I am a real one. I never wanted to be a digital creative director. There was no such thing in 1988 when I went to St Martins to follow my dream of becoming a designer like my heroes at Push Pin Studios and Pentagram and Hipgnosis. All of these guys were already deeply unfashionable by then, blown away but the startlingly ugly typography of Neville Brody, the crass post modernism of Malcolm Garret and the pretentious posturing of Peter Saville.
Too many adjectives in that sentence Willow. Don’t do as I do, do as I say.
When I couldn’t get a job as a real graphic designer I went back to my old job, making tea for grumpy old bastards on the night shift at the typesetters. In the corner they had an ugly box with two slots where you could feed it with floppy discs that weren’t floppy. It had a portrait orientated black and white screen. Big fucking deal.
So CD ROM’s and later the incredibly slow and awkward Internet seemed quite exciting in comparison. I had done my best to exclude any images, colour and round corners from my degree show, and here was a medium that had none of these idle temptations.
