Chapter 6: London calling

June 2004 - Sept 2005

So I finished university in 2004, and the job-hunting began! From the summer until September that year I went back to live with my folks, who had re-located to the south of France. So guess it wasn’t all that bad! I practiced my french, and picked up some useful life skills whilst over there - including how to make fresh pizza dough. I also had a few bits & pieces of freelance work to do, as well as sorting out my first proper CV (keeping it to a single side of A4 was the challenge) and then getting a design portfolio together. I was applying to be a graphic designer at this point. Despite that, I still dabbled in some painting - I did a new large-scale fishing boat oil painting for a friend of my parents, who’d liked my other A-level fishing boat painting at my folk’s house, so they commissioned me to do a new one.

French fishing boat, oil on canvas, 2004

I’d already decided that London was the best place to go for work - it just seemed to be the best place to go for the most new graduate opportunities, plus as a young adult it had a certain appeal for it’s culture and variety too. I’d already done some London-based work experience whilst at university - which I forgot to mention last time. In my second year I’d done a week at an East London multi-disciplinary design studio called Foundation33. To be honest, it was tough being so inexperienced and I must have been a burden for the guys running the place, to know what to give me to work on, without taking up too much of their time. They clearly had a lot of things going on. It was nice anyway just to experience a small working studio space hidden away in Bethnal Green, and a few different freelancers came in as I was there. Their work included branding for the Channel 4 Big Brother TV show, plus they restaurant menus happening, right through to furniture design & architecture. I tried to help out with a random photo of the day feature they’d post on their website. I’d also help out a little with prepping work for presentation at pitches, but as I was so new into my course I just think I lacked the skills & confidence at that point. What I did note from the experience was their website - it was designed on a system which Daniel helped design called Indexhibit- it’s a good starting point even today for anyone wanting a free no-fuss portfolio website template. I used it after finishing university to build my first portfolio website.

In 2003 I had another work experience opportunity, via a friend Carrie, who had left Reading the year after started. We initially met when I started a part-time job right at the beginning of University at Pizza Hut (I’d actually forgotten about it, but I was only there for 2 weeks before I realised it wasn’t for me!) Anyway, she worked in the Dorling Kindersley dept (part of Penguin publishers at the time) - and she helped me get in there for two weeks of work experience. I helped to source photographic images by scoring picture libraries, I did lots of scanning but also got to design some book jackets and use photoshop. It was a good insight into a larger more corporate environment.

I returned there again for another week, this time I was heading to Penguin Fiction Dept. - and was able to work shadow and come up with some concepts for some new book jackets - I remember they had some really good designers, and everyone I met was really welcoming. Another perk of that job was every morning you could head to a certain floor of the building where they had some new samples of books - so I was able to nab a few freebies. I think the most notable one I was really proud of getting hold of was the Kurt Cobain diaries, which had just been published. I think another jacket designer there actually had nabbed it first, but then by the end of my short stint there, she gave it to me as a parting gift!

Anyway now that I had graduated, I did start to feel more confident after my 4-year course was complete. I was popping back & forth to London once or twice as interviews finally started to appear during the late summer. I think I can remember scouring a magazine called Design Week & The Guardian for all the latest job opportunities. I had an early interview at a small company in Soho that designed the music flyer ads you’d get handed outside music venues - but sadly that never materialised into an offer. There were many other interviews - I think it took a dozen or so - just being interviewed for the first time and trying to get a lucky break. And looking back now, I think all this practice must have helped me, as later in life, I never had as many rejections as I did in those early years.

As my course at Reading was still quite heavily geared towards print design, and web design was still I’d say in very it’s early stages, my experiences made me lean towards designing for print & publishing to begin with.

I’d arranged plans in late summer to move to London with my brother Al and friend Aimee. I’d met her in year 1 of University, but she’d dropped out before the end of that first year, but we’d stayed friends - she was living back at home near Oxford, but wanted a change, and was able to get a transfer with her existing job at Dockers (Bicester Village) to come and work at the Levis London Flagship store (who also owned the Dockers brand). My brother Al, who was still a professional drummer, had been invited to join a band based in London, so he started this, alongside part-time work. He never wanted to work indoors in an office, so he got into landscape gardening, and early on did an apprenticeship at Kew Gardens. The 3 of us found our first rented flat in Kilburn, North-West London. It was a noisy place to live - I remember either hearing an angry teenage daughter and irate mother arguing & smashing things up below us, or else screaming foxes outside at night.

