Tal Rosner and Andrew Pavitt

As part of my college course i was to select two practitioners and compare and contrast their work and how it influences and effects my own.

Two practitioners i shall be comparing and contrasting are Tal Rosner and Andrew Pavitt. In this blog i shall be discussing their similarities and different working methods, hoping to see where they unite and where they find their own styles.
Tal Rosner is a film maker, his website describes his genre as Motion Graphic Art. His work consists of title sequences (one of which he created for the Channel 4 series Skins) to visual interpretations of classical music. I find his work energetic and lively as it ebbs and flows with the beat of the music. There is a certain excitement to Rosners work and his knowledge of Graphic Design and page layout is apparent as his work unfolds as if turning the pages of a book. Rosners background is in Graphic Design, he left the 9 to 5 work of commercial design to begin evolving as he mastered working with video. Tal Rosner left the studio behind him and now works for commisions alone or with the occassional help of a colleague.

Andrew Pavitt is an Illustrator and Designer who has a love for pattern and form, his work ranges from editorial designs for broadsheets to his own range of greetings cards. Pavitt begins his designs with pencil roughs, quite quickly, and then moves his designs to Adobe Illustrator to manipulate and finilise his images digitally. Andrew is based at Big Orange studio in London where he works alongside around 8 other deisgners, also sharing half the studio with the institute of illustrators. Andrew trained originally as a Fine Artist.

Both Andrew and Tal have been guest speakers at Stockport college, i attended both seminars to learn more and find out more about what unites and seperates them.
One of the many things they have in common is the fact they have both evolved from their original schoolings. They started in a different field of Design and Art and adapted as they grew with experience and life skills. Tal wanted to get away from working in a busy well paid office as he thought his creativity was being stifled and Andrew felt like he wasn't ustilising enough graphic elements as fine artist. I feel this is significant to me as i began my degree with Graphic Design and changed to Surface Pattern Design. They taught me that you can utilise many fields, and there is room to grow and change as you learn. That the degree studied is a firm basis but you also learn once in working environment, putting many aspects of design into play. The fusion of illustration, graphics, fine art and video makes me realise there is no reason to be stifled with your title or influences.
Another comparison is their appreciation of pattern, both artists seem to favour repeat and symmetry. Tal mirrors captured video footage and manipulates it to create beautiful kaleidoscopic films, full of reflection and reoccurrence.





While Andrew uses repeat to create playful images and geometric designs in his portfolio.

This compares to my work as using pattern and repeat is of great importance when creating surace patterns, and i am excited that they play with replication in their designs. The lessons i could learn from their practices are that inspiration for surface pattern design can begin anywhere, even with a video camera.

One of the contrasts Tal and Rosner posses is at the moment their working environments. Where as Tal left the studio to work on his own and have freedom, Andrew prefers to base himself in a studio. The studio for Andrew can help with artistic blockages as Designers bounce off each other where as Tal prefers his own space. The market place sometimes calls for a designer to set up in a studio to share costs. All Andrews bills are split between the design group, costing £200 a month. Both ways are symbolic of my own ambitions ideals I wish to begin my design working life in a studio to get a real feel for the industry but evolve to be set up at home for freedom and space from the outside world. The market place and external rigours financially make it more viable to share a studio for quite sometime once graduating.