inky
fingers
mickey
gibbons
Mickey is a multi-disciplinary designer with his heart firmly devoted to paper and ink. He has been designing award-winning magazines and newspapers for decades and recently returned to his artistic and heritage roots back in the rural eastern English county of Suffolk. Focussing on his drawing and print-making, in the last two years Mickey has self-published a hardback book of drawings and a 4-part zine series on foraging.
Mickey, anti-capitist to the core, still keeps his eye in when it comes to branding, so Veerkracht Dialogue’s creation and request for a visual identity was an exciting opportunity to work with ecologically enlightened practitioners of many kinds.
Creatively, Mickey hates the very idea of a ‘comfort zone’ and chooses to undertake work on projects with methodologies that he is unfamiliar with so that he can continually challenge his abilities and knowledge as a designer and artist.
This appetite to expand his skills base, coupled with a love of deadlines, always sees Mickey with his hands full (usually covered in ink), but as he would remark:
“You never find the best beaches on a motorway“.
The gallery of images below show a range of Mickey’s printed work.
indigo
threads
Veerkracht Dialogue Visual Identity Project
After discussion with Jani about the objectives and plans for the Veerkracht project, I focussed on trying to imbibe its visual language with a combination of nature’s freedom and the functional order of Dutch design.
I began with a scan of my own selvedge denim jeans and began to focus on the stitching patterns which, when folded and scrunched, resembled flowing water.
I made a version of this sewing pattern in Adobe Illustrator which I began to experiment with using every tool in my box. It’s a big box. I photocopied, cyanotyped, overlaid and distorted this orderly pattern and only stopped when I was happy with the punk synergy between digital and analogue in the imagery.
