Jon Ball
Extraordinary characters? Absorbing environments? Defined as, “poke, a verb: to push prod or lever with the end of finger”? What on earth is Pokedesign?
Pokedesign is the creation of Jonathan Ball, a freelance illustrator, web site maker and identity designer. Jonathan provides with fantastic style, entertaining and effective visual forms for books, magazines, posters, the Internet and commercial products.
Jonathan uses a variety of traditional
media and computer aided techniques to minister his unique style on his
trusty eMac running OSX. “I use Photoshop, illustrator, Freehand,
Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver, indesign for my designs. I always have a
good supply of pens and pencils and paper!”
So where has imagination stemmed from? “I have been greatly inspired by great LP and 12”covers from my teenage years, like Peter Saville New Order covers.” With his inspirations, Jonathan likes to work to “Instrumental music from bands like Mogwai, Underworld and Labradford conjures up many different images for me to work on.”
Jonathan also draws a lot on inspiration form his teenage years from cult classic films giving us further insight to where he has developed his “out of this world” environments. “Amazing sets from Ridley Scott on Blade runner and Alien, Japanese covers for console games in the late 80’s which were so much better than the European and American ones.”
Jonathan’s character designs do resemble a similar style found with
many graffiti character artists, a medium of art he likes and respects,
“ I believe that a lot of street art is of higher creative value and
shows more true passion than multi million pound paintings, as street
artists get nothing for there efforts yet are still impelled to create.”
Jonathan is currently training at Coleg Gwent in South Wales, and does
some freelance illustration and graphic design work in his spare time.
“To me the world is full of detail and nuance. I try to convey this
through my work and sometimes the smallest things have the biggest
meaning,” he says, “so I do bold and upfront work that has a direct
visual impact but at the same time enjoy subtlety and atmosphere.”
Speaking out about visuals and life, Jonathan adds, “I would like people to consider more the visual aspect of what is around them and think about how it affects their life.” Jonathan adds, “People often talk of an area as being depressing or boring, but don’t question whether they are making it that way, in poor choice of aesthetic styles for houses and their environment.
Jonathan’s style is a
development of the principles he carries with his view on art, “I think
art should be fun and not go too deeply into concepts to the point that
they replace the visual pleasure we get from it.”
To contact Jonathan at Pokedesign:
http://www.pokedstudio.com/
jon@pokedstudio.com
01633 211748