Interview - Craig Oldham. Music

My research for the journal carried on this past week, as I was lucky to interview Music’s Craig Oldham. While researching his work over the past few months (as well as attending his 12 on 12 talk back in April), this was a designer I definitely look up to. Working for the Chase before Music, his website is motivational and inspirational to say the least. I was fascinated on his creative thinking and his philosophy on design and ideas generation. I was slightly nervous when getting ready to interview Craig but he made me feel very welcome. I attended the interview with fellow classmate Kat Speak, who I recently worked on the Tolerance brief with. We were taken to the meeting room in Music studios and Craig sat down and was happy for any questions we had.

Similar to Paul’s interview, we talked about the industry and the thinking process behind getting that final idea for a brief. Craig explained that when starting a brief, researching is important but only if it’s needed. If your familiar with the subject, the more vital part of the brief is the meaning of what the client is asking for. For example, if a client is asking a advertising campaign to sell tickets for a football game and there idea is a poster, Craig explained you can open the brief to a scale to however you a feel will work to the best of its capabilities and make suggestions to the client for other areas of promotion, which could work better.

Craig also explained you play different roles when starting a job. When reading a brief and understanding it, you become an editor. When having ideas you become a creative thinker and when you decide you may need a photographer of an illustrator you become an employer. He explained this is a journey you take as a designer throughout a brief and you gather emotions from the process you take. When an idea doesn’t work, you try all different ways of making it work but when there’s no way through, Craig explained its ‘’soul destroying’’ depending on how strong your personality is within you work when an idea is not working.

In regards to advertising, Craig explained the good, cheap, fast option when talking with a client. He explained taking away one element and leaving the other two options will show the client a realistic option of what they can expect. If they want it cheap and good, the deadline would be later than expected. If the client wished for the brief to be cheap and fast, more likely it wouldn’t be as good as it can be. The talk was good and in regards to research for the journal, it has helped a great deal.