An interview with Glenn Garriock of FormFiftyFive

Atelier1A | visit site

You’ve just re-launched FormFiftyFive with a brand new design for the website. Can you tell us a little about the background of the blog, how it’s evolved, and what your plans are for its future?

FormFiftyFive launched 31st January 2007 and was originally a way for Jack Daly and myself to keep track of all the amazing work we kept sending each other via email. We wanted a way to archive all the work and links so that it would be easier to find when needed. Bit by bit our audience grew and we had a few people ask if they could join in. We tried really hard to post at least one decent link a day and it was getting more and more difficult, so it seemed to make sense to spread the wait a bit.

Last October we merged with the Serif and after all the dust had settled we had doubled our visitor numbers and the size of our team.

When Jack and I set of we just used a standard Wordpress Template and although K2 served us well it was never how we wanted the site to be. We also wanted to give our readers much more than just a list of images, although we do appreciate that most of our visitors come back for that reason alone. The new site includes a whole list of things we’ve been wanting to try out for ages.

The thing I’m most excited about are our video interviews with only the very best of our featured studios, artists illustrators and designers. We have 3 individuals that are already keen to get involved - Alex Trochut has already been announced and you’ll just have to be patient to hear about the rest.

We have a whole list of added features that we’ll role out in stage 2 once Alex Nelson ( the brains behind the new site ) has caught his breath. Alex has been incredibly patient with all of our requests an ideas, we couldn’t have completed the new site without him. He deserves all the praise!

The New FormFiftyFive | visit site

How was the process of working on the site redesign, and how did you get all 33 - presumably very opinionated - members of FFF on-board with the new look and feel?

Well I doubt it would have been possible to get everyone involved. Our contributors are all very opinionated, on of the reasons they are part of FFF! Jack, Alex and myself did the bulk of the work and had a few people glance at it along the way. Last Thursday we had a beta test for all contributors and the response was far better than we could have hoped for. All comments were completely valid and will be incorporated in the launch version.

In these early visuals you can see how the design progressed. From an early stage we had decided on a structure that included all the elements that we were keen on. Alex worked up a wireframe and we started messing around with the style.

As you’ll see the design was already close to what it is now. We went back and forth between a dark and light background, but felt that the dark grey worked the best and really brought out the ever changing colour pallete (the ‘highlight’ colour will compliment the commissioned header illustrations).

First draft

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Second Draft

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Third draft

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Fourth Draft

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Can you give us a potted account of your history, and how you eventually ended up founding Atelier1a?

I graduated at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design part of Dundee University and started work straight away at Elmwood in Edinburgh. After two years in which I learned too much to list and worked on a extensive mix of projects from large to small I decided that I wanted to see another way of working in another country. I grew up in Germany, although my parents are Scottish, and it made sense to start here.

Atelier 1A happened out of necessity, while my Girlfriend learns German in Hanover I need to keep myself occupied. And I’ve been learning quick as I go along to find clients while keeping existing ones happy and manage everything myself. It’s been great fun so far! I do miss working in Team though and will be looking for work in Berlin and Hamburg in Autumn. I’ve always worked on interesting ‘extracurricular’ projects even during my time at Elmwood and will continue to do so, Atelier 1A is simply an extension of that.

The Atelier (French/German for workshop of a creative person) is located in the Traditional Life Industrial Area in the beautiful village of Uetze.

When the British Army moved out of Hanover my Father and 2 partners bought up the aircraft hangars and build them up in Uetze to rent them out to companies. I’m in Hall 1A (hence the name, also in German 1A or Eins A is the best grade you can get at School and is also used in place of Excellent or Grand) between an Architecture Büro, an Asian Restaurant, a Gym and an accountant… what more do you need?!

Can you tell us more about the Six by Ten project?

Six by Ten is one of many tactile ideas we had. The first book was in a way a test to see if we could make a book by hand, involve artists featured on FFF and actually sell it. It worked a little too well almost! The extremely limited edition of 60 sold out in well under 48 hours from its release on FFF. As you can see in the making of clip it was quite a time consuming process. All books were hand printed in Edinburgh’s Printmakers Workshop with a lot of expert advice from Edward and Isabelle at the Owl & Lion Gallery. The Prints then travelled with us to Germany where they were assembled and shipped around the world.

Issue #02 will start as soon as FFF has had it’s spring clean completed and will involve another 10 artists a new 6-word story and a much larger format!

Six by Ten | visit site

Which web project are you most proud of and why?

I think now that FFF is live it is certainly my favourite. It’s difficult starting with a “Just make it better” brief, no time constraints and fulltime work that competes with a project. The three of us were the only thing holding us back, so we just went for it and I hope that what we’ve ended up with will hit the spot!

Do you find yourself doing more web than print work these days, and which do you prefer?

I definitely have more online work coming in then print! I enjoy working on both but I do get a bit more of a buzz when a print project comes back from the printer and you rip open the protective wrapper and you can smell the ink! Both Web and print work have their highs and lows. With web work clients seem to think that everything is easy to change which sometimes ends in far too many amends… saying that a print project can have the same problem.

In the end if it’s an interesting brief, the client is willing to work with and not against me and we are both happy with the results then I don’t mind if it’s online or offline.

Garriock & Associates | visit site

Alexander Henderson | visit site

— Posted on June 3rd, 2009 by Daniel in: Design processInterview

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