THE YEAR THAT

Liam Bowden

My first year at university was 2004 and it was a year of personal awakening. I’d been very creative although I wasn’t in a very creative environment. But that year I suddenly realised the skills and talents I had. They were fostered and seen as positive, rather than negative. It gave me a big leap in confidence personally, professionally and in every sense. Creativity was encouraged and the crazier the better. It was a personality-creating moment.

I was studying visual communications, which was basically graphic design and a bit of everything that comes under that. There was sculpture, printmaking and photography. I was looking to possibly do sculpture as a major but chose graphic design instead because then it was still possible to do a lot of sculpture.

I had gone to a very sports-oriented school, so this was the polar opposite. I wasn’t interested in sports then so it was very refreshing to be able — all day, every day — to create things and have that part of my brain exercised. I was looking at things through a completely different lens. It taught me about creative process and structure, whereas before that had all seemed like a whim.

Probably to my lecturers’ frustration, I did a lot of projects where I’d create a piece of furniture rather than a graphic image; or an installation rather than a flat item to express what I wanted.

When I didn’t follow a brief, even if my teachers were a bit annoyed, they also encouraged me, so they fuelled the beast as well.

I was surrounded by people who shared my interests and were into the same things, so socially it was an exciting time. I was probably quite a distracted, procrastinating student. Most of my 9-to-5 time would be spent socialising and doing the rounds of people I wanted to catch up with, and at night I’d try to catch up on the work I had fallen behind on.

I was also learning boundaries. At first it was all about being very creative, then, as the course went on, I began thinking about how to commercialise things. I was there for four years and ended up with a Bachelor of Visual Communications. As you get closer to the end you start thinking about how you’re going to make this a career. I went out and did internships in fashion, graphic design and advertising to get a taste of that.

Since I was there, the course has become a lot more focused on commercial development and internships but in those days, it was about making you

I hadn't been that interested in fashion initially. I was interested in creating worlds — imaginary situations, things that would delight people.

as creative as possible and then throwing you out into the world.

I hadn’t been that interested in fashion initially. I was interested in creating worlds — imaginary situations, things that would delight people.

The business that became Deadly Ponies evolved gradually. I was working with friends doing things like making stickers and doing branding and random graphic images. Some of those got applied to leather, and then there was a market day at which they were going on sale. And they sold out.

I was doing freelance design and one of the places I did it for was a fashion store. They became interested in my work and it just went from there. As told to Paul Little.