1 Religious Illustrator
A Sikh man wearing speedos approached me in a Longridge sauna, and asked if I could draw his family being blessed by the Guru Gobind Singh Ji. To this day I have no idea what Singh Ji should look like, but this didn’t seem to be an issue. I knocked out several more for his friends, all in pencil crayon, before this bizarre seam of work dried up.

2 Hi-Fi Salesman, Preston Town Centre
Neds would run in, yank up the volume on the biggest hi fi systems, and run away in a wall of white noise. Phil the Manager played Simply Red as a demo tape endlessly. Dark, dark days.

3 YMCA Daycamps Instructor, Lakeside, Windermere
The kids arrived by bus in the morning and we’d have a brilliant time running them ragged and telling them rubbish until teatime. Once week a co-instructor and I convinced our group that we’d been co-joined twins, attached by the earlobes and recently separated – hence our ‘leaning’ walks. By Thursday they’d figured out not to trust us, as we had terrible backache.

4 Life Model, Edinburgh
Harder than it looks. I supplemented my student grant by taking my clothes off in a variety of life drawing classes across Edinburgh, and still get approached by ex students who are SURE they know me, but just can’t place it somehow… something to do with clothes….

5 California Coffee ‘Barrista’
In a classic case of ‘up-selling’, I converted one of my regulars at the iconic Edinburgh police boxes into my first client, by flogging him a coffee table to go with his espresso. Shameless, but effective.

Follow Paul Kerlaff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/PaulKerlaff

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

A year ago I had some excellent business coaching with Lynne O’Neil, from the CEO in Glasgow. Perhaps because I make things I work much better if things are mapped out physically, and we ended up marking out a business strategy on the floor – The present on one side, a year in the future on the other. My workshop became a kind of psycho-geographical space, and the time line stayed there for months.

My current room now has a double height space, because half of the old upper floor was removed, creating a mezzanine. I only realised afterwards that the half that was taken away was the ‘past’ side.

Find out more about Paul and his work here.

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

Shadow Screen was an exploratory process. Central Station worked with product designer Paul Kerlaff to create new patterns for the Shadow Screen service produced by his company, With Kerlaff.

Participants from all creative disciplines were invited to submit not only design proposals but also critical feedback, suggestion and comment. The idea was that the doors to the competition process were thrown open, to promote critical engagement and hence offer value to all who participated. 

In contrast to traditional competition formats, a long ‘shortlist’ were invited to show their proposals, for feedback by an invited panel of luminaries and by interested observers. There was one ‘winner’, but 5 of the shortlisted entries were offered a licence agreement for their pattern, alongside valuable exposure and feedback. Viewers were invited not to ‘vote’ in an X-factor style format but instead to use their powers of articulate persuasion to sway critical opinion.

Paul blogged regularly, as did the short listed designers. Read what they had to say, see their designs and find out more about the project by browsing through these:

Thoughts from Paul [With Kerlaff]:
Cutting out the Flaws of Competitions
Process Makes Perfect
Waiter: Social Media for one please
Shadow Screen Shortlisting – fly on the wall
Shadow Screen Judging – the Juicy Bits
Shadow Screen Winner

Thoughts from the shortlisted creatives:
My Shadow Screen Got Shortlisted by nothing
Shadow Screen Shortlist by Stephen Cappello
My Shadow Screens: Is Pattern Primary? by Titas
Smog Shadow Screen by daisymacdonald
Shdw Scrn \ The Man in the Moon by Dele_Adeyemo
Sublime Shadows by daisymacdonald
Shadow Screens – Does variety win? by Titas
Electric Bird x Shadow Screen by KavanStudio

On the face of it, the process of making a striking, freestanding, screen using Stephen’s Braille based pattern seemed fairly simple – just apply to an existing template that works well, take a few photos and and hey presto, new product launched. But much as I’m a fan of the path of least resistance, it didn’t seem appropriate to knock out more of the same. In fact, the three panel folding screen that is the most clearly identifiable image of the Shadow Screen range is not really a ‘product’ in the conventional sense – it was created for a Beruit Spa, who needed a lightweight, moisture resistant, folding screen. The impetus for it’s development was context driven, and like all good design, it justified it’s presence by creating value in response to this context.

