I use my Mac for
Design polymath Gavin Strange does it all on the Mac!
What doesn’t Gavin Strange use his Mac for?
Q What do you use your Macs for? GS: A bit of everything! Graphic design, illustration, photography, film making, animating, motion graphics, a bit of 3D, designing toys, gaming, surfing, tweeting, Facebooking, updating – pretty much everything you can think of! Archiving, storing, organising. Everything and anything!
Q The Droplets are great. How do you use your Mac to create them? GS: Making the Droplets, my collection of vinyl toys, has really pushed the Mac into all sorts of directions. I start off with paper, doodling the designs, and then get straight into Adobe Illustrator to bring the characters to life. I send off the Illustrator files to the production factory and they send me back photographs of early sculpts that they’ve made by hand. I then use Photoshop to annotate my feedback and then send it back over to them, and then we go back and forth until I start receiving real samples, which I then catalogue by photographing and then start sharing the work in progress on social networks, such as Instagram and Facebook.
Once the finished toys are ready, I move onto the packaging design, using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to work that up. I like to capture and document the creation of most things, so I fire up Premiere Pro CC and create some sort of behindthe-scenes edit and share that online, too. I try and share everything I do, because I’m just so damn excited and stoked that I’m lucky enough to work on such fun projects! Q What made you pick Macs for this work? GS: I’ve always worked on Macs. It’s the design of the hardware that always attracted me, the minimalism of everything. Nothing feels out of place and whatever’s there is there for a reason! The software is a huge part for me, too. I just love how intuitive everything is. It’s very easy to use. The ecosystem of the iPad and iPhone is a big draw too – oh, and the Apple TV, how can I forget that? Photos synced to my telly is the best thing ever!
Q You also work at Aardman Animations (the creators of Wallace&Gromit). How important are Macs there? GS: The designers and directors are big Mac fans. It’s a fair mix between MacBook Pros, that are great for being on the move with, but then the mighty iMacs are great for working big. I haven’t seen any of the new Mac Pros being used yet – now that’s something I’d like to play with!
Q What work are you most proud of? GS: I’m most proud of my five-foot tall Gromit for the Gromit Unleashed project last year. I was one of 80 international artists given the chance to customise a Gromit that was part of a 10-week-long art trail here in Bristol, and which were then auctioned off for charity at the end. My Gromit was bright pink and gold, covered in illustrated statistics that were designed on the Mac and then laser-cut out and hand-applied to the dog itself. I’m so very, very proud to say my creation sold for £29,000 on the night of the auction, with every penny going to the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. In total we raised over £2.3million that night! It’s something I will never ever forget, and why I’m most proud of it!