My first rented flat in Kilburn, and a map of the surrounding area

In October I was offered my first job at Park Publishing. It was based in Wandsworth, and run by a couple of guys who had the concept to spin up charity events. They had a small team of telephone salesmen, and would cold-call corporations to sell them printed ad spaces. They’d then host events at nice venues for each featured charity. The money gave each client a sponsored advert in a programme for each event - and that’s where I came in. I had to design these brochures. Sometimes the companies would provide me some advertising artwork to fill a space, but other times it was me making up generic adverts. It was awful, and I was out within 3 months of arriving.

Job no.2 started in Feb 2005. I went to Alain Charles Publishing - they were based in Victoria, very close to Buckingham Palace & New Scotland Yard. This was a medium-sized company and they produced business magazines - with much more editorial content, but otherwise there was still some advertising space to fill. The titles ranged from middle east oil, technology and Arts. the latter being the more interesting one to work on - at the very least for the imagery and articles themselves. This job was also a much better use of the layout design skills I’d learned at University - but really pushing them into a professional environment. I was using a programme called Quark Express to lay out the various pages, and my design manager there Johno was a friendly patient guy who gave me the time and training to progress. As well as the work being better than the last job, socially this was a nice step up too, as there would often be after-work Friday drinks at the little pub near the office. It was my first experience of going straight out after work, no dinner, straight onto the beers, and then paying the price the next day.

But it was also a dark time that summer in July 2005, when the London terrorist attacks happened. I was really lucky to not be caught up in it, I think thankfully the Jubilee tube line, which I travelled in on, was one of the few not specifically targeted that day. But I remember having to then walk home that evening from Victoria back to Kilburn - it took about an hour and a half, which seems nothing now but it felt like a long time when you’re used to whizzing around London at break-neck speed. All the tubes had also stopped running after those events, there were a few buses still running, but I remember feeling panic every time one came by, that it might explode! When I got back home, I just felt really relieved to see my brother Al & Aimee, and we got a big bottle of whisky and just drank the whole thing that night! I don’t think I went into work the next day, many people chose to take a day off, or their work places said to just stay at home. I’ve got a feeling that transport didn’t instantly start running again as normal either. It was probably inspired by these events and the chaos of living in a hectic pocket of London that I began to dabble in some experimental art - just a few very doodle-style drawings onto small canvases using black ink.

London ink drawings, on small canvases, 2005

Apart from that particular bad memory of 2005 - Kilburn wasn’t too bad a place to live, it was well-connected for travelling around London, but Kilburn High Road was a very hectic high street. We had some nice local pubs around, Aimee was a bad influence on us too, as she loved the pub. We’d rotate around a few of the local pubs, and I remember seeing the odd celebrity. In Kilburn we’d see the guys from Peep Show quite a lot. And in West Hampstead you’d tend to see the odd actor, I remember Emma Thompson walking past on the high street a couple of times. We explored the nearby regions of Queens Park on one side and Hampstead Heath on the other. It was nice when you found a little pocket of green space or famous spot suddenly within walking distance such as Abbey Road which wasn’t too far away. As a tourist living in London it was fun, but living there wasn’t ever going to be permanent for me.

Things gradually returned to normal, and I lasted at Alain Charles for about 7 months in total, until around September. so it was basically a full year now living in London, but Aimee had decided to leave and head back to Oxford. She never had enough money working in the retail store to really appreciate London living. She went on to become a landlady running a pub in her home village, which she’s still doing to this day. But me and Al wanted to carry on living in London for a bit longer, and we managed to persuade one of Al’s old friends Alex, from Petersfield, to come and live with us. She was a very talented children’s illustrator, and we convinced her she could come to London to progress her illustration career, as she was stuck working in a local bookshop at that point. I’d seen a job opportunity come up to work in the music industry - and I jumped at the chance, as designing record cover artwork didn’t sound too bad. It was working for Sanctuary Music - based over in Kensington Olympia. I managed to get the job, and it thankfully tied in with the end of our first year lease in Kilburn, so we then re-located to Putney and that’s where we ended up staying for the next four years.