The dilemma of speculative product design is that it has no real context, or at best an assumed one, and so its claim of creating value rests on the believability of a fiction. Because the Shadow Screen service creates value by responding appropriately to the needs of particular contexts, through the means of screening, filtering and defining threshold space, it seems counter intuitive to choose fictional context over reality. Context is arguably essential to showing the value of the Shadow Screens, and particularly so if the winning design is to be used to show the potential of the collaborative work.

The judging panel were attracted by Stephen’s design not only it’s simplicity and economy, but also by the potential to encode site specific content into the work. The digitally based means of fabrication inherently offers freedom from the constraints of tooling set up costs, and the best design has always fully exploited the potential of production. it makes an enormous amount of sense, therefore, for the made design to respond to real contexts, not only formally, but through site specific content. Buildings have long been judged on their appropriateness to context. It will be fascinating to see if product design, like the best architecture, can respond intelligently to place.

For those who didn’t make the trek to the Sub Club on Friday, Stephen Cappello was the winner, receiving a cash prize of £500 and a licence agreement for his design, ‘The Devils’ Church’. Four of the remaining shortlisted designs were also awarded a licence agreement, so Kavan Studio, Veeny, and Titas (two patterns) will all have their designs offered as part of the Shadow Screen range. As with the existing patterns, the designers will be paid a percentage royalty based on the selling price for each screen sold.

So, how did the judges come by this decision? It’s probably fair to say that the immediate impact of the patterns is hard to shake – it’s pretty clear whether a design is visually arresting, and this rarely changes. When we met for shortlisting, we looked at nearly a hundred entries in total, and it was pretty clear which of these should make it into the final ten. Although we didn’t pick a winner at this first meeting, we all had our favorites. It’s probably fair to say that even though we took pains to keep the comments on the designs fairly equal, it’s hard not to hope that your favorite wins.

What really showed through from the facebook comments is that each of the patterns works in a different way, and arguably four or five of them could have been the ‘favourite’. It made the final choice immensely difficult. Should we choose the pattern with the most immediate impact (which for me was the ‘bubbles’ pattern by Chris Veeny)? Or the one that received the most positive reactions (the beautiful ‘Smog’ pattern by Daisy Macdonald)? How about the patterns most likely to be used by interior designers looking for a compliment to other materials (Titas’ work)? Or the pattern that looks simple but is actually more complex than it looks (Mathew Kavan Brooks)?

In the end, the shortlist was so strong that I decided to offer licences to the five patterns which were most likely to be commercially viable for use as a cut screen. This decision left some fantastic patterns out, not due to the quality of the patterns themselves, but because they had a major issue with production – Dele Adayamo’s lovely collage of children and balloons, for example, didn’t offer an obvious positive and negative for the cutting process, and Daisy Macdonald’s Smog was stunning but very hard to crop due to the areas of uncut sheet. Daniel Sunden’s Untitled would be great as a piece of art in it’s own right, but hard to incorporate into an interior without overwhelming. The simplicity of Catrin Lewis’ work, though very strong in the right context, could be mistaken for a standard pattern, with the same going for the undulating waves of Titas’ third pattern.

Offering several licence agreements also freed up the choice of winner, and the judges felt that it’s clear concept had been executed in a refined way, pushing both the intellectual buttons but also subtly the right visual ones. What clinched it was that the pattern offered the possibility for customizing a screen to incorporate a hidden message of particular relevance to a client, or a context. It’s simplicity of form might also offer the potential of more economical production techniques, should the volume be sufficient. I’m looking forward to working with Stephen and with all those who have been offered a licence agreement to develop the work.

A huge thankyou to all those who entered, and I hope that the experience has offered some value even for those who didn’t win.

