A designer’s journey
Where imagination meets industry
Sometimes, even great successes like artist and creative director Shaun Loynds experience self-doubt.
“I’d be in California on Santa Monica Beach,” Shaun, 57, said, “filming a commercial for Harley-Davidson, and I’d just get this feeling that someone was going to turn up and go, ‘What’s this guy doing here? He went to Shadsworth High School in Blackburn and only has two O-levels and he’s as thick as a brick.’”
But Shaun was a maker and a doer from the start, growing up in Blackburn with six siblings and a desire to create.
“My parents were great,” Shaun said. “I know for a fact that if we had mobile phones and the internet when I was a child, we wouldn’t have been on them. My parents were always saying things like, oh, why don’t you do a picture? Why don’t you help bake this or come out into the garden and help me build this or that?
“So, I’ve always been creating, making, cooking, that kind of stuff – but art was what really captivated me.”
When Shaun saw a careers advisor in secondary school, he expressed an interest in building a creative career but was told to “become a sparky or something”.
“They didn’t even steer me towards architecture or anything like that – but that was Blackburn for you, I guess. When I was about 13, my dad told me to get myself a summer job.
“I was offered a factory job, but I turned it down. I said, no chance, because I realised it would do my head in. I think my dad knew what he was doing when he told me to get a job like that, and it was a great lesson.”
Thankfully, Shaun’s history teacher was more encouraging than the school’s careers service and suggested that he apply to the Blackburn School of Art. Shaun interviewed well but didn’t quite make the required grades – however, when two students dropped out and the college gave 40 applicants another interview, he was offered a place.
Shaun said: “I remember walking out of the building thinking, ‘I am going to work my fingers to the bone’, and that’s what I did. I realised that this was absolutely my destiny. I was made to do this.
“In my first year, I got the Student of the Year Award and finished with a Distinction in the second year. My work was displayed in the School of Art reception because my mark was so high.”
Wolverhampton Polytechnic (as the University of Wolverhampton was in 1986) wasn’t initially on Shaun’s radar, but when a course-mate’s father offered to drive his son and Shaun to view the Wimbledon School of Arts, they stopped at Wolverhampton on the way home. Shaun said: “It was an open day, and from the moment I walked into the School of Art building, I thought, whoa, man, this feels great! I remember the first place we visited was the photography studio downstairs. Then we went into wood, metal and plastics, and then up to fine art, and then where the graphics were. It was buzzing. I just thought, this is it. I want to go here.”
“I worked in this business as an art director because people wanted me for my craft and my ideas and I’d direct everything to the nth degree.”
The Wolverhampton Polytechnic experience was an important stepping-stone in Shaun’s path to success, and he says that many of the people he studied alongside also went on to do great things in the creative arts.
Shaun fondly remembers the opportunities he received through studying at Wolverhampton, which included meeting people he called the “giants of graphic design” like Alan Fletcher, Saul Bass, Abram Games and being helped by John Lowe, his favourite lecturer, to recognise his talents.
He said: “John got me a placement at the Why Not Associates, which was a new boutique design agency that had just come out of the Royal College of Art. They gave themselves the name because they did stuff that was different to everybody else. And when asked why, they went, well, why not?
“At the end of my week’s placement, they said, ‘We’ve really enjoyed you being here. Do you want to stay for another week?’ So, I did two weeks there and it completely changed how I saw the world.”
Shaun’s first industry role was with Switch Design Partnership, which came about after Shaun invited the company to a private viewing of his degree show. After they expressed interest in his work, he offered to work for them for two weeks for free, which after some deliberation they allowed him to do. In less than a month, the company told Shaun he had made himself “indispensable”, and he was soon working freelance for them for £250 a month, then within six months earning a £6,000 salary, as their junior graphic designer.
Shaun’s big break came about when he contacted Sandy Bradley who was creative director at Charles Barker, Black & Gross agency with a bold proposal.
Shaun said: “They were doing all these big campaigns for clients like Minolta and Birmingham Airport. They’d just done a campaign for Centro, so I produced my own version of the campaign and very cheekily faxed it to Sandy, saying, ‘I keep seeing your campaign around. I know how difficult clients can be and your campaign looks like your client’s been meddling. This is what I’d do if I had a free run.’
“When I got home that night, there was a message on my answer machine that asked if I could come into their office on Monday. No word of a lie, I went in and Sandy said, ‘You’re a cheeky bugger, aren’t you?’ It just so happened that I had sent my fax through on the same day that one of their art directors had resigned, and she said, ‘I admire what you did. I’ve got a contract here and I’d really like you to sign it.”
As Shaun says, “the rest is history.” Shaun has gained prominence and awards throughout his career due to his hard work and abilities in the world of visual communication and art direction. Among his experiences, Shaun was sent to Japan to work on a global pitch for Hitachi, launched the home appliances company Gtech from a Worcester pig pen and helped transform an unknown brand into a global success, and made TV commercials in places as far-flung and varied as Cape Town, Texas, New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona.
One of Shaun’s more memorable contracts saw him creating campaigns for HarleyDavidson Motorcycles, one of which earned him and the team a prestigious Roses Advertising Award for Best Art Direction. The winning poster came from a campaign originally intended to be a Superbowl TV spot – often considered the holy grail for advertisers – but when the company decided to pull the budget, Shaun and his creative partners turned one scene from the film into a set of striking posters.
Shaun said: “In the video, the camera was going to pan across different rooms in a school and you’d see one child stood in the corner with her hands on her head, then the camera would move through and you’d see a child outside the headmaster’s office, and then it would go to a child writing lines on the board. The line was, ‘Hand-picked by the establishment since 1903’, insinuating that single-minded ‘rebellious’ people often stand out for all the ‘wrong reasons’ and are inadvertently picked out by those in authority to be prime candidates for riding a Harley.
Shaun and the team designed.
“We presented these shots as three posters to the company in Milwaukee. They loved them, and the one with the headmaster’s office won the award. The biggest, most interesting thing for me is that Willie G. Davidson (great grandson of the founder) asked us to frame it and he now has it in his office. It’s lovely to think that.”
The industry has changed a lot since Shaun began his career in the 90s. He explained that whereas back when he wrote ads for television, he would know for a fact that he would have his audience’s full attention for 30 seconds or even a minute.
“So much is driven on social media, and I think you’ve only got about three seconds to grab people now,” Shaun said. “I worked in this business as an art director because people wanted me for my craft and my ideas and I’d direct everything to the nth degree. When I think about the hours I’ve spent in editing suites, it sometimes feels like now there’s a tendency to just bang work out.
“There are still companies doing fantastic stuff though: Fold 7 does incredible stuff, and Fluid in Birmingham (owned and run by a Wolverhampton graduate) win awards all the time.”
Nowadays, Shaun works part-time in advertising and full-time creating pure art for the love of it, exhibiting his mixed media original art whenever he can. He did not originally study with an aim to become a creative director, but instead to be an artist, so it seems natural that he would one day fill his time creating art for art’s sake.
Shaun, who refers to his visual style as “eclectic chaos” and a form of daily exorcism, said: “There are days when it feels like a battle, and where I’m literally fighting to get something out. I think that part of the chaos in my work is because I’m processing things from the past. It’s like a war.
“There are a few bits of digital in my work, but most of the work I compose is with glue, scissors, paint, paper and actual material. It’s all very hands-on, getting stuck in.”
Shaun is in close contact with the University of Wolverhampton and works as a visiting lecturer working with third year undergraduates mainly.
In closing, he added: “Speaking to the students and helping them see things in a different way is very rewarding and coming back remains an absolute pleasure.”
