The designers whose work is featured in the You See Red website all have a common background in graphic design and although our inspirations cover a wide spectrum of designers, artists and styles, they all have a strong ‘graphic’ theme.

If you are curious about where that theme is derived from, then the following should give you an insight into the references we have on our bookshelves, and hanging on our walls.

Classic Travel Posters of 20s, 30s and 40s
Perhaps the most familiar source for the style of You See Red is the classic travel posters of the 1920s and 30s. During this era, some of the most well known artists of the period were commissioned by the railway companies and London Underground to produce posters designed to encourage the public to travel to particular places or events. Artists such as Tom Purves, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Frank Newbould, Norman Wilkinson, Ronald Lampitt and Walter Spradbury were producing images which needed to be strong, vibrant and impactful. Many of these pieces were not created as master paintings to be scanned, but as ‘separated’ artworks with a layer for each colour used in the final poster. This method of working required the artists to work with a restricted number of colours and to keep the linework as simple as possible. Combined with the influences of the abstract artistic movements of the time, the resultant work has a simplicity and strength which still looks contemporary today, even though the railway companies and many of the destinations have long since disappeared.

Over the following decades, printing technology advanced, making the accurate reproduction of multi coloured originals an economic proposition for the posters. However the tradition of employing established artists continued through the war and into the 50s and 60s and You See Red draws inspiration from many designers’ work from this period, including Paul Nash, Abram Games and illustrators such as Brian Cook.

50s graphic design and interiors
Much of the design produced by You See Red is abstract, or patterned (especially in The Studio) and the inspiration for this work comes from many sources including the unashamedly ‘modern’ design of the 50s as demonstrated by The Festival of Britain and epitomised by designers such as Robin and Lucienne Day.

60s and 70s colour, forms and abstracts
Although the classic, illustrated poster was being superseded by the advent of high quality colour photography, the 60s and 70s still provide a rich source of inspiration for us - the whole Op/Pop Art movement and particularly the work of Victor Vasarely and Roy Lichtenstein all have a wonderful strength of colour, line and composition that demand attention.

Cartoons and Graphic Novels
Simply through the constraints of their methods of printing, the drawing of cartoons and graphic novels is economical and simple. Perhaps because of its target audiences and the essentially ‘throw-away’ nature of the medium, it is not really regarded as serious. However, at You See Red we believe that at its best, this can be a truly inspirational medium with some single frames being a masterpiece in themselves, especially the work of Hergé and Francis Bergése

Contemporary Artists
At present there seems to be a resurgence in interest in contemporary artists producing the sort of work which we find visually exciting and inspiring, these include Bridget Riley, Kelly Ellsworth and Patrick Caulfield. As well as the ‘big names’ we are often inspired by the work of less well-known artists and designers such as the linocuts of James Dodds.

Although this list might seem like a rather eclectic (even odd!) collection of influences, they have all had some greater or lesser influence on the development of the You See Red ‘style’. If you like our work, then hopefully some of the names we have listed here will enable you to broaden your understanding of what makes us tick and maybe discover work that you have not seen before.

Other Influences
Our inspirations are not exclusively art and print based, and we would like to extend our work to include 3-dimensional pieces in both The Shop and The Gallery. We have a keen interest in the principles and designs of the Arts and Crafts movement, paper and cardboard engineering, contemporary architecture, furniture design and the use of recyclable and renewable materials.

Subject Matter
As full-time commercial graphic designers we are constantly producing design work to meet a client’s brief and budget constraints. Whilst there is certainly scope for creativity, it is necessarily within fixed parameters and ultimately is directed by what our client likes. One of the key purposes of You See Red is to provide a showcase for us to exhibit work which we have produced simply because we were inspired to do so, and as such the content reflects our different characters and interests.

Like any creative process, graphic design needs constant feeding with visual stimuli - and designing ‘in a vacuum’ is nigh-on impossible. Thus we are all avid photographers and collectors of books, artwork and the ephemera of print and design, and any one of these sources can spark an idea for a print, Studio template, Shop or Gallery item. We are already finding that the list of ideas could keep us going for years to come!