kerr vernon

Kerr VernonA conversation with


KVGD is Kerr Vernon, an independent Glasgow based Graphic Designer with over 15 years experience. He works with local, national and international clients in the arts, education, finance, retail, FMCG, healthcare, music and charitable organisations. Working in partnership with only the best web developers, photographers and writers in the industry Kerr Vernon delivers creatively-led, engaging and memorable design for print and the web.

KERR VERNON

Kerr Vernon Kerr VernonA conversation with

With the invention of the Ipad and Ebooks, do you

think digital sales will cannibalize print sales?

May the printed book become scarce and more

valuable?

Perhaps to a small scale. Time will tell. Vinyl is still regarded highly?

On blogs and articles on the Internet there are

many discussions to whether print is/ is not

dead? What is your stance?

It’s not dead. It’s not even resting. The majority of my output is about 80% print projects. Clients love all the different techniques too. Foiling and embossing and quality paper adds a real pick me up tactile element. projects vary from marketing collateral through to stationery and everything in between. Its often stuff i refer to as ‘leave behinds’. This is the printed material a client leaves behind after a meeting. The printed piece that speaks for their company. If its any good it should help sell their company and project their values and goals in their absence.


Historically what print based designers/ephemera

do you draw inspiration from? For me it can be

anything from 1940’s English café posters to

iconic designers such as Alan Fletcher.

Indeed. Inspiration can come from anywhere really. I love Stuff with a hand crafted look. So stuff with a mix of illustration and typography always goes down well. My all time favourkite is the heads of state in Philadelphia. Their posters are amazing.

How important is print to you as a designer?

It’s really important. It’s what drives me as a designer and it’s what I studied to do. It’s about creating something tangible. Some thing that exists in the real world and not the digital world. You can hold it and engage with it, photograph it and put it on your website and say i did that. Its a great feeling of achievement and very satisfying, especially if you have a happy client too.


Emerging from the graphic design industry today,

there is a huge pressure to have web skills and

print knowledge does not seem to be enough.

With rapidly evolving technologies, is it now

enough just to be a print based designer?

It would be pretty tricky surviving on printrojects alone. It’s hard to fight progress sometimes and you have to keep learning new skills to keep up. I recently started using fireworks for digital design and it’s really helped with the way I design websites now.

I collect a lot of printed ephemera from cigar tins

to postcards and I have a growing collection of

typewriters. Do you collect any printed matter?

I buy design books every now and then but I’m not too much of hoarder.




I know it is a tricky and generalised question but

what do you think the future of print may be?

I hope its going to be ok. People will always appreciate craft. Mass digital printing of junk mail is everywhere and just gets cheaper and cheaper to produce. On the flip side there’s un upsurge in screen printing and letter press across the design community so hopefully people will still a bit extra for something nice.

What would you hope the future would be?

I hope it smells of uncoated paper.

Documents

kerr vernon