Along with elements of optical illusion, the pattern repeat also makes reference to the abundance of sleek and linear architectural forms around us. Be it a window, door, gate, or railing, the changing pace and width of apertures are forever present, creating bold shapes and lines that weave a sense of structure and order. The nature of the pattern on the screen aims to emulate this in it’s shadow, which is directly affected by the ever changing angle and position of the light.

Above all, both the screens surface pattern and it’s three-dimensional projection into space aim to provide a visually exciting experience.

The artwork “Electric Bird” leads to you so many new places, its modern appearance is actually heavily based in a real old school grid of science and math yet its structure is full of movement and fluidity. The design functions in a variety of ways, its initial visual allows it to appear current and on trend, its make up and design allows an audience to discuss its roots in academia and traditional art forms whilst its movement and swelling forms make it appear fresh and new from every angle.

The design has been created on a bed of grid work designed by the artist and mathematician M.C Escher. Initially his grid was designed to fit tessellating shapes of butterflies. With every edge of each butterfly touching his artwork was debatably flat and lacked an extra dimension that allowed it to be a successful visual rather than just a pattern work. With the Electric Bird design every negative space that flows around each teardrop is just as important as the positive space and therefore lends itself greatly to the shadow screen design. The negative space gives our eyes the freedom to move and link between each form and define our own visual path which in this design is often a fluid journey as we move between the swelling sizes of the shapes in the artwork. If you look closely you can make out each defining wave of the artwork as Electric Bird is made up of one set of teardrops in the shape of a butterfly which is then repeated in circular arrays and endlessly fits together to make the full composition.

Now that you know where the design came from and how it fits together you can take pride in its modern appearance as well as discussing its traditional design structure but what was even more important to me as a designer is to give the artwork a visual purpose to serve as a graphic that speaks volumes about who I am and what I have to say. I have mentioned the artworks fluidity and swelling a lot when I talk about this design and the reason for this is due to the commentary I am trying to insert into its design. I wanted the artwork the have a sense of emotion and mood, in all of my works there are great references to the sea, surf culture, a relaxed but up beat way of life, and so on. This design was put together so that as a Shadow Screen sits in a room it not only is a new piece of furniture it is a voice, an amplifying sound that resonates a mood. The Electric Bird speaks volumes of calm and cool, the way the design expands and shrinks mimics the movements of the waves, tides and the ocean and allows the screen to give out a sense of calm and serenity.

I hope this can bring great clarity to this design and give the opportunity to many new viewers to enjoy the artwork in an array of new dimensions. If you have any opinions on the design, any feelings about the visual or any questions I would love to hear from you. You can write them on the facebook group and I will answer as many of them as I can.

Matthew Kavan Brooks, KavanStudio

Another question is would the patterns remain the same after being done from its actual material?

Questions and ponderings above are just my personal observations, and I would really like to know how others would describe the winner. So please feel free to comment :)

The architectural importance of shadows was was so described by Eighteenth Century writer, artist and architect John Ruskin.  His approach to design was to manage the light and dark areas within a building to create the ultimate impact within a space, and to highlight interior details.  These ideas are universally important in design and architecture, and later in photography and film.

With this in mind, there are many interesting effects that can be achieved through the use of patterned shadow screens. The main challenge for me of this project was designing a screen that would be adaptable to many different environments.  I was keen not to allow too much light through, for the ultimate dramatic effect, and to keep the pattern abstract but dynamic. I was also interested in the projection of the shadow, how this would change with the movement of the screen – I tried to align the pattern so the most interesting effect would be created.

One other thought that inspired me was reading some of Japanese author Junichiro Tanazaki’s I933 book In Praise Of Shadows.  He describes his regret of the elimination of shadows by the introduction of the electric light, and the acceptance of the Western obssesion with brightness. He writes ‘Surely you have seen in the darkness of the innermost rooms to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold leaf of a sliding door will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow upon the horizon at sunset.  Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.’

Perhaps the Screens of Paul Kerlaff will bring the beauty of shadows back into our Western homes.