Hardcore bands, basketball and YouTube experiments – introducing designer and illustrator Sam Bailey

Date
26 April 2017

South London-based designer and illustrator Sam Bailey was self-taught “other than a college graphic design course”, and cut his teeth by making white label work for high street labels and for publications. “I did a lot of work with bands when I started out, and then some internships at a creative agency and a magazine,” he tells us. “From there, I worked at a fashion supplier creating graphics for high street labels, then more work doing layouts and artwork at magazines. A lot of this work I don’t have on show, but I have these jobs to thank for experience, developing skills as well as paying the bills.”

Mixing commissioned work with personal projects (“it’s always been important for me to have a personal output”), in recent years, Sam tells us “most of my exposure and contact for new work has been made through Instagram, where I post a lot of what working on.”

Among the projects Sam has been working on lately are a series of basketball videos “converted into a long images using code”, artwork for Leeds Hardcore band Higher Power and a series of experiments. Over to Sam to tell us more…

Basketball
“I like the idea that an element of the process is beyond your control; I saw a John Cage work at Tate Modern recently that got me interested in the incorporation of chance as a creative strategy. These are basketball videos converted into a long images using code, I then dissected parts from the long image files to create individual pieces.”

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

Higher Power
“Higher Power are a Leeds-based Hardcore band, they approached me to design cover art for their album. Their reference points were 90’s shoegaze album art — oversaturated colours etc. I started out manipulating some live photos they gave me and went from there. It was fairly fluid process from start to finish, and while I started out only meaning to create the front cover, I ended up laying out the whole thing.”

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

Experiments
“I watch ​a lot of ​YouTube tutorials and try to learn new software, this results in a lot of experimental work and artwork to test out new ideas. There’s no set process but some of my favourite things to do include warping and wrapping ​images in 3D space. I do more conventional and functional design work as well, but this is more freeform — trying to find new combinations and methods.”

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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Sam Bailey

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About the Author

Bryony Stone

Bryony joined It's Nice That as Deputy Editor in August 2016, following roles at Mother, Secret Cinema, LAW, Rollacoaster and Wonderland. She later became Acting Editor at It's Nice That, before leaving in late 2018.

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