Graphic Text
Brogen is an interesting name.
Is it traditional, or do you have fantastically eccentric parents?
I have eccentric parents who decided the best place to look for an original name for their son was in the White Pages. They got as far as ‘B’ and thought Brogan was aptly odd enough then decided that in order to add further difficulty to my life they’d change the spelling. So for the last 35 years nobody’s been able to spell it correctly. The real challenge though came when I was about 18, when dropping the ‘r’ meant I was suddenly associated with a group of people I had nothing in common with. Hilarious for people around me.
What attracted you to design?
I started designing about 20 years ago when I was back in school. All of a sudden I’d found something I loved doing and it didn’t involve exams.
You moved to France a few years ago. Tell us about that and why you went.
I moved to France because I met a French woman when I was living in London, who’s now my wife. We did some travelling and then decided we’d live together in the place she grew up, that happened to be Paris. At the beginning I had a love/hate relationship with Paris but with time I came to really love the place. On the one hand it’s a beautiful city filled with an eccentric array of cultures that’s always alive and buzzing with a plethora of things to do.
On the other hand it’s steeped in bureaucracy, can be narrow minded, suffocatingly traditional and leave you feeling emotionally worn out. After a few years of integrating myself into French culture I began to understand the French for who they were outside the clichés. And with that insight the culture came to life and France became a great place to live.
Could you speak French when you went?
I studied French at school in 4th form which was a great advantage. That meant that upon my arrival I could count to ten, and say hello and goodbye. Obviously I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, so I thought I could rely on my English. The French do learn English at school for eight years so they can all speak it, but they won’t.
To the French being French meant they weren’t about to make my life easy. It was apparent that I had no choice but to learn the language, if I was to stay there. So I enrolled in some lessons. After a couple of months I felt confident enough to take my first brief for a design job. It was a total disaster, I only understood about one word in 50. Fortunately I was working with companies in England and Holland where people spoke English and where there was a great graphic design culture. Then I started working with French designers and my French quickly progressed.
As a designer, what were the advantages of working in Europe?
Europe is the home of graphic design and continues to produce compelling work. It was great being surrounded by interesting people working on interesting projects. Budgets for client-related work are much higher than what we have in New Zealand, which means there’s more money to generate high-end design work and employ specialised talent. In my case this gave me more spare time to work on personal design projects where the emphasis was on creativity. Being in a city like Paris was also beneficial in that it was easy to work with surrounding European countries.
I could work via the internet with a company in Holland for example from my studio in Paris and, if needed, travel to Amsterdam and be there in four hours. It gave a feeling of being connected on a larger scale with my work.
You were involved with the design of the very popular and well-known publicity campaign for the 2002 European Football Cup. How did you get involved with this?
The advertising agency Publicis in Paris wanted to generate a series of graphics to create hype for the 2002 European Football Cup. They had seen my work and wanted to commission me to create the graphics. These were put up on billboards and bus shelters around Paris. They also installed a massive screen surrounded by the graphics at Hotel de Ville in the centre of Paris, where people collected to watch the matches.
You have recently moved back to
New Zealand. What are the advantages
and disadvantages of working as a designer here?
I moved to New Zealand because I wanted to start my own design company, which is more complicated in France. Upon my return I found it more difficult to find work than I’d expected. My work for the last 10 years was European based and I don’t think people on the local market could relate to it. After a few jobs, though, that changed. My biggest frustration was the smaller budgets. This would normally mean spending less time on the work, but it just isn’t possible. The work takes the same amount of time regardless of how much it pays. It’s meant I work more on a larger number of projects. The good side is that I get greater creative freedom because fewer people are involved and because I’m now reputed for doing creative work. The culture here is such that people listen to my expertise as a designer, especially within the corporate design sector. In France you get asked to design logos for companies who have little understanding of what you do and the benefit you can add to their company. Whereas in New Zealand you are able to help transform the vision of a business through the interpretation of their identity. It’s been interesting for me to approach design at a level where an understanding of business is paramount, where you can really help people’s businesses. As New Zealand’s not a country steeped in tradition it invents and reinvents itself as it moves towards the future. With this comes fresh perspectives and the need for innovation. We need to be new and different to succeed. So for me New Zealand’s a great place to be a graphic designer, it’s the feeling of isolation that can make it a difficult place to be.
What do you value in good graphic design?
For me good graphic design is a combination of an intelligent solution combined with high-quality crafting, ideally from a unique perspective. I don’t have much time for design that’s just about following a trend or design that’s buried deep in unnecessary graphic gimmickry. Ultimately graphic design has a job to do in providing better communication and increasing revenue for a product or service. For me it’s about finding an original way
of doing this.
Much of your design work seems to
be for other creatives, musicians’ album covers or Karen Walker’s Resene paint range. What is it like working with creatives from various fields?
Creatives can be an odd breed. They can have a very clear vision for their own creativity which can be impossible to work with. I think I’ve been lucky to have worked with creatives who are truly creative in the sense that they’re open minded and able to either appreciate the expertise of other people or be flexible in creating a graphic interpretation of their own creative outlet.
If you’re able to work with an open-minded creative then you may have difficulty paying your bills but you’ll be able to produce interesting work.
Some critics are derisive of designers moving between mediums. You have recently started designing lamps although your background is in graphic design. Are the techniques in product or graphic design different? Do you think that designers can or should move freely between design mediums?
When my work is on a personal level I design whatever I feel inclined to design whether that be a piece of furniture, a graphic or other. I don’t feel the need to suppress my creativity to one particular bent. The creative people I admire from today and the past all tried their hands at a diverse range of mediums and I think that diversity is important. Though there are practicalities that need to be considered in the process. Designing a lamp for example is quite different to designing a poster and therefore demands different considerations. Either way it’s a piece of design and if it’s design related and I’ll feel the inkling then I’ll design it. Damn the critics.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a series of photos with a photographer for an exhibition, a TV ad, another lamp, a packaging project and renovating my house.
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