that I was supposed to be in my school, I was in Art once every two days, I think. 
 
 And after that, it was, you know, various other courses that didn't really appeal to me that much. Never did understand history, but. Mm hmm. 
 
 And I don't really remember a lot of that subject. But I was born into the arts back then. But when you're immersed with people that are like minded as you in the arts. 
 
 It was a lot of fun. We're all learning and just sort of almost it was just like like a fun time of my life that I'll always remember. And there are a lot of different places for Graphic Artists to go after that. I don't know the placement for fine Artists. I'm not too familiar with how you got placed in a job or like you landed positions in various companies. As an Artist, well, at least when I was going to OCAD, they there was there was really no business that they taught you.
 
 It was just like, here, this is how you paint. Right. And this is how you this is how you do Photoshop. 
 
 And this is how you do typography. And then, OK, here's quote air quotes, professional practices, which was just like they tell you to write a bunch of papers and which I think of is like your master's degree. But right. 
 
 Yeah. But then it was like, OK, then you're done. You graduate and then it's like you figure it out. 
 
 And wow. Yeah, it was like I didn't. So I just went to galleries and then they kind of laugh at you, you know, like because you don't have the experience and you don't have all the all the shows under your belt yet. 
 
 So it's just yeah, I think I hope that they changed it since I was there. Did OCAD did they have dedicated teachers that would work nine to five at OCAD? Yeah, there were some like that. Yeah, that were there were also Designers and Illustrators part time. 
 
 OK, because I know with the George Brown College, they had a lot of teachers that would teach part time and then they'd be Illustrators in the afternoon. So they would be they would teach you a lot of the hands on work skills that they were demonstrating at the same time. Yeah. 
 
 Yeah. I think there was a bunch that were like that. But then there were some that you could tell were pretty much retired and they were just trying to make some extra money on the side kind of thing. 
 
 Right. And then they do the they do their job in the afternoon or whatnot, but they do teaching in the morning sort of thing. Yeah. 
 
 Right. Yeah. Yeah. 
 
 We had one teacher. Actually, he was he did all the background graphics for the National News and for Hockey Night in Canada. He would do all the graphics for them. 
 
 And a nice guy. He'd come in and he teaches some of the tricks on how because when they do news stories for the national. Yeah. 
 
 You know, back then they weren't computer generated also. They'd have to do them on storyboards, basically, and do them quite fast for the news at 11 o'clock back then when it hit. Right. 
 
 And so he used to teach us a lot of different tricks of the trade and ways of doing techniques that would speed up the process. And it was, you know, it was basically Art. He put it down on a board and they'd take a camera still of it and then they'd put it behind the newscaster.
 
 But at night time, he would do the national news and then in the daytime he would teach us. So it was kind of we kind of got sort of a current approach. It wasn't something that was in a textbook. 
 
 It was something that was happening now. It was really great because you felt like you were on the cutting edge. Right. 
 
 And now I guess today it's it's all computers. But I hope they still to this day teach the fundamentals, even though they're probably not as glamorous as a computer. Yeah. 
 
 Yeah. I think I think there must be some of the original sort of grassroots kind of just to be, you know, there has to be a foundation. Yeah. 
 
 The foundation. That's exactly it. They must have some some of that, at least at least for one or two classes. 
 
 So. But yeah. Yeah. 
 
 Well, thank you so much, Gord, for participating. Oh, thank you. And yeah, we've we've done about we're pretty well covered. 
 
 I think we've done pretty good. So we got the we got the full hour for sure. Oh, I'm glad I'm glad we got together to talk. 
 
 Yeah, it was fun. It was really good. Yeah. 
 
 Thank you. Thank you again for participating. Yeah, thank you. 
 
 Thanks for asking me. That was a lot of fun. Great. 
 
 I look forward to the final. Yeah, it was. It was. 
 
 And perfect. Yeah. So thanks again. 
 
 OK. And OK. Have a good evening. 
 
 Maybe we'll get together for a coffee sometime. Yes, exactly. I said I said we should get together for for catch up coffee soon.
 
 We'll keep in touch anyways. Yes, for sure. For sure.
 
 All right. OK. Take care. Take care. You too. Have a good night. 
 
 Bye. OK. Join me next time as I go down another rabbit hole with another creative professional on their insights, their inspirations and their ingenuity.