Simon Spilsbury, D&AD, Fun Lovin' Criminals and more...

The natural velocity at which Simon Spilsbury thinks and works makes us thankful that there wasn’t a coffee shop between his house and his studio when we dropped in to talk about a varied array of recent projects. We discuss family, pencils (D&AD ones, that is) and art directors in our latest artist catch-up.

Anyone who knows Simon Spilsbury knows he’s not short of energy. His visual language is a very accurate reflection of the man himself, urgent, dynamic and really bloody funny, his style needs that immediacy to keep up with the rapidity of his creative thinking. A born problem solver (a trait brilliantly deployed in the nailing of the most outlandish briefs) when Simon needed a new studio space, he built one, himself, from scratch. "My workspace is a self-build at the bottom of my garden, in amongst the trees and next to the brook. Sounds ideal but being in my garden there aren't any coffee shops on the way down it. If I could relocate it would be to a camper van, a studio on the move.”

The rapidity of his idea-generation is startling. "I prefer to be spontaneous than plan meticulously and a time-poor brief will usually bring out the best and most unexpected work. I remember meeting an art director in a pub to solve a press ad for DHL supporting the Rugby World Cup in South Africa and a loose beery sketch of two giraffes resembling rugby posts became the image. It got in the D&AD Annual.”

This kind of approach saw him recently invited to the Genome Campus Conference Centre in Cambridge for the Accelerating Bio-Innovation '24 event. The brief was to illustrate 22 posters of Nobel Prize-Winning scientists from Newton through Darwin and Turing to decorate the inside of the full 80 metre circumference of the centre, depicting ground-breaking science to current award winners. "The best clients have art directors who aren't too prescriptive. They're employing you for a reason and let you get on with it. The 80 metre illustration client mentioned above gave me 10 days to reflect on 22 scientists. They made one adjustment. That's a dream project.”

Growing up in Somerset (did your local environment influence the way you work? “I don’t think it did, I don’t draw many tractors”) Simon comes from a very artistic family, in fact he went to his dad’s art school aged 4 and then his dad further taught him at secondary school. "My style developed from being influenced by other artists. It changed pretty quickly after The Times AD called me a 'poor man's Ralph Steadman'. Now it adapts naturally depending on my interpretation of an idea. I enjoy being adaptable and surprising myself with the result.”

One such celebrated project which has just been awarded a D&AD Pencil was a great brief from Red Dot Design to create original art wine labels, each one tailored to an individual client. They sent him 50 labels, blank apart from a red dot.

That grey stubble is testament to a period in the industry that’s seen a lot of change: "My most talked about project (by myself) is the Fly illustration I did for a 96 sheet poster for Nike many years ago. Photoshop had just hit the shelves and we comped sunglasses, complete with blood spattered people, to a drawing of a fly. It took 48 hrs in a PP studio at £200 pph. I could probably do the job in an hour now. In 20 years time we’ll have similar AI stories.”

Most recently he’s been working on his amazing The Guitar Project, illustrating the top electric guitar brands and using them as a base for people to personalise with their favourite band logos/lyrics/record covers etc. They’re stunning artworks, the visual equivalent of a power chord. This has developed into the Rock n Roll portraits series, the latest iteration has seen him partner up with Fun Loving Criminal, Huey Morgan, on a limited edition signed and embossed tribute to Huey’s beloved Gibson Les Paul Custom.

 

Next up, Metallica, PJ Harvey and Roger Daltrey. Don’t touch that dial…

See more from Simon here. 

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