Sean Sims

Recently in our professional studies lectures we had the pleasure of being introduced to a very local Brighton based illustrator and designer named Sean Sims. He himself was a CCAD student between the years of 81-85 which is quite inspirational, as he has gone on to work for big clients such as the guardian. He studied a variety of topics which included design history and illustration, all of which have had a great impact on his work over time. Within his workspace, Sean Sims surrounds himself with ceramic character creatures that he has collected, each are quirky in design and these as well as childrens books, work by Alan Green, motivational quotes and posters from the 40s-60s influence his work and creative drive greatly. He is also influenced by Harry Stevens travel posters, finding their childlike, bold and graphic qualities admirable - and there is quite an obvious link between his and this artists work when you compare them together.

An example of Harry Stevens work found here

An example of Sean Sims work found here

Sean Sims does lots of different kinds of work, ranging from publishing, editorial and newspaper. He also works for a lot of specialist magazines. He regularly illustrates the 'How to' section of People management magazine, although because the work isn't constant but on request, the income and wages he receives are not regular. When illustrating for magazines like this one, he takes extracts from the text and illustrates that one element, because a lot of the time the written work on a whole is difficult to understand. This is how he creates a visual message from the written one.
He uses a quirky, adult kind of style but sees it best to have a couple of styles handy to rely on depending on what kind of approach you are looking for in your work. He often creates montage illustrations and uses what he describes as 'standardised' male and female characters. He takes on each job that comes to him no matter what, and no matter how dull it might appear to be. His work often represents graphic design, if the article he is working for does not ask for much, which he sees as mundane.

Work for the 2012 London olympics found on his site

He advised us to keep an extensive variety of work on our online portfolios, because often companies will seek out illustrators and base their decision of who to use for their project based on what they see there, so it is indeed better to show that you have a variety of ranges and approaches for whatever they might want to use.
Sean Sims prefers to work straight on to the computer rather than a sketchbook, and his choice of software is Illustrator, which he has taught himself to use gradually. He prefers to use this because he would rather his work look 'flat'. When he was trained in illustration, he did not have all of the same advantages as students like myself have today in terms of technology, but since this has developed over time, he has with it, which is a positive for him because as a student of my age he didn't thrive over creating physical pieces and hated using acrylic paint. In spite of this, Sean will occasionally work with pen and ink, but this is before scanning them in and then developing them on Illustrator.
His processes include taking images from google to work from and reference, although if he is working for another, he has to negotiate and keep up conversation with his client. He will also occasionally reuse his old illustrations to further develop for new projects. He enjoys working on character design and will often use limited colour in his studies and also limited shape.
The artist has worked at creating an animation for the yellow pages, which can be downloaded and watched here. Companies like this sometimes give you a colour palette to work from, and if he has freedom on his colour palette he will often harmonise them, as this is his personal preferred way of working.

A clip from his Yellow pages animation, image found here

Some of his work involved adding very simple and small illustrations to accompany pieces of text in newspapers, but of course he more than often has to create very detailed works for companies.
He also often works at creating some childrens activity books where stickers are made, which he finds very enjoyable to do. These can be seen here. And another example of his childrens work:

found here

He finds that different jobs take different amounts of time which can unfortunately but inevitably create difficulties, therefore time management is very important.
Sean Sims has been a greatly successful illustrator, and has worked for and been invited many other big names. Some of these include:

His designs have been used for a variety of things, such as lunchbox covers for kids and greetings cards and gift wrap. I found this lecture very inspiring considering this particular artist is very successful and originated from CCAD like myself. I think his work is very nice to look at, and I admire the artists unique, simplistic style and have found some motivation here, as I would like to perhaps have my own work on greetings cards and gift wrap in the future, and to be seen as a familiar designer for children's products. To finish, here are some of his gift cards and wrap designs: