Scott Duffey

Friday 14th January 2022- Scott Duffey is a graphic designer who did the graphics course at Chester University.

He led with a very interesting style of lecture inspired by “choose your own adventure story.”

Personal Stuff – more creative, his own words. Toucan Tango is an illustration print business he runs with his wife. It started out with gig posters, very traditional poster design, with geometric layouts that are bright and pop art like. They gained a studio space that they made into a cafe called Sup that would be utilised for creating a community. He worked on networking around this business idea. They make drinks (coffee and beer), events and screen printing in New Brighton. They have been branding the items they sell.

I love this piece that is an a3 screenprint, inspired by his favourite video games. It is such a clean and precise piece of work.

Day Job is three days a week at a design studio in Liverpool, specialising in food packaging. He learnt a lot from the owner about print and packaging. Saw their shift towards more digital approaches to work. They have done illustrations for Peter Rabbit BBC apps, food packaging for John west and Geeta’s, and covering work for pet food companies and candle companies. Agrial Fresh produce was the merge of Agrial and the fresh brand that needed rebranding. He first got hired as a web developer and then became a graphic designer.

The struggle that he has had working with the company, he noticed that when working with one client, then similar come around, and you can get quite pigeonholed into doing similar stuff, e.g. keep having to do posters. Also juggling between digital to print and back.

He recommends becoming an expert in fields outside the day job and keep being creative. He found that learning the technical aspect of the print process was useful.

Building connections, he suggested the Liverpool art fair as a place where he went.

He recommends keeping notes and sketching, exercising and check what you are missing. Make sure work with your creative process.

My thoughts on the lecture:

His lecture was in-depth and intrigued me. Takeaways that I have are to be enthusiastic, be yourself, make sure you are learning all the skills and keep being creative. I was interested in the cafe that he started and his art style, so I decided to visit and create a small project after finding some inspiration there.

Here is the link to the blog post about the project